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I ran a website that I first coded when I was 14-15, then kept improving over the years. It was for amateur electronic music producers to upload their tracks an

I ran a website that I first coded when I was 14-15, then kept improving over the years. It was for amateur electronic music producers to upload their tracks and after a few years there were several thousand active users, generating ~$400/month in AdSense. One day a relatively famous DJ tweeted a link to a song on the website, and that day alone generated close to $300, so 19 year old me thought he was about to earn his first $1000 in one month from a website! But Google decided to block the account because I guess that spike in traffic was too much, even though it all came from Twitter... So suddenly I was left with this website I had invested hundreds of hours in, and no way to monetise it. I tried a few other ad networks but they all seemed really dodgy and in the end decided to leave it with no ads. There really needs to be more regulation in this space.

smt88 7y ago
Honestly my big problems with Google as a user are the same as yours: they try to automate their customer service, and the software just isn't even close to being a human equivalent. It's an absolute nightmare.
- cube00 7y ago
  I understand trying to automate customer service but when you have an alleged human reply with the following after an email chain with nothing more then RTFM, something is broken. Phrases such as "I made sure to include all the information available to me" just make you feel even more worthless. > Wed, Aug 28, 9:28 AM EDT: Google Play team > I’m not able to provide any more information or a better answer to your question. In our previous email, I made sure to include all the information available to me. Update: It looks like they didn't actually include all the information available to them, there's another level of escalation, apparently only accessible after public attention https://twitter.com/GooglePlayDev/status/1166999937156100096 https://twitter.com/GooglePlayDev/status/1166999937156100096
fencepost 7y ago
Sponsorships possibly through Patreon? User sponsorships in the $1-5 range get a little "I'm a sponsor" bling, companies (or individuals) can sponsor higher perhaps with levels for on-site only ("listen to my new release!") or off-site ads (software, instruments, mics, etc.)
Phillips126 7y ago
I also developed a website young (mid teens), which was essentially a "beautiful/unique website ranking" based on visitor submissions and upvote/downvote system. I had the essential pieces done and launched the website, super excited as my first real project. I decided to toss on Google AdSense to see if I could potentially monetize the website by putting a single picture advertisement on the right side of the website. I was starting to generate some money (small, but exciting for a young developer). I was talking to my high school friend about what I was doing and how AdSense worked. Unbeknownst to me, he later visited my website and clicked the ads repeatedly expecting to make me hundreds of dollars... well, my account was shut down. I tried to plead my case, Google didn't care at all. I was "banned" and a small fish. Years later (in my early 20's) I considered revisiting the idea of monetizing a site I had for an online community. I tried to appeal to Google again lifting the ban and was denied. I was effectively banned for life from using Google AdSense as a young teen because of a friend "trying to make me rich" without him knowing the repercussions. I know there are alternatives to Google AdSense, however, Google was the one that payed the best. Still irks me to this day when I think about it...
- vortico 7y ago
  How is this system immune to me clicking on an enemy website's ads 100's of times to get them banned from AdWords?
  - Phillips126 7y ago
    That was part of my argument during the appeal. And like every other report of similar things happening, all I get back in response was some canned copy/paste email from their policies. It seemed very out of my control for something like this to happen and I felt wrongly punished - and for a lifetime!? I can understand "banned for X amount of time" but as a young developer's first offence a lifetime ban seems a bit overkill.
  - segmondy 7y ago
    Nothing. If anything, I'm feeling like we should create bots, browser extensions that repeatedly do this and cause massive havoc on their system until they listen and start figuring out better ways to fix their system. Folks are not fighting back. I'm not into ads and have never cared about using them to monetize, but if I did and they took my money. It's war.
CodeMage 7y ago
Is there really no other way to monetize except through ads? Sure, there needs to be more regulation in this space, I agree with that. But the idea that ads are the best monetization has never sat well with me. I understand that it's convenient because you get money without asking your end users for it. But I've always thought of it as "if it seems too good to be true, then it probably isn't" and stories like yours just keep reinforcing that feeling. And all that's without considering how ads degrade the user experience or help erode the privacy. Every time I have to browse the web without an adblocker, I get freshly shocked at how awful it is.
- basscomm 7y ago
  Sure there is, but most people don't bother for a few reasons: -Slapping some ad network's code into your site is comparatively easy, and monetizing almost every other way is hard (i.e. "I just want to create awesome content and get paid for it, I don't want to be my own sales department, too, that's boring") -Even if you do monetize other ways, slapping some ad network's code into your site is, effectively, 'free money' on top of what the site's users are willing to pony up for -Users have been inured into believing and accepting that covering every possible square inch of civilization with ads is an unavoidable consequence of modern life. So much so that the absence of ads in something that isn't otherwise monetized is suspicious (there's no such thing as a free lunch)
  - hombre_fatal 7y ago
    You're forgetting a major one: there's a whole gulf of things that people just aren't willing to actually take their wallet out for. People even scoff paying $8/mo to Netflix while spending hours watching it daily. Good luck taking payments for your little project. For all sorts of reasons, too: we have been conditioned to think ads = free, none of your competitors ask for money (they use ads, so they're "free"), the modern payment flow is still cumbersome and doesn't support microtransactions, there are all sorts of things like HN that I simply wouldn't use if it wasn't free, your users can't afford it, etc. One of the worst aspects of ads is how they've mutated our society's relationship with paying for things that we value, but ads definitely fill the void outlined above. Your creation's value to society doesn't have to breach the high threshold of getting a user to take their wallet out. But just think of all the things you have done on the internet today, all the things you enjoyed doing or thought were worth even a tiny amount of attention, yet how unwilling you'd be to actually send money their way in the current system.

