Blog Surfing Programs and Adsense

A couple days ago, I posted an article about blog surfing programs. Its come to my attention (from Google :) that Google is not terribly fond of all of these programs.

They will not specifically identify the programs they disfavor, but there are some things to look out for and avoid if you want to avoid trouble with your adsense account.

1. avoid programs that offer the sale of impressions or credits. Even if you don't use this ( I wouldn't recommend it, I think it silly to buy impressions, unless your site is so 'sticky' that people will buy your product when they show up and the margin is greater than the cost to buy in which case you probably could care less about adsense) this function Google considers anyone that's a member to potentially be a user and thus might shut down your account.

2. avoid programs that allow you to sell your credits to others if you want to keep Google happy.

3. the only program that seems to avoid these problems is blogexplosion. Google would not verify for me that blogexplosion is or is not acceptable, but they don't seem to do any of the offending sales.

Now, I still think these services are great for drumming up traffic. here is what I'm going to do. You can follow suit if you like, but follow the leader at your own risk!

I'm going to take my google ads off of some of my blogs.

I'm going to promote the hell out of them through these services. When my traffic level gets high enough, I will slowly ad ads in, unless I've found some other great way to make money.

Now Google will miss out on my blog's rise in popularity.

They don't seem to care, and that's fine. Each unto their own self interest.

If I find some advertising firm that does what Google offers with less problems well then I may try them out and see how it goes.

I'll keep my readers posted in the meantime. . . . :)