Blog Revival: How to Claim Your Final Adsense Payment and Restart Writing
Bloggers stuck with unpaid Adsense earnings can now proactively request account cancellation to receive their last payment once the minimum payout threshold is met, reigniting motivation to resume blogging and monetize content effectively.
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The hardest part is getting started
It has been over 4 years since I last managed my blog. The remaining ad revenue of US$88 was stuck all this time. Recently, I found out that you can actively request to close your Adsense account, and Google will pay out the final earnings once the minimum payout threshold is met. This gave me the motivation to start blogging again.
Just arrived, starting with the simple title “The Beginning is Always the Hardest.”
Looking back at the history of writing blogs, it was around middle school, during the peak of my gaming craze. At that time, our home computer was very poor and had almost no games to play. But at that playful age, even without games to play, I still had to turn on the computer every day. That was already very exciting for me back then.
Due to the above reasons, most of my computer time is spent chatting with classmates on instant messaging and browsing websites; as you can imagine, it feels quite empty and lacks a sense of accomplishment (at least others can gain a sense of achievement from playing games).
At that time, “Blogs” were booming, which was very new to me. The first platform I tried was the hugely popular Wretch. When I set up my account and opened my blog for the first time, I felt, “Wow! I have my own website,” and “Wow! I can even change the style, so cool.” Coincidentally, my school computer class taught web design (FrontPage 2003 / 阿聖網站), so I focused on exploring features for my first blog. I searched for materials, played with styles, and installed lots of very “trendy” JavaScript plugins. However, the content quality was mostly nonsense.
This gave me a deeper understanding of the online world, which I was previously clueless about, such as: how to find information, how to fix issues when plugins break, how to embed images, and more.
Many of the data came from forums, which were very popular at the time. I was a typical lurker who only read and rarely posted, occasionally replying with “Thanks for your generous sharing.” While browsing various forums, I discovered “free forums” where you could apply to become an admin and have your own forum. This was a level above blogging—being an “admin,” “admin,” “admin” felt really cool!
Building on the basics of managing a blog, forums offer even more settings to explore (creating boards/member permissions/plugin center). You can customize everything yourself, as if entering another world.
There are many free forum systems available; after trying several back and forth, some lacked complete features, some were restrictive, some unstable, and some had too many intrusive ads. The one that left the strongest impression was Marlito, which best met my needs and where I have managed my forum the longest.
Meanwhile, the blog also moved to “Youthwant Blog”; the reason was that Wretch started imposing many restrictions. Youthwant was just starting out, so it was first-come, first-served, had fewer restrictions, and its features met my needs. This time, I actively manage the content, with 70% sharing useful apps (similar to A-Rong’s freebies) and the other 30% sharing forum experiences (settings/bug fixes).
There are about 30 articles in total, with daily views around 200 people / a maximum of 500 people (which seems low now). The blog ranks in the top 10 on the YouTube network blog leaderboard, with most traffic coming from posts sharing useful apps. After managing it seriously for over a year, I then got busy with 9th-grade studies and high school, causing intermittent updates. Later, I joined athlete training and left the blog neglected.
Due to the blog name being too cheesy, only a screenshot of the view count is provided.
Later, I created another Blogger to record technical articles about programming issues and solutions; however, Blogger was difficult to use and lacked basic features, so I gave up after writing a few posts.
Later, I applied for a domain and bought hosting to set up a WordPress blog myself. But since I had to handle everything—setting up and adjusting features—I couldn’t focus on writing content. I kept writing sporadically, and after the hosting expired, I didn’t renew it, so the site went offline until now.
Summary: From initially finding blogs fascinating -> to exploring and mastering blog features -> to focusing on the essence of blogs—the content -> to sharing technical articles
Became lazy, recorded less of the process, rarely reviewed or shared it, tasted the sweetness of ad revenue, and gradually drifted further from the original intention—the simple passion to share with everyone.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/zuvonne/3738631215
Set a New Goal for Yourself: Teach and Learn, and Start Documenting Your Life Again!
Technical aspects: iOS app development, Swift, PHP, MySQL…
Life aspects: work, photography, unboxing, and random thoughts
Experience: Recently working on machine learning, starting from scratch
Story aspect: experience in skill competitions, life observations
This article is also published on my personal blog: [Click here].
If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to contact me.
This post was originally published on Medium (View original post), and automatically converted and synced by ZMediumToMarkdown.