Hey everyone -

Well, I'll just come out and say it. Starting Monday of next week, GoodBlogs will no longer be able to pay $20 per blog post that makes it to the homepage. Or $10, or even $5. It isn't that we don't want to (because we do), it's just that GoodBlogs hasn't really worked out like we thought it would, and we've hit a pretty large financial roadblock. The site will remain online and you will still be able to submit posts, comment, and share (more on this in a second).

GoodBlogs hasn't worked out as hoped for a couple of reasons, but the main reason is that Google AdSense won't allow us to run their ads on our site. When GoodBlogs was originally planned and built and launched, the idea was to use Google AdSense to generate revenue and then use most of that initial revenue to pay our awesome covey of bloggers. It was working too. For those of you that were around towards the beginning, you'll remember seeing Google AdSense ads on the site. You will also remember that they then just disappeared.

This was because, without notice, Google disabled our account, sent us a termination e-mail, and retained (ie kept) all the revenue that we had generated to date. To quote from their e-mail, "After reviewing our records, we've determined that your AdSense account poses a risk of generating invalid activity."

After this happened, we applied for a new Google AdSense account (this one being applied for by GoodBlogs, LLC). Our site was reviewed and approved and we started running Google AdSense ads again. Those of you who were around then will remember the ads were up again and then, just like that, they were gone. That's because, again, they kept everything we had earned, and we received an e-mail from them stating, "After reviewing our records, we've determined that your AdSense account poses a risk of generating invalid activity."

What does that mean? I have no idea! It is literally impossible to speak with a real person at Google AdSense. They do not provide customer support. There is no phone number to call. There is no e-mail address to reach out to. If you call other departments within Google asking to be transfered, they refuse to do it.

After this happened and we gave up trying to get ahold of someone at AdSense, we tried several other advertising platforms. Unfortunately, all of them pale in comparison to Google AdSense. They are just not capable of driving the same sort of revenue. This is the primary reason for our having to cease payments. There are a couple of other, much less significant, contributing reasons as well.

I think we can all agree one of those reasons isn't a lack of good writers or amazing community members. We have those in spades. I think we created a pretty amazing place here in a short amount of time (over 50,000 comments in five months!). It is my hope that many (or even all) of you will stick around after we are no longer able to pay out on Monday, with the goal being to get us back to a place where we can.

I hope you are still willing to share your creativity. To support your fellow bloggers. To continue to build your own followers. To continue to meet new friends, and to continue to read some really great stuff. If the site's traffic continues to grow, there's a decent chance that we can, at some point in the future, start paying out again. As a matter of fact, if each post currently on the site could, on average, just bring in 10 visitors a day from search engines, we would then be able to resume payouts to bloggers.

To that end, GoodBlogs.com will remain online and function the way it has, minus the monetary incentive. You'll still be able to submit posts, follow your favorite bloggers, comment on the posts of others, share articles via Facebook and Twitter, etc. In short, the community will still be here on Tuesday, and so will I. I hope you'll join me.

Sincerely,

Jason Trout

P.S. So what do you think? Are we going to set a record for the number of comments on a post with this thing?

• Published in GoodBlogs Announcement
• 135 Comments
•