This isn't about paying or not paying for a service. These days I am heavily leaning towards paid services because, well, I want them to stick around.

If Google needs to have some of my money in order to ensure that the relationship is, well, sensible, so be it. Give me that option.

A few months ago I posted a set of ideas on how a more sensible approach could work. It focused on AdSense, which seems to be where most of the friction originates. Here it is:

First of all, don't make the process an digital on/off decision. Create a system of
staged penalties leading up to account suspension and then, if abused, closure.

New accounts should have an "on-boarding" process in place.

It would be OK to tell the site that, for the first 30 days ads will be presented
and NO revenue will be paid to the site. This is a monitoring period where Google
can just watch and see how the site behaves.

During the following 90 days revenue is slowly notched up from 0% to 100%. Again,
close monitoring and feedback during this period is critical.

If and when a problem occurs, Google is to provide clearly understandable data on
the relevant violations and suggestions on fixing them.

One argument against this is that, if they made their violation detection data
public, spammers will use the data to get even better. Well, so be it. Use this
to develop even better detection technology. Last I heard Google is staffed with
pretty smart folk. Solve the problem!

After clearly flagging the relevant problems give the account owner a reasonable
length of time to fix it. Say, three days from receipt of the notice.

If the problem is not fixed in the alloted time then ad revenues start to be
discounted based on some well-explained formula. Maybe 10% per day. This should
provide enough incentive for a lazy site owner to take action.

This could also come with staged penalization of the site-standing in search. This
could be controversial. Maybe not.

This could also have an element of a reduction of the CPM revenue on ads served into
the site. Once the revenue reaches zero, ad placement stops. Perhaps there's the
option for Google to serve non-ads with text noting that this site is in violation
of AdSense rules. I can thing of few things that'll wake someone up more than having
all of your ad locations populated with such a notice.

Despite all of the above, the account is never killed off except for the most
egregious cases.

Having all ad revenue shut down the site is given a full report --with clear
reasons-- of the violations and the timeline to ad-serving shutdown. AND, how to
fix it. The site could be suspended from AdSense for thirty days, during which
they have to show that they fixed the problems.

Once the problems are fixed a staged restart of ad-serving would begin.

At first the site would start being served with a few ads and they'd only earn,
say, 50% of normal revenue.

Over a period of three months of "good behavior" the sites ads would increase and
improve. And, of course, the percentage of revenue earned per ad would notch
back up to 100%.

Oh, yes, if the account holder owns multiple sites on one AdSense account the sites
ought to be treated separately. If one site is having problems but there's another
that is in perfect standing account actions should only affect the site that needs
to fix problems and not the entire account.

I'm sure the above has holes. It is probably a reasonable start for a framework that
could fix the problem.

I've had the experience of having legitimate and above-honest clients get banned
from AdSense for, well, we'll never know. The problem with the way Google runs
this is that there's no way to make an honest mistake. This is very easy to do when
you are just getting started. It isn't fair. It isn't right.