Adsense rejected. Ideas or alternatives?

[Scot]

So we are 1 day from our MVP launch and Google Adsense keeps rejecting our application. They are saying we have insufficient content. I get it, we're not a blog, not do we ever intend to be. However, once our MVP is validated and we get running full steam with our full website and app, traffic won't be a problem.

Is there any way around the "insufficient content" issue? Also, is there a decent alternative to Adsense? We are planning on launching a decent Ad Words campaign in a couple of days and it would be nice to actually collect a few dollars in revenue to help pay for maintenance fees on our site.

I tried finding an answer on the forum, but the only thread I found was from 2011 and a bit outdated. Thanks!

 

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[IGP]

U can try media.net -

 

[ZMan26]

did you try taboola ? they do have high requierments though

anyway when googled " adsense alternative " I got this list :

• Adsterra
• Media.Net
• Chitika
• Adversal
• Infolinks
• Clicksor
• Revenuehits
• Bidvertiser

Maybe take a look at it.

I don't like adsense myself for monetization I think there must be better ways for your to monetize.

 

[Scot]

did you try taboola ? they do have high requierments though

anyway when googled " adsense alternative " I got this list :

• Adsterra
• Media.Net
• Chitika
• Adversal
• Infolinks
• Clicksor
• Revenuehits
• Bidvertiser

Maybe take a look at it.

I don't like adsense myself for monetization I think there must be better ways for your to monetize.

I googled alternatives, just wanted to check if anyone's had experience with any of the different ad groups personally. A lot of them require start up costs which doesn't really make sense to me. Eventually when we have the page views well solicit for our own ads, but we are at the MVP stage.

Have you personally used Taboola?

 

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[AllenCrawley]

I'm actually confused. You mention an MVP but want to place adsense on your website?

Is your business relying on Adsense as the revenue model? Who does this anymore? What am I missing?

 

[ZMan26]

I'm actually confused. You mention an MVP but want to place adsense on your website?

Is your business relying on Adsense as the revenue model? Who does this anymore? What am I missing?

My question as well, maybe you're asking the wrong question, maybe you should be asking " what are better ways to monetize " instead of what are alternatives to adsense.

Havent used taboola, heard they pay well, check them out

 

[Etido]

Hard to answer without more information about your site but media.net is the best alternative if you want high RPMs and contextual ads.

Native ad networks like Taboola, Content.Ad, Adblade, etc work better for BuzzFeed style viral news sites.

Bottom line is you will have a tough time getting approved for any networks if you don't have content or traffic. Many of the native networks want at least 10k pageviews/day to work with you.

 

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[Scot]

I'm actually confused. You mention an MVP but want to place adsense on your website?

Is your business relying on Adsense as the revenue model? Who does this anymore? What am I missing?

Long story short, we will have 3 revenue streams through our website once we get beyond MVP. Our developer starts work on the full function website and app in a week. Primary monetization will be subscriptions and lead gen.

Our MVP is going live this week just to validate our assumptions about our market and to see how users interact with the website. We figured, let's get easy to place Google ads on the site while we're in the early phase (we won't start the subscription section until app is launched) to see if we can scrape together some ad revenues to help fund the site. We are boot strapping everything here, so every dollar counts.

So that's why we are trying to get Adsense up. No, we will not rely on it past the first few months. No it's not even close to our main revenue stream. It's just to pay the site hosting and Aweber monthly fees until we pull in subscribers.

 

[devine]

Have you considered not flooding your app with adsense trash?
It will pay out.

 

[Scot]

Have you considered not flooding your app with adsense trash?
It will pay out.

App isn't going to have Adsense on it. Refer to above. The ads, probably 1 ad per page, is just going to go on the MVP website to help pay for the site while we are developing. Once the website and app v1.0 go live, it will be funded via subscription and lead gen.

 

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[ZMan26]

App isn't going to have Adsense on it. Refer to above. The ads, probably 1 ad per page, is just going to go on the MVP website to help pay for the site while we are developing. Once the website and app v1.0 go live, it will be funded via subscription and lead gen.

I think you should drop the adsense for now.
Launch, get more traffic and see if you want it later.

Worst case you can buy a verified adsense account.

 

[IGP]

You are never getting in to Taboola, Vibrant Media, etc. with out serious traffic. I run them on a few sites, so don't waste your time.

Media.net is basically a Bing/Yahoo adsense alternative. They will probably take you (not 100% sure). I run them also one of my mortgage sites. They don't pay as well as adsense, but you dont have much of a choice.

 

[Scot]

You are never getting in to Taboola, Vibrant Media, etc. with out serious traffic. I run them on a few sites, so don't waste your time.

Media.net is basically a Bing/Yahoo adsense alternative. They will probably take you (not 100% sure). I run them also one of my mortgage sites. They don't pay as well as adsense, but you dont have much of a choice.

Thanks for the advice. I just wanted to see if anyone has used any other ones.

I get that this is a pretty stupid thing to be worrying over. I'm mostly just stressing over the fact we launch our MVP tomorrow and focusing on tiny inconsequential things. Deep breath. Haha

 

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[ZMan26]

btw, have you considered starting a blog ? no matter your industry, a few relevant articles can get you approved + more traffic + more authority in your niche.

 

[Scot]

But seriously guys, thanks for pointing out the ridiculousness on worrying about ads right now. I do appreciate the criticism.

 

[Scot]

btw, have you considered starting a blog ? no matter your industry, a few relevant articles can get you approved + more traffic + more authority in your niche.

