AdSense API beta announced
Well, looks like I was right. Google's has officially announced the AdSense API beta program, and I'm sure a lot of publishers are going to be lining up to try it. But you'll have to meet some stiff requirements — they're interested in sites with 100,000 or more daily page views.
As I thought, sites that use the API will get a share of the revenue earned by publishers they've signed up, though it's not clear to me if that share extends to the publisher's entire AdSense revenues for life or if there are limits/restrictions on it. Wouldn't that be sweet if you signed up someone for AdSense and they then went on to setup a big site that was raking in $10,000 a day or more in AdSense? This will be very interesting indeed.
Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. You can read this blog by mail if it's more convenient for you, just send a blank email to memwg-blog@aweber.com to subscribe.
How NOT to use AdSense referral buttons
In my mission to educate AdSense publishers, I sometimes stumble across examples of publishers who are breaking the rules, perhaps unknowingly. I'm not a big fan of the AdSense referral buttons (they're not big money-makers) but if you choose to use them on your site you must understand the rules about their use. Here are a couple of egregious referral button uses that will land you in trouble with Google. I meant to do this yesterday, but then I had to break the story about the the new AdSense API.
The first example is from CouponMountain:
While the “FREE SIGN UP” text and the arrows are cleverly done, they also violate this rule in the AdSense terms and conditions:
5. Prohibited Uses. You shall not, and shall not authorize or encourage any third party to: (i) directly or indirectly generate queries, Referral Events, or impressions of or clicks on any Ad, Link, Search Result, or Referral Button….
You can't do anything to encourage visitors to click referral buttons other than use vague phrases like “I highly recommend you join Google's AdSense program”, without calling attention to the referral buttons. Now, I've always thought this rule rather silly for the AdSense referrals because of the time delay in getting referral payments, but the rules are the rules. (The example above reminds me of the first edition of Joel Comm's AdSense e-book that recommended using big red arrows to point visitors right at the ads… oops… that was taken out of later editions…)
The second example is from RateItAll, the site that accidentally broke the embargo on the AdSense API yesterday:
There are two problems here. One is that they're encouraging clicks on the referral buttons, as with the previous example. The second is that they're using too many referral buttons (there's actually a third one that you can't see in this screenshot, at the bottom of that page). According to the AdSense program policies, which are part of the terms and conditions:
A single referral button per product may be placed on a page up to a maximum of 4 buttons, in addition to the ad units, search boxes, and link units specified above. Referral buttons are considered to be ‘Google ads’ for purposes of these program policies.
Ooops again, three buttons referring the same product (AdSense) is two buttons too many. Plus there's the fact that their placement of those buttons looks pretty ugly, too.
Let's see how quickly those pages get modified…
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Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. You can read this blog by mail if it's more convenient for you, just send a blank email to memwg-blog@aweber.com to subscribe.
Google set to monetize social networking sites
If the AdSense API is not a pipe dream (we're still waiting for official confirmation from Google) then it indicates a concerted effort by Google to increase the reach of its AdSense program and to sign up reams of new AdSense publishers. Which will (despite the overblown worries about click fraud) provide an even larger venue for advertisers, especially those looking to reach the fertile demographics that use social networking and community content sites. Imagine if MySpace were to sign up with this program and allow their pimply-faced users to make a bit of extra cash by showing contextual ads in their profiles? AdWords advertisers could easily run MySpace-targeted campaigns, for example, just by using site targeting.
Done right, and if they can sign up the right sites as partners, this could be a huge money maker for Google. After all, once someone's signed up as an AdSense publisher and they've gotten a taste of what it's like to monetize content, it's inevitable that some of them would branch out to create regular sites and blogs that are monetized via AdSense. And AdWords advertisers would be able to reach an even larger pool of sites, especially some high-traffic hot properties. It'll be interesting to see what happens with this.
Sponsored Link: For a deeper understanding of AdSense, buy my special report, it's only $14.95 (with free shipping — OK, that's a joke…)
Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. You can read this blog by mail if it's more convenient for you, just send a blank email to memwg-blog@aweber.com to subscribe.
