Banned from Google Adsense - Lost $200,000

I don’t even have the words to describe the frustration we are going through right now. The total loss is around $200,000 or something but we don’t have an exact amount because we can’t log into any of our AdSense accounts. With server fees and programmer fees still bleeding us right now as I type. It’s quite depressing and the only reason why I decided to blog about this crap is because I read John’s post a few days ago. He did warn his readers about putting all their eggs in one basket way before this post but I just never broke the “engineer’s mindset” of trying to optimize systems with the training I went through in high school and college. I just thought that I could make sites with AdSense generating all the revenue. We never thought that this would happen to us. We were so close. We thought that it only happens in the movies - where the hero works so hard and is so close to achieving his goals and winning, but then losses everything because of something so small and stupid. Think of when Rocky lost all his fortune when his brother in law, Paulie signed a contract giving his lawyers power of attorney. Or when Tony Montana from Scarface lost everything because he got greedy and careless. We always thought that that would never happen to us and that we were smarter than that. One of the main things we have learned from this is that money can make you STUPIDER and lazier.

I think one of the possible reasons why we got banned for invalid clicks is because we logged into our accounts during our vacation in LA. Also it is possible that someone found our major sites and click botted for days when we were on vacation. We do not know if any of our sites were attacked or not but we have always purposely kept our personal sites like this blog low in traffic because I was scared that haters would do something like this. We have already appealed the bans but so far nothing but canned responses. There is no phone number or address or any humans there. Their forums are useless and replies just go unanswered.

I feel really cheated with the payments pending to arrive in days when we got the ban emails for invalid clicks. Google does not pay publishers even for the previous month’s earnings if you get banned. There was no warning and it never entered my head that I could lose all of our adsense accounts. We never clicked on our own ads nor told anyone to do so. We even kept most of our sites a secret. It’s not even about the money. It’s about the businesses and passive income we worked so hard to build. I have no idea how we can come back from this. I think the only person who truly knows and understands what we are going through is Robert Kiyosaki who lost his very successful business because of some stupid little mistake. I guess it is true, that true success comes only after many failures with priceless lessons. This is the greatest failure/setback that we have ever had in our 25 years of life so far. It has really opened our eyes to strive to become better people, businessmen, and being more grateful. The measure of a man is not the amount of money he has or the amount of daily passive income but the wealth of happiness he has during his time on this world. When we were banking all that money everyday we should have been more grateful, less arrogant, more careful, and should have been happier. We never truly appreciated what we had until we lost it. I should have actually followed what I posted here: Strategy for Success.

During the last few days when we were really down feeling stressed, depress, and even suicidal - one of our old high school friend called us. Surprisingly it uplifted us. We had last talked to him about 2 years ago but during this unexpected phone call he told us that he was actually starting on his journey to mastering money. One thing he said was “Don’t worry guys, you’re gonna make a comeback.” We are neither poor nor rich now but the knowledge and experience including this painful $200K lesson which we have learned during our journey so far is priceless.

I do not know when/if we will ever post again here. Hopefully we’ll make a come back. Cherish your success and time. Be GRATEFUL for what you have and Good Luck.

Henry and Wilson