How can you solve the "low value content" AdSense disapproval challenge?

Question

Note:  If you want your site assessed regarding Low Value Comment, please don't post a comment on this Community Guide. You won't get an answer. Instead, you can post a new question at the AdSense Community Help Forum.
 
Many individuals hoping to be approved for AdSense are disappointed when they receive a denial message saying their site has "low value content". How can you understand and overcome this problem?
 
How does Google assess your site's content quality to determine its value?
 
Google has developed a system to rate websites for quality. It assesses content by reviewing the site's foundation of Experience-Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness (E-EAT). Then the quality rating system overlays a special, more demanding standard for sites focusing on life-critical issues, including money/finance and health, under the Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) extension.
 
Google has built a comprehensive multi-page guide for site raters, the human reviewers who assess most potential AdSense accounts, other than those rejected outright by bots or (in rare cases) approved instantly for well-established and trusted publishers.
 
You can learn more about the E-EAT/YMYL concepts, and dig deeper into them, by visiting this resource page:
 
https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2022/12/google-raters-guidelines-e-e-a-t
 
Concepts that work, and those that don't
 
Say, for example, you want to set up a site based on technology and artificial intelligence.
 
You've spent several hours reading about the topics, and maybe have some programming experience, and would like to monetize your new site with AdSense. But how much value does your content really provide? Lots of other people have written about the subjects, and your efforts to restate the latest trends in your own words really don't add much to the story.
 
Your chances of approval are low -- and even lower if you don't clearly identify yourself, your credentials and provide a convenient and highly visible way for people to verify you are who you say you are. (Anonymous sites/blogs with the royal "We" won't get far in Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness.)
 
Conversely, you have spent several years focusing on a specific aspect of technology, to the extent that you have achieved public recognition for your knowledge/skills, and you can tell your story in an engaging manner, fusing your deep subject knowledge with plenty of real-life examples and details. Your chances of approval will be much higher.
 
Resolving the burden (and opportunity) of achieving experience and expertise
 
Writer Malcolm Gladwell has written that it takes 10,000 hours to master most fields of knowledge/skills. That's about five years of work and/or post-secondary education. These numbers ring right to me. In the construction industry, for example, tradespeople develop their skills through an apprenticeship program that usually takes five years. Undergraduate degrees at post secondary education institutions take four years -- and then you need to add at least.a year of practical experience/internship before you are ready to set out on your own.
 
When I was young, I wanted to be a journalist. My university had a student newspaper where senior students (with part-time employment at the city's daily newspapers) taught their younger peers the basics. It took me six years to master the craft, concluding my journey by living through the conclusion of the Rhodesia/Zimbabwe civil war as a sub-editor for a local newspaper, while I filed stories as a part-time foreign correspondent for a Canadian news agency.
 
I needed another seven years to learn enough about business and marketing to make the transition to becoming a full-time publisher.  
 
These observations mean that if you are trying to build a site FOR AdSense, without the real foundation of life experience and knowledge, you will almost inevitably fail. If you already have the E-EAT, it won't be so hard. 
 
You may find these observations discouraging, especially if you've read or imagined there is some quick and easy route to AdSense approval. However, if you take things from a different perspective, and determine that you really want to develop your E-EAT within a field that matches your passions and abilities, you can set off on a highly rewarding journey that will enhance your life far more than any AdSense account.
 
Why does E-EAT matter so much?
 
Sites with poor E-EAT won't surface well in Google Search. This means you will have trouble attracting enough visitors to earn any money from AdSense. If you try to boost your traffic with spammy social media or email marketing, tricky Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tactics or perhaps wasteful or harmful (arbitrage) paid advertising, you won't be delivering good value to the paying advertisers. Some Low Value Content sites that slip through the approvals process end up facing severe ad limits, meaning they are effectively demonetized. Poor quality sites simply don't get anywhere with Google, and so don't succeed with AdSense.
 
Other observations and pointers
 
Once you've resolved the E-EAT challenge, consider these other points.
 
Your site needs to be textual, within policy-compliant topics. Forget adult content, and you won't get far by trying to build a site primarily on videos -- especially if they aren't your own. (Of course if you have relevant E-EAT and enjoy creating videos, you can look into monetizing your knowledge and skills through YouTube.)
 
AdSense is not a place for sites where you are primarily seeking to market your products or services. If you have an E-commerce site, or are trying to encourage people to use your consulting service, it is helpful to post useful content but you probably will find that AdSense is counter-productive. Because the program is based on contextual advertising, the ads that appear would distract from your own offerings or -- worse -- direct potential clients directly to your competitors.
 
AdSense is generally not suitable for web applications or "tools" sites. While the program allows these sorts of sites to be monetized (if they are based on truly your own original work and not from some library or affiliate scheme), the problem is the bots at the initial review stage will bounce your application -- and any sort of human review is only available through an invitation-only process, generally if your site has 300,000 or more unique views per month.
 
Quality is important and the fact there are some non-compliant (low quality) sites with AdSense doesn't mean you can join the crowd. Bad sites with AdSense may have been approved many years ago, when the rules were less stringent, and some sites slip through the cracks and are approved, which shouldn't be there. You can certainly report these poor sites. However, you can't expect the program to approve your site because another site doesn't make the grade.
 
The great majority of potential AdSense sites are declined. I understand the denial rate is somewhere at 95 to 96 per cent. So you don't need to feel you are alone when you are declined.
 
Final thoughts: Responsible perseverance reaps incredible rewards
 
After you read this document, you might believe there is no hope for success. This is not the case. The important challenge is for you to reframe your objectives. You may not be approved for AdSense by putting together a content collection FOR the program.
 
However, if you set a goal to develop your unique talents and put in the many hours of learning and work to master your field of knowledge, you'll acquire useful skills that can help you in many ways beyond AdSense. Then, when it comes time to apply again, you'll enjoy the sweet satisfaction of genuine success and accomplishment.