The new Google AdSense API
RateItAll.com just sent out a press release titled Online Social Network RateItAll.com Integrates Google AdSense via an API to Deliver Revenue Sharing to its Members. This press release is interesting for three reasons:
- It's dated May 18 but was sent on May 30
- It keeps referring to AdSense as “Adsense” (I hate that)
- There is no word yet from Google on the existence of an AdSense API, though we've had clues about its existence
I don't normally do this, but I've included the full text of the press release at the bottom of this message in case it gets pulled because it was sent out prematurely. The press release does not yet appear on RateItAll's own site, I've only found it on the PRWeb site.
Here's the key phrase from this release:
By leveraging the Google Adsense API, RateItAll has enabled its members to create Google Adsense accounts, earn cash for their content contributions, and track their earnings without ever leaving the RateItAll.com Web site.
That sentence succinctly describes what the AdSense API is all about: it's a way for content-driven membership sites, especially social networks, to allow individual members to drive revenue from their efforts. Unlike Squidoo, which is the AdSense publisher and splits some of its earnings with its members, it appears that the AdSense API allows the individual members to become AdSense publishers in their own right.
RateItAll already lets members insert their AdSense publisher ID into the system and earn money. But they had to leave the RateItAll site to apply for AdSense. Now they don't. I imagine that RateItAll would get a referral bonus at a minimum for this, but I wonder if they also get a kickback based on the new publisher's earnings?
I also wonder if AdSense approval will be automatic for RateItAll members, and members of other sites using the API? Will Google Base offer this as well? And Google Pages?
The entry bar for becoming an AdSense publisher is getting lower and lower. When I joined, you had to have a functioning site with many pages. Then you just had to have a blog on Blogger. Now it looks like you just need an account and maybe one entry (or maybe not!) on a site that exploits the AdSense API.
I'll talk some more about this when I know more. We may get an official announcement shortly. I'm sure JenSense will have the full scoop for us, too.
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Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. You can read this blog by mail if it's more convenient for you, just send a blank email to memwg-blog@aweber.com to subscribe.
Original Press Release
Online Social Network RateItAll.com Integrates Google Adsense via an API to Deliver Revenue Sharing to its Members
RateItAll.com, a leading social network and review community, announces that it has leveraged the just released Google Adsense API to enable revenue sharing for its contributing members.
San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) May 18, 2006 — Pioneering online community and social network RateItAll.com today announced that it had integrated Google Adsense into its service via an API in order to share advertising inventory with RateItAll members.
By leveraging the Google Adsense API, RateItAll has enabled its members to create Google Adsense accounts, earn cash for their content contributions, and track their earnings without ever leaving the RateItAll.com Web site.
“Several months ago I approached Google about our vision of transforming RateItAll into a marketplace for content in which ad inventory was shared by all contributors,” said RateItAll President Lawrence Coburn. “Not only did Google thoroughly grasp what we were trying to, they had already begun development on the API that would help make this vision a reality.”
The program, called The RateItAll Economy, allows RateItAll members to earn cash for a variety of activities including using RateItAll’s Weblister tool to create and manage their own ratings list, adding a new listing to an existing ratings list, creating a profile with a photo, and referring new, contributing members to the community. Soon, the program will be expanded to allow participants to earn cash for writing reviews.
“I firmly believe that if you are going to build a business based on community contributions, you need to be prepared to share revenue with your contributors,” said Coburn. “The introduction of the RateItAll Economy continues our tradition of leadership by innovation in the peer production space.”
About RateItAll:
RateItAll is a vast ratings community and social network built upon one of the world's largest and most diverse collections of consumer-driven opinions, ratings, and reviews. Visitors to RateItAll can earn cash for their contributions, and using free RateItAll Widgets, can choose from more than 20,000 interactive ratings lists to embed on their personal Web sites. Founded in 1999, RateItAll's mission is to enable the structured exchange of the world's opinions.
E-book creation made easy (plus hidden bonus)
Those of you who've read my AdSense newsletter will recall that I reviewed the book The E-Code: 33 Internet Superstars Reveal 43 Ways to Make Money Online Almost Instantly — Using Only Email (you think they could have rounded it up to 50 ways). The most popular technique by far was to build a list by offering a free e-book (or an audio product) in exchange for a person's mailing address. You make money via affiliate links in the e-book and via mailings to the mailing list you build up with the e-book. Simple enough to understand. The hard part, of course, is writing the e-book in the first place. The E-Code provides you with techniques for quickly and easily building such a book. One of the ways is to ask a bunch of people to contribute content for the book in exchange for some free publicity. (In fact, The E-Code is itself written this way…)
If you want to see such a book in action, take a look at The Big Book of Proof. Ewen Chia sent a message out to his list a couple of weeks ago asking for testimonials (no, I didn't participate…) and here's the result. Amazing what you can do just by asking people. He even includes a “hidden bonus” buried in the book, which turns out to be a (very confusing) ClickBank Affiliate Calculator from the guy who sells Instant Niche Content.
