Hello, Google AdSense

EDIT: We have been approved by AdSense on 25/11/2019.

So, I applied to become a publisher on Google AdSense’s’ platform so I can start generating some passive income by giving away knowledge to blog readers who are interested in topics I will be writing about, and I got rejected. Twice.

I am writing this post exactly before I re-apply and see if I will get accepted, or rejected, for the third time.
(Good thing you have unlimited tries until you get approved. Yuppiii!)

I’m quite optimistic because now I have made sure that I have fixed all the issues AdSense team found on the site.

Shall we start?

The first time I applied on the platform just to get AdSense’ codes so I can use them as fixed placeholders on the site, as I was experimenting with blog’s templates and structure.

There were like 4 blog posts with more than 3500 words in total, with unique content, but barely any traffic.

The second time when I submitted my application after writing a total of 10 blog posts, changing my template to a more serious/professional one and paying around $50, I thought it would be easy to get approved and start generating income, but that wasn’t the case. (PS: You don’t need a paid theme, you need a light/responsive one. This is a placeholder for the post I will be writing about Theme optimization, so, make sure you take a look on here every now and then.)

I still was doing something that wasn’t enough to get Giant’s approval.
It sucks. It hurts. ARE YOU SERIOUS?

You don’t know what’s going on, because the email you receive from AdSense doesn’t say the exact reason, but it points you to their Program Policies page.

All I had to do and figure out, was to read carefully what’s written in the page mentioned above.

The solution came to my mind. I was stuck inside of my thoughts and I didn’t know what else to do, so…

I started google-ing stuff like:

Why AdSense won’t accept my application

How many blog posts do I need to have in order to get approved by AdSense?

Do real people review publisher application on AdSense?

And many other things I could think of. It helped.

Google is your friend.
Seriously.

There were a lot of search results with theories, since Google doesn’t like to reveal things, the ways they operate, and that’s totally understandable since people would probably try and exploit their mechanics and systems.

So, here’s a short guide that I will be sharing with you today.

Think of Google as you would think of the police. (This blog post is for the good guys. I don’t care what you think about the police, bad guys.)

Police don’t care who you are, or what you do, as long your business doesn’t involve anything shady.
In case you’re a bad person, the police will need to know information about you, so they can keep tabs on you.

For that reason, you better have an “About us” page, where you explain exactly what you are going to do on the site you are applying for.
This makes sense, right?

You are here for the money, obviously, but your readers aren’t.

They are on your page because you are writing about things, giving information and probably expecting some feedback, comments, and critique.

You need a “Contact” page.
It doesn’t have to be SEO optimized, nor a beautiful page with astonishing images or other media.
It has to provide information like:

email address (You can use only your email address, and skip the other things I will mention below)
A phone number,
Your location/address and other things that can help your readers get in touch with you.

Get a nice WordPress theme.

It doesn’t have to be a paid one. It needs to be a light one, since nowadays people use their mobile phones more than they use their personal computers. You are probably reading this post from your phone, aren’t you, bugger? Boo.

Don’t let your future readers lose their sight because you added a red background-color and set your text color to this amazing green.

You get it, don’t you? (We are currently having issues, please come back later.)

Good, you get it, let’s move on!

Why is google being an a**hole?

Bad news. They are not. They are trying to protect advertisers from malicious publishers, and vice versa.

People spend money to appear on your and my websites. They expect to get a return of investment on the money they paid Google, through their advertising campaigns. So it makes perfect sense.

Good publisher guy gets paid by good advertiser guy in hopes good advertiser guy gets his ROI while publisher already enjoys the money he got from AdSense.

Summary?

I’m not writing this post for my readers, but for the AdSense folks, in hope, they see this post and understand that I know wherever I did wrong.

I put 0 effort in SEO in this post, this is just 100% text editor and a guy behind a keyboard.

In case you are a reader (and not Google staff) and interested in this kind of topic, I can make more of it, as long you turn off your damn adblocker so I have an extra motivation to write.

How about you? Have you ever gone through this? No? No problem, just write below what’d you do in my case.