There's no such thing as a free lunch. Or, apparently, an earned one.

Let's face it: Nobody with half a brain gets into blogging for the money. Since I have half a brain or so, I know that blogging is just not that profitable of an endeavor. One really has to enjoy what one is doing rather than view it is a potential source of income.

However, when Google AdSense personally sought me out and contacted me a year or so ago (in the form of a banner ad on my blogger account) I decided to give it a try. "Maybe I could make enough money to put some gas in my car" I thought, not realizing that a tank of petroleum fuel would soon skyrocket to the price equivalent of platinum-coated-gold. I signed up, placed the appropriate "code" into my "template" and "waited for the money to start pouring in."

A couple of things were immediately discouraging. First, I discovered that Google will only send you a check after you have earned $100.00 (before taxes, thereby making the final value of the check somewhere between $11.50 and $11.75). Since each ad click nets a fraction of a penny of income, at the pace I was on a year or so ago this meant that I would receive my first check in approximately October 2019.

Secondly, I realized that the "code" I placed in my "template" "sucked". Since the program scans the blog for key words and places ads related to the blogs content, most of my ads were for...(of course)...church signs! Apparently, they haven't created programs that can teach a computer to recognize sarcasm, snark, and humor. Or a program that can experience any human feelings. Which is a good thing, because if I had to be subjected to this in real life I might have to drive my car off of an overpass. I mean, really, how much more over-rated can a movie get? Wait....never mind.

I digress. The fact that most of my ads were for church signs meant that most of my readers were less than interested in the links, and I wouldn't receive much money for clicked-on ads. No matter. I was too "lazy" to take the "code" out of my "template", so I just left it in there.

Over the course of the past year, a few things have happened. First, my traffic increased, thanks to my archives, some new friends who give nice shout-outs, a few guest posts at other blogs, and a visible presence on humor-blogs.com. Since AdSense also gives out scratch for page visits, I was earning income based on page visits alone, and not for worthless ads that didn't in any way at all reflect the interests of my readership. I realized that my estimated check arrival time of October 2019 was now looking more like Summer 2007. Oh, the joy. I could almost taste that quarter-tank of gasoline that my hard work would earn me. Which was encouraging, because it meant a check would arrive soon, but also discouraging because gasoline tastes like $#!*.

As of yesterday, I believe I was hovering around the $90.00 plateau ($9.63 after taxes). And then I received this email from Google:

Hello Joel Bezaire, It has come to our attention that invalid clicks and/or impressions have been generated on the Google ads on your site(s). We have therefore disabled your Google AdSense account. Please understand that this was a necessary step to protect the interests of AdWords advertisers.

It went on from there. My account has been deleted on the AdSense page. No sign of my just-about-enough-money-for-a-Value-Meal-if-you-don't-Supersize-it income. Gone. All that lack of work, wasted.

I write all of this just to point out Google's circular logic:

1. Help Google earn money by allowing us to place irrelevant ads on your site!!
2. By allowing this, we will give you a microscopic percentage of the money we earn, which even then isn't very much because you must remember, the ads are completely irrelevant to your site's content.
3. This means you should work to promote your blog, because the more page hits and ad clicks you get, the more money you will receive. Even microscopic amounts can add up over extremely long periods of time!
4. If you get too many page hits of ad clicks, that means you cheated and will never see your money, your Value Meal (unsupersized), your quarter tank of gas, or your platinum-coated-gold, you worthless, putrid sack of dishonest (*&&%. Ninety dollars (before taxes) isn't enough to get worked up about so nobody will take legal action, but if we bend the entire blogosphere over the table over this amount we will make out like absolute m&^$#-f(*^$^%* bandits! You're a pitiful blogger and we're f*&&^%&* Google!! How do you think we got this big and famous and multi-national in the first place?!? MWUHAHAHAHAHAHA......

I just love the implication (later in the letter) that somehow I have:

a) The technical wherewithal to create a program that clicks on ads:
"...automated clicking or surfing programs, or any other deceptive software"
(I can't even begin to wrap my mind around the fact that a program like that could actually exist, let alone start to create or install one. Hell, I was barely able to install the "code" to get the ads to appear on my site.)

b) The available funding to hire someone to click on ads for me:
"...a publisher encouraging others to click on his ads."
("OK, look. If you will click on my ads, I will split the income with you. That could get each of us an eighth of a tank of gas. Or, we could split a value meal! No, it couldn't be super-sized. Hey, wait...come back! Please?!?")

c) The time to sit around and click on my own ads:
"...a publisher on his own web pages"
(They caught me. In between teaching seventh graders, coaching basketball and baseball, playing bass on the worship team at church, judging Heroclix, my 40-minute commute each way to work, taking graduate school classes, selling a house and moving, and my rigorous comic-reading schedule, I sit around and click on ads for products in which I have absolutely no interest. In fact, my wife encourages me to spend my free time in this manner.)

For the record, I have clicked on those ads exactly twice. The first time was after I placed them on the site. I wanted to see where the link took me. The second time, I was so friggin' shocked to see an ad for a product that might actually approach relevancy for my readership that I felt compelled to click on it. I liken it to taking a picture of a Dodo bird, except less expected and believable.

In conclusion, there is an ugly white box near the top of this page, and one towards the bottom of the right-hand sidebar. These are where my hopes and dreams were once found. May these serve as a monument to corporate suckiness, and a warning to all those who are drawn in by promises of wealth, fortune, and $11.67 after taxes.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go sign up to carry ads for Amazon.