How Do I Change Country on my Adsense Account?

Although I live between two countries - the UAE and the UK - I had started my adsense account when I first when to Dubai in 2004 and had set up my own website. My adsense account was therefore registered in Dubai and was registering payments in US Dollars, although a couple of years ago this changed to Euros.

What I wasn't aware of at the time was the cumbersome proceedings I would need to undertake should I wish to change the country that my Adsense account was registered to.

To start off with I wasn't earning that much in Adsense and so when I got my first cheque for $100 I was very pleased and excited! The cheque was sent to me in Dubai, whose currency the dirham was actually pegged to the dollar so there was a lot of correlation between the two countries and I didn't think it would be difficult to cash my cheque through my Dubai bank account. However, I was wrong and as it turned out, I had to take the cheque back to the UK with me and get it paid into my UK bank account.

So I thought it would be better if I could get the money paid directly into my UK bank account. However I couldn't do this unless I changed my country to the UK and that is where the trouble started!

So I went to my account and tried to change the country to the UK - no joy, a message came up saying you can't change countries.

You have to close down your account and open another one!

I couldn't really believe that someone like Google couldn't figure out a way to change someone's country in an account in some way, but no, that was the only way forward apparently.

By this time I had about 8 blogs, 6 websites and a number of revenue sharing sites (some of which I am sure I cannot remember even now) that I would need to change all the code for.

In the instructions it said that I would need to close one account before applying for another one, getting that approved and then adding all my code back in. Well, I had read a few posts from people in the Google Adsense help that had been helped by Google to do this and had been given at least a day or 2 to change all the code on their websites so when I queried this with Google and got a reply from an individual this is the way I went.

I applied for a new account and got this lady to approve it which she did (although I also got another email saying it had not been approved) and started on changing the code on all my websites, blogs and revenue sharing sites. As I had to create a whole new set of Ad units this took me over a day to do. Even now I am not sure if I have covered everything.

So I was asked if I wanted the Adsense earnings from the old account sent by cheque to my Dubai address or if I wanted them to be transferred to my new account. I took the option of the transfer as I will not be in Dubai for a while and anyway I would only have to bring the cheque back to the UK to cash it. However, I was advised that it will take up to 90 days for it to be transferred. Shame, as I was not far from another payment and will now have to wait for that.

So these are the things to remember:

• If your new country has a different reporting currency to your old one or you are on a list of designated countries then you will have to close your account and open a new one.
• Keep a list of all websites that you have installed your adsense code on - including revenue sharing sites.
• If you have a lot of adsense sites, try to contact someone on adsense to get a bit of changeover time when you change adsense accounts so that you have time to update your code.