We probably will have a small blog, soon. But in all honesty, it's on the bottom of our priorities. Once our developers start their thing, I'll probably start plugging away at some content.

 

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[AllenCrawley]

But seriously guys, thanks for pointing out the ridiculousness on worrying about ads right now. I do appreciate the criticism.

Trust me, I understand bootstrapping. I think ads on a new website will do more harm than good and you'll never make enough with them to even pay for hosting.

 

[Scot]

I'm pulling the ads. Thanks guys. You're right, ads will hurt us, not help us right now. I'll drop my change in a coffee can. That'll probably make us more money haha

 

[Andy Black]

Looks like you did the right thing already.

AdWords traffic to Adsense on a landing page is very hard to make work profitably, and without getting banned from both for "Arbitrage".

... or "Offer not found", "Bridge Page", and a load of other policies I can't remember.

Even if your landing page is compliant, you're likely going to get smart priced until you're barely making anything back via Adsense.

Trust me, PPC arbitrage is a whole nother level of media buying, and borderline shady anyway (Ask.com springs to mind, and I wouldn't be surprised if their whole business model was vaporised when Google got rid of the side ad positions).

If you're driving visitors via AdWords then check out my post "How to get profitable or fail fast with AdWords." (Linked to in the first link in my signature.)

If you're putting ads on, then you're generating leads for those businesses placing the ads. So try and cut out the middle man and generate leads then contact businesses with those leads?

Google's much more lenient if you're doing lead gen... well, for some verticals anyway. You'll still have to be careful of the "Information Harvesting" policy.

I've run tests with very simple landing pages where I've bought impression and click data (AND generated a few leads), for very low ad spend.

 

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[Scot]

Looks like you did the right thing already.

AdWords traffic to Adsense on a landing page is very hard to make work profitably, and without getting banned from both for "Arbitrage".

... or "Offer not found", "Bridge Page", and a load of other policies I can't remember.

Even if your landing page is compliant, you're likely going to get smart priced until you're barely making anything back via Adsense.

Trust me, PPC arbitrage is a whole nother level of media buying, and borderline shady anyway (Ask.com springs to mind, and I wouldn't be surprised if their whole business model was vaporised when Google got rid of the side ad positions).

If you're driving visitors via AdWords then check out my post "How to get profitable or fail fast with AdWords." (Linked to in the first link in my signature.)

If you're putting ads on, then you're generating leads for those businesses placing the ads. So try and cut out the middle man and generate leads then contact businesses with those leads?

Google's much more lenient if you're doing lead gen... well, for some verticals anyway. You'll still have to be careful of the "Information Harvesting" policy.

I've run tests with very simple landing pages where I've bought impression and click data (AND generated a few leads), for very low ad spend.

Thanks Andy, I'll definitely reread that post right now. Just making sure, "information harvesting", can you go into a little more detail on this? If we are using Ad Words to drive traffic to our website (we're using Aweber for email capture), are we able to turn those email lists into lead gen down the road without making big brother Google angry?

 

[Andy Black]

Thanks Andy, I'll definitely reread that post right now. Just making sure, "information harvesting", can you go into a little more detail on this? If we are using Ad Words to drive traffic to our website (we're using Aweber for email capture), are we able to turn those email lists into lead gen down the road without making big brother Google angry?

Yes, you can ask for email addresses. Just make sure you have a privacy policy, t&c, contact details, and make it obvious why you want their contact details and what you will do with it.

Check out the Google documentation, and look at other landing pages in your vertical.

I don't know all the details as the leads I generate are always for local service, brick and mortar, businesses, and Google's pretty happy with that setup.

 

[healthstatus]

Use a PPC network like share-a-sale. Pick 4-5 advertisers that fit your visitor profile and put their banners in statically on the site until your traffic kicks in.

 

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[Scot]

Yes, you can ask for email addresses. Just make sure you have a privacy policy, t&c, contact details, and make it obvious why you want their contact details and what you will do with it.

Check out the Google documentation, and look at other landing pages in your vertical.

I don't know all the details as the leads I generate are always for local service, brick and mortar, businesses, and Google's pretty happy with that setup.

Gotcha. That makes sense. We should probably just use our collected emails in the beginning for an email list to get traffic. We'll probably tackle lead gen once we get past MVP stage. Thanks again.

 

[Andy Black]

If you're sending visitors to your page via AdWords, then your second most important consideration is not getting banned by Google (the first consideration being to get profitable of course).

 

[Scot]

If you're sending visitors to your page via AdWords, then your second most important consideration is not getting banned by Google (the first consideration being to get profitable of course).

Yeah, I didnt even consider that. Thanks for saving my website! haha Upon further thought, we are launching without ads and without doing any lead gen. Once we get sufficient traffic we will do ads the correct way (market directly to companies) and we will consult with a lawyer to get our T&S and Privacy Policy correct before we start collecting emails with the intention of generating leads.

 

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[ZMan26]

Yeah, I didnt even consider that. Thanks for saving my website! haha Upon further thought, we are launching without ads and without doing any lead gen. Once we get sufficient traffic we will do ads the correct way (market directly to companies) and we will consult with a lawyer to get our T&S and Privacy Policy correct before we start collecting emails with the intention of generating leads.

And when it comes to adsense its easy to get banned, and thats where the content I recommended you to get earlier kicks in.

Get some writers from fiverr / odesk, pay them a few bucks and get content.

 

[healthstatus]

Get some writers

Textbroker.com and Constant-Content.com are good sources for getting things written or Constant-Content has a library of pre-written articles you can select from.