Read to the end. I do not like Cheating. You have tried blogging. You posted daily for over a month. Shoot sometimes you posted 2, 3 and even 4 times a day. You commented on other sites, you did whatever 
Darren Rowse said to do. You even paid for some reviews.
You check your Adsense and see $4.98 and you think back to the 2 times you clicked your own ads when you were at RadioShack and a friend’s house.
So you tune into a little John Chow and decide it is time to take action.
You start clicking your ads from computer to computer. You go to school and click some ads, get your friends to click ads, and when you get home you click. You only click once so to not get caught.
Before you know it you made $100 and are now going to get a check when the time rolls around. SAWEET!
You have made the bigtime! You continue this for a few days. You will be at $1000 in no time! Nobody is hurt and you are going to get a fat check for $1000 soon!
Do you know what this is doing? Does it hurt? Hell yes it does. You are stealing. You are stealing from advertisers like myself. That’s right I advertise, but that is not all that I am talking about. I am talking about stealing from me as a publisher.
You drive down what advertisers are willing to pay. You drive down what all decent publishers make for each click. Is this a problem. It is, and publishers should be pissed at people who fraudulently click their own ads.
Then one day you try to log in, and access is denied. You never get your check. The damage is done.
Do you Stumble?
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[...] To start this off, I hate spam, I hate spam sites. I hate that the internet is getting filled with sites that do nothing but have ads. I fight for a better internet. I fight against click fraud. [...]
Of course, if the account is closed then no damage is done (since the advertiser isn’t charged)…unless of course Google keeps the difference.
You don’t get the point.
They hurt us.. the publishers that want to use ads to make money on legitimate sites.
You see I also advertise and pay less knowing that there is fraudulent clicks.
So if I was going to advertise on your site and was going to do $2 a click, now I will only do $1 a click because there are people doing fraud and some of it gets through.
I think google eventually discovers cheating and returns money to advertisers
The problem is people who don’t do this and get banned with no explanation. Very few people probably do this, but the innocent ones always get caught in the crossfire.
I am sure there are innocent people out there you get caught. I know a guy who clicked someone’s ads hundreds of times thinking that he was helping the website owner.
Google banned the website owner.
Unfortunate.
What I hate though is that my earnings are ultimately affected by those that cheat, even if they get caught they have hurt what advertisers are willing to pay.
As an advertiser, I don’t worry about click fraud. One reason is that Google regularly refunds me for fraudulent clicks that they have detected. Another reason is that I use the new “placement performance” reports.
If I am advertising on your legitimate site and am getting good conversions, I will either continue advertising or increase my bid in an attempt to get more traffic. The sites that send fraudulent traffic, or poorly converting traffic, get “blacklisted” from my campaign.
Thanks Derek for the great comment from an advertiser’s point of view.
I also advertise but don’t put as much time into it as I should.
I believe my traffic is top notch and wish that everyone was honest in this business. The more honesty there is, the more advertisers will pay because there will be more advertisers willing to give it a shot.
Nice post. Advertising dollars are precious.
Google team is getting better and better. I hope they ASAP solve this kind of problem.
I also pubisher and advertiser.