The reason I'm mentioning all this here is that I'm about to unveil a new blog dedicated to affiliate marketing, geared specifically for geeks. It's going to answer the age-old question, Can a geek make money online without succumbing to the Dark Side? It'll talk about things like e-book creation, writing mini-courses and related topics, all from the geek angle. (Sorry, that's what I know best…) I've snapped up the domain and am setting up my blog as we speak (suggestions for good themes appreciated!). I want to keep this blog focused on AdSense and contextual advertising.
So don't worry, this blog won't be changing. I'll post a formal announcement about the new blog later this week.
Sponsored Link: Join Mr. OverDeliver for free e-books and other stuff.
Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. You can read this blog by mail if it's more convenient for you, just send a blank email to memwg-blog@aweber.com to subscribe.
Understanding "tag and ping"
My last posting talked about blog and ping. At the end of this week, many mailing lists and blogs are going to talk about a “revolutionary” adaption of blog and ping called “tag and ping“. As always, it's good to take pronouncements like “the next generation of tag and ping” with a grain of salt.
Tag and ping is nothing more than blog and ping with tagged posts. Tagging, of course, is one of the more recent (but not that recent anymore) “Web 2.0″ crazes. The idea is simple: content (typically blog postings) are categorized using “tags”. A tag is a link that follows a recognized format. For example, Technorati's tagging system encourages you to add links like this to your postings:
<a href=”http://www.technorati.com/tag/AdSense” rel=”tag”>AdSense</a>
When Technorati reads you blog, it looks for these tags and automatically adds the posting containing the tag into the given category. This is an example of self-categorization, because the creator of the content does the tagging. (Many blogging systems support tagging implicitly via their own categories, by the way.) Other services like del.icio.us allow for third-party categorization of content.
The good thing about tagging is that it lets you easily find content related to a general topic area. (Kind of like what AdSense does — wouldn't it be neat if Google harnessed the power of its AdSense patent and created an automatic tagging system for content? You know, I can see this showing up in the search engine results for pages, like an automated Google Co-op system. But I digress.) Tagging is not perfect by any means, though. You still have the problem of deciding which tags to use. And you have to decide if you trust the tagger to tag legitimate, on-topic content.
Serious bloggers are already tagging. There's nothing new about tagging. I'm sure people who've done the blog and ping thing before have also done some tagging. But apparently someone saw a hole in the blog and ping system and decided to exploit it, hence the new product.
If you're really interested in the Tag and Ping product, which is apparently going to retail for $147, here's the secret affiliate signup page for it. (Well, it's not so secret if you understand how 1ShoppingCart works and you do a little sleuthing with someone else's affiliate ID…) Buy it yourself using your own affiliate link (be sure to clear your cookies!) and get it for half-off, although you'll have to sell at least one copy of it to someone else in order to see any money because of the minimum $100 payout level…
Or you could just start using tags in your postings if you aren't already doing so! And you can bet that if enough people start “tagging and pinging” that Techorati, del.icio.us and other will be taking steps to weed out the cruft.
P.S.: People who join their affiliate program get access to a free report called How to Quickly and Easily Protect Your AdSense Account From Accidental Clicks, which you may have seen floating around in various mailing lists (I got three separate copies of it sent to me today already). The advice in the report is pretty basic: either turn off JavaScript or else edit your hosts file to stop ads from showing when viewed from your own browser. If you don't know how to do either, the report lists the steps to do them. The end of the report is a big ad for Tag and Ping, of course. You can just download the report from the link above (I can redistribute it as an affiliate, of course) and read it without having to join their program, but it's not exactly earth-shattering… It was odd to receive this report so shortly after yesterday's post on how AdSense publishers can keep their noses clean.