smt88 7y ago

Honestly my big problems with Google as a user are the same as yours: they try to automate their customer service, and the software just isn't even close to being a human equivalent. It's an absolute nightmare.

cube00 7y ago
I understand trying to automate customer service but when you have an alleged human reply with the following after an email chain with nothing more then RTFM, something is broken. Phrases such as "I made sure to include all the information available to me" just make you feel even more worthless. > Wed, Aug 28, 9:28 AM EDT: Google Play team > I’m not able to provide any more information or a better answer to your question. In our previous email, I made sure to include all the information available to me. Update: It looks like they didn't actually include all the information available to them, there's another level of escalation, apparently only accessible after public attention https://twitter.com/GooglePlayDev/status/1166999937156100096 https://twitter.com/GooglePlayDev/status/1166999937156100096

fencepost 7y ago

Sponsorships possibly through Patreon? User sponsorships in the $1-5 range get a little "I'm a sponsor" bling, companies (or individuals) can sponsor higher perhaps with levels for on-site only ("listen to my new release!") or off-site ads (software, instruments, mics, etc.)

Phillips126 7y ago

I also developed a website young (mid teens), which was essentially a "beautiful/unique website ranking" based on visitor submissions and upvote/downvote system. I had the essential pieces done and launched the website, super excited as my first real project. I decided to toss on Google AdSense to see if I could potentially monetize the website by putting a single picture advertisement on the right side of the website. I was starting to generate some money (small, but exciting for a young developer). I was talking to my high school friend about what I was doing and how AdSense worked. Unbeknownst to me, he later visited my website and clicked the ads repeatedly expecting to make me hundreds of dollars... well, my account was shut down. I tried to plead my case, Google didn't care at all. I was "banned" and a small fish. Years later (in my early 20's) I considered revisiting the idea of monetizing a site I had for an online community. I tried to appeal to Google again lifting the ban and was denied. I was effectively banned for life from using Google AdSense as a young teen because of a friend "trying to make me rich" without him knowing the repercussions. I know there are alternatives to Google AdSense, however, Google was the one that payed the best. Still irks me to this day when I think about it...

vortico 7y ago
How is this system immune to me clicking on an enemy website's ads 100's of times to get them banned from AdWords?
- Phillips126 7y ago
  That was part of my argument during the appeal. And like every other report of similar things happening, all I get back in response was some canned copy/paste email from their policies. It seemed very out of my control for something like this to happen and I felt wrongly punished - and for a lifetime!? I can understand "banned for X amount of time" but as a young developer's first offence a lifetime ban seems a bit overkill.
- segmondy 7y ago
  Nothing. If anything, I'm feeling like we should create bots, browser extensions that repeatedly do this and cause massive havoc on their system until they listen and start figuring out better ways to fix their system. Folks are not fighting back. I'm not into ads and have never cared about using them to monetize, but if I did and they took my money. It's war.

CodeMage 7y ago

Is there really no other way to monetize except through ads? Sure, there needs to be more regulation in this space, I agree with that. But the idea that ads are the best monetization has never sat well with me. I understand that it's convenient because you get money without asking your end users for it. But I've always thought of it as "if it seems too good to be true, then it probably isn't" and stories like yours just keep reinforcing that feeling. And all that's without considering how ads degrade the user experience or help erode the privacy. Every time I have to browse the web without an adblocker, I get freshly shocked at how awful it is.

basscomm 7y ago
Sure there is, but most people don't bother for a few reasons: -Slapping some ad network's code into your site is comparatively easy, and monetizing almost every other way is hard (i.e. "I just want to create awesome content and get paid for it, I don't want to be my own sales department, too, that's boring") -Even if you do monetize other ways, slapping some ad network's code into your site is, effectively, 'free money' on top of what the site's users are willing to pony up for -Users have been inured into believing and accepting that covering every possible square inch of civilization with ads is an unavoidable consequence of modern life. So much so that the absence of ads in something that isn't otherwise monetized is suspicious (there's no such thing as a free lunch)
- hombre_fatal 7y ago
  You're forgetting a major one: there's a whole gulf of things that people just aren't willing to actually take their wallet out for. People even scoff paying $8/mo to Netflix while spending hours watching it daily. Good luck taking payments for your little project. For all sorts of reasons, too: we have been conditioned to think ads = free, none of your competitors ask for money (they use ads, so they're "free"), the modern payment flow is still cumbersome and doesn't support microtransactions, there are all sorts of things like HN that I simply wouldn't use if it wasn't free, your users can't afford it, etc. One of the worst aspects of ads is how they've mutated our society's relationship with paying for things that we value, but ads definitely fill the void outlined above. Your creation's value to society doesn't have to breach the high threshold of getting a user to take their wallet out. But just think of all the things you have done on the internet today, all the things you enjoyed doing or thought were worth even a tiny amount of attention, yet how unwilling you'd be to actually send money their way in the current system.