Emergency Fundraiser, Blame Google

Back in early October, I held a fundraiser on this site which raised $2,200. I was gratified by the outpouring then, and had planned not to do another fundraiser until sometime in January. I had enough monies slated to be paid to me by Google at the end of December for clicks to ads on my site in the previous four months to help cover me in the meantime.

Unfortunately, Google canceled my Adsense account out of the blue last Tuesday--no warning, no nothing--after my site saw a large upsurge in ad clicks on Monday, Dec. 3. The back story is here. Google will not be paying me the $600 they owe me unless I somehow manage to get my account restored by proving to them that...well, I don't know what I am supposed to prove to them since Lord Google doesn't tell you what it needs to know and I am not web literate enough to know what to give them in the way of data to prove my case. All I know is that I am out a significant amount of money due to no fault of my own and Google is unwilling to work with me to resolve the situation.

Over the weekend, I heard from several bloggers who'd been similarly screwed by Google. Two managed to get their accounts restored after several weeks of appealing to Google, the others basically gave up and moved on. I have too much money at stake--not to mention all the principles at work here--to walk away from this and will continue to hound Google until it pays me what it owes me. That could take weeks or months and the outcome is highly unpredictable.

Until then, I have two favors to ask readers. One, if any of you are well-versed in websites, could you please contact me directly and help walk me through how I can use my site stats package to prove to Google that none of this was my fault (unless of course they are cutting me off over content in which case it is my fault!). Over the weekend, I became convinced (at least to the degree my ignorance allows) that my site had been the victim of one of those distributed attack thingys wherein some other site puts up a malicious script and goes off banging on others sites' ads hundreds of times. Somehow the other site makes money off this. I don't understand how that works (and I am not even fully sure that's what happened), so I am truly hoping that someone who reads this will reach out and help me. I have already appealed my case to Google once and been turned down, but then I don't even know what terminology or data to use to satisfy Lord Google that I didn't do anything to endanger its advertisers.

Two, I am now doing an emergency fundraiser to replace the money Google owes me and to give me a small cushion above that. I hadn't planned to ask readers for money until sometime in January, but I've got no choice and need to ask for your help now because reader traffic will absolutely plummet next week through the end of the year. That said, I'd like to raise $1,200 by the end of this week so that I can go into the holidays with some level of security that I won't be evicted from my apartment come the New Year. Seriously, my little go-round with Google has put me up against the wall like that.

There's a Paypal button on the right. Or if you prefer good old fashioned snail mail, then shoot me an email and I'll give you an address.

I apologize for having to do this at all, especially right before the holidays kick in, so just keep in mind that Google made me do it.