Sponsored Link: Since we're talking about mailing lists, join ListDotCom to give Internet marketers permission to plug their latest money-making systems at you.
Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. You can read this blog by mail if it's more convenient for you, just send a blank email to memwg-blog@aweber.com to subscribe.
What is "blog and ping"?
Someone asked me a question about the so-called “blog and ping” model and what it meant. The idea is quite simple: to get search engines to find your content, you must blog about it and then ping the search engines.
Blog and ping sounds innocent enough, but notice how I've phrased it: “you must blog about it“. Unlike regular blogs, where the blog is the content, the blog and ping model promotes non-blog or stolen content. The typical “blog and ping” blog has postings that do nothing but link to other pages (using keyword-rich links, of course) or that steal their content from other (legitimate) blogs. What's more, the postings are almost always automated, with scripts running at regular intervals to start new blog and ping cycles.
The point of blog and ping is to get pages to rank highly in the search engines and to make money off those pages using advertising (like AdSense ads) or affiliate links. The blog and ping model works (though not as well as it did before — the search engines are getting better at catching it) because the search engines index blog content very quickly. You'll notice, for example, that the search engines have separate submission methods for blog feeds. Blog and ping takes advantage of this speed.
You can learn more about blog and ping by reading Understanding Blog and Ping from The Blog Herald.
Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. You can read this blog by mail if it's more convenient for you, just send a blank email to memwg-blog@aweber.com to subscribe.
How AdSense publishers can keep their noses clean
If you've been an AdSense publisher for a while, you've surely encountered people who complain about being kicked out of the AdSense program for no good reason. While I'm sure there are cases where the publisher was unfairly terminated, I suspect most account terminations are in fact done for valid reasons.
It's your job as an AdSense publisher to keep your nose clean. Keeping your nose clean means:
- If you notice suspicious clicks, report it.
- If you accidentally click your own ads (it happens), report it.
- If your site is suddenly featured on Slashdot, Digg, or some other high-traffic site, report it.
- If you know something (press release, review, etc.) is going to send a lot of traffic your way, report it.
- If you're in doubt about anything, report it.
As far as I can tell, Google takes the guilty-until-proven-innocent approach in its dealings with publishers unless you show a pattern of co-operative behavior. Not waiting until Google notices something — hmm, those earnings are way above normal, I think I'll just let it slide… — greatly increases your chances of not getting your account suspended or terminated.
Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. You can read this blog by mail if it's more convenient for you, just send a blank email to memwg-blog@aweber.com to subscribe.
Sales page tun-offs
Sorry, this isn't directly related to AdSense, but it's something that's been bugging me. I'm a member of ListDotCom, which is an opt-in service for Internet marketers (hard to believe I can call myself a “marketer”) looking to build their mailing lists. So every day I get a few emails with various deals, etc. Some aren't bad, but there are definitely a lot of iffy/scammy ones. I find the ones offering to show me how to become an AdSense expert particularly amusing, of course 
Anyhow, somebody was promoting Automatic Money Vault, which appears to be a system showing you how to make money by promoting ClickBank products. (I haven't read it, but I bet I can describe the system for you: 1. Join ClickBank; 2. Buy a product; 3. Create an autoresponder sequence promoting said product; 4. Go back to Step 1.) I have no problems with the product, but it reminds me of why I don't like most of the sales pages I encounter and why I had so much trouble coming up with a decent sales page for my niche discovery course.
Here's the part of the sales page I really dislike:
Turn off the browser's JavaScript support and this is what you see:
Whoops, where did the date of the special offer go?
The answer, of course, is that the date is conveniently generated by a bit of JavaScript so that the page always shows the current date. Which implies that the special offer is about to end today, so hurry up and order it already… ick. I just don't like it.
But these tricks work, otherwise they wouldn't be used so much. It makes it hard for those of us who want to push our own quality products without resorting to such tactics.
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Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. You can read this blog by mail if it's more convenient for you, just send a blank email to memwg-blog@aweber.com to subscribe.
