I was banned from Google Adsense about a week before I was to receive my first $100 pay check. I have estimated that if I was not banned I would have easily made over $10k in ad revenue over the last 3 years.
I still have no idea why I was banned. I believe it was either I had my Google Ad banner a little to close to my Flash Game, hence, they thought I was trying to trick people into clicking the Ad. Or they did not like the fact that my page had no "content" in their mind because it was just a Flash Game. Also, I was banned about a week after I had a 5 times increase in traffic because I was promoting my game on forums so that might have had something to do with it.
The thing that I am pissed about now is the fact when I was banned only my Domain was banned but I just recently found out my entire Google account is banned from ever using AdSense for different domains.
If anyone is interested I can post the website and my appeal emails to Google.
What about when you're me and you sell firearms, ammunition and firearm accessories? You're banned until you have enough money to pay them. It can be frustrating.
Edit: I'd love to hear some alternative options on how to advertise on large networks (small firearm only networks haven't done much).
advertise something else then upsell them on your site
i.e. buy advertising for your "i love guns" line of tshirts
then on your sales page say "get this shirt free with a purchase of any gun"...then list 5 most commonly bought guns with your prices.
another option is to just skip the middle man. Do a google search for high converting terms. i.e. "best gun for self defense"...then see if the first site is privately owned. If it's an enthusiast site, contact them via whois and offer a few bucks for advertising. $100/yr will work for most people. This way it's like you are the first result, which = decent traffic. Just make a flashy ad that gets people's attention...and offer them a deal. And you'll have decent CTR, and decent conversions...all for the cost of 30-40 Google clicks which might get you a single sale.
Don't do the upsell thing, Google will perceive it as cloaking and will kill your account very quickly.
Contacting site owners is a good idea though, it's a simplified version of media buys. You don't need to pay CPM or use an adserver, just whip up a simple PHP/javascript code to rotate banners and track clicks and offer to pay them monthly to split test your code with their existing banners.
How about using the data you collected with the Google Content network and trying to negotiate with your best converting sites directly for ad placement?
Otherwise you're looking at media networks like advertise.com
I still have no idea why I was banned. I believe it was either I had my Google Ad banner a little to close to my Flash Game, hence, they thought I was trying to trick people into clicking the Ad. Or they did not like the fact that my page had no "content" in their mind because it was just a Flash Game. Also, I was banned about a week after I had a 5 times increase in traffic because I was promoting my game on forums so that might have had something to do with it.
The thing that I am pissed about now is the fact when I was banned only my Domain was banned but I just recently found out my entire Google account is banned from ever using AdSense for different domains.
If anyone is interested I can post the website and my appeal emails to Google.