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Interesting, and unfortunate, but the guy tried to game the system. What did he think would happen?

how'd he game the system? i skimmed the entire article (very long) but all i could see was that he produces video based on people's interests - things like trucking documentaries. his account was cancelled (they kept $3700) but they are still running adsense ads on his pages (in contravention to their own terms).

is it possible that he did game the system and isn't telling us? of course. but he seems honestly exasperated.

In the article he says he sent out news letters saying the more money he gets from adsense the more videos he could produce. Kind of a wink and a nudge to induce his visitors to click the heck out of his ads. i.e gaming the system.

> Kind of a wink and a nudge to induce his visitors to click the heck out of his ads. i.e gaming the system.

good pickup. i missed that. from the article:

> Oh yes, I was also running little blocks of adverts provided by Adsense and, yes, I told my subscribers
> that I got some money if they visited the websites of those advertisers – all of whom were interested
> in selling stuff to sailors

as i see it, there is an uncomfortable tension between click through rates and a desire to reward the publisher showing the ads. this has led to this situation where people like the videos, perhaps click lots on the ads hoping to reward the video producer. The producer himself is perhaps more used to print and video advertising where saying something like "please look at our advertisers" is perfectly reasonable.

another tension is that if google tells people what part of the terms they have violated and in what quantity, then they will be further gamed by fraudsters...

tl;dr version - website run by sailing enthusiast contains ads tailored to sailing enthusiasts. Visitors click ads at higher-than-normal rate. Site operator's AdSense account gets shut down (and all money in account confiscated) for clickfraud.

What a way to make profits ,

be evil ?

It would seem that hes missing a Privacy Policy, which is required by the adsense terms. I got a feeling you really got to be on your toes about such things, if you want a second chance. Though i don't think he should simply give up, his site seems serious enough.

It is also more or less stupid to mention that you earn money from the ads on the site, because that should be pretty obvious. The only reason i can think of, why someone would even mention it, is to play a psychological trick on people, to get them to click the ads.

Another problem, which also seems a little suspicious, is that he has little to no content available for non-members.

Also, I'm not entirely sure about this, but if I'm not mistaken, you should not display adsense on "no-content" pages. That would include those pages telling people that they need a subscription, to view the requested video/page.

As far as i know, it also isn't allowed to hold adsense in the members-only area of your site. My guess on why this isn't allowed, is that there is no way the adsense bot would be able to visit the members area, and as such the ads wouldn't be contextually targeted.
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Small correction, seems he got it stacked away in his About page, and while not necessarily bad, hes using a template as well. It would give a more honest impression, if he actually took the time to write his own.

And rather then having it stashed away in his about page, i also think it would be better, if he had a visible link to it on all his pages named "Privacy Policy".

But it likely has to do with his lack of content, and/or displaying ads in members-only sections.

Very interesting read...

the main part of the problem has to be the fact that no human at Google has been involved. some decisions have to be made by humans

Perhaps it is asking a lot from a film maker and sailor to carefully study online advertising guidelines, but if he makes significant money from it, he has to. He is also violating Amazon's affiliate rules by giving incentives to Amazon customers for using his affiliate links.