List of official Google blogs (including AdSense API)
I have mixed feelings about Technorati since it often screws up the indexing of this blog (my ranking would be higher if it actually recognized that MakeEasyMoneyWithGoogle.com and memwg.com are the same domain) and is flakey at times, but you do get the occasional tidbit that someone's found. The Spanish blog frikibuscador noticed that Googler Eric Case has a Blogger profile that lists him as the creator of the following official Google blogs, listed in order of creation:
- Inside AdWords
- Inside AdSense
- Official Google Blog
- Google Press Releases
- Google Italia Blog
- Google Korea Blog
- Inside Google Sitemaps
- Official Google Video Blog
- Google Talkabout
- Official Google Reader Blog
- Inside Google Desktop
- Google Maps API Official Blog
- Official Google Enterprise Blog
- Google China Blog
- Official Google Research Blog
- Google Mexico Blog
- Dr. Razavi's Good to Know Info
- Google Co-op Blog
- Google Web Toolkit Blog
- AdSense API
First of all, this is a handy list of official Google blogs to have. (I've listed them all here in case that page gets taken down.) What I and the other blog found interesting was the AdSense API blog, which is just a placeholder for now. Does this mean that Google is getting set to release an AdSense API for publishers? It wouldn't be a big API. Maybe a way to programmatically get statistics and other information? Or maybe it's just a mistake or a fake blog entry to keep us on our toes… I'm sure we'll find out soon, one way or another.
Sponsored Link: Build your mailing list by joining ListDotCom.
Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. You can read this blog by mail if it's more convenient for you, just send a blank email to memwg-blog@aweber.com to subscribe.
Bonuses for buyers of Make Easy Money with Google
Thanks to the halo effect for Joel Comm's book, Make Easy Money with Google has jumped significantly in the rankings as well. I'd like to see it pushed even higher, if possible. If you were thinking about buying this book, don't hold back, you can add the book directly to your Amazon shopping cart via this link. Or visit the Amazon directly. To sweeten the pie, I'm offering a bunch of free bonuses to anyone who's bought my book, and I'm making the offer retroactive. So you just need to prove to me that you've bought it and I'll send you some free e-books that I've got the rights to distribute.
Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. You can read this blog by mail if it's more convenient for you, just send a blank email to memwg-blog@aweber.com to subscribe.
Profitable Niche Discovery: A Free Course by Eric Giguere
My new site LessonsForFree is offering my first mini-course, Profitable Niche Discovery. In this free course I discuss tips, tools and techniques for:
- Finding hot/popular topics
- Testing the viability of a market
- Discovering related, underserved niches
See the sales page for details. I announced this course to my mailing list yesterday, so I've already got a lot of people signed up. Lessons will arrive by mail every 2 to 4 days. This course is of interest to anyone looking to make money online and is not restricted to AdSense. I'm writing all the lessons, this isn't some private-label course I've bought, and there's no obligation or requirement to buy anything — you can do your niche research with completely free tools. Join me and find out how!
Sponsored Link: Read AdSense Arbitrage to learn how to make money by combining AdSense and AdWords.
Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. You can read this blog by mail if it's more convenient for you, just send a blank email to memwg-blog@aweber.com to subscribe.
Are Google revenues flat for Q2?
Just a quick addendum to my last posting. I guess I hinted at this in the posting, but I'm wondering if the change to borderless ads is being prompted by flat or declining revenues for this quarter. Total speculation on my part, but similar things were done with ad tweaking on Google's search result pages when they were facing problems. If there's a significant percentage of AdSense publishers who don't use blended ads then this could make a measurable difference in overall clickthrough rates. There's still a month to go before the quarter ends, after all, so it could affect things.
For the people who don't know AdSense: AdSense publishers can change the colors of the ad units to match the color palettes of their sites. If the publisher doesn't specify a palette, the default is to display ads with a blue border, blue ad titles, black ad text, and green URLs, all on a white background. What Google is doing is removing the blue border, replacing it with a white border. On a white HTML page (which is the most common scenario) this means that the border is effectively removed from the ad, making the ads appear more like part of the page content. This means they're more likely to be clicked, as studies have shown. More clicks = more money for Google.
Sponsored Link: Get free stuff from Mr. OverDeliver.
Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. You can read this blog by mail if it's more convenient for you, just send a blank email to memwg-blog@aweber.com to subscribe.
Google defaulting to borderless AdSense for increased ad revenues
Just received this mail from Google explaining how the default color scheme for AdSense ad units is switching to be borderless:
We're writing to let you know about a coming change to the
appearance of your Google ads. Your ads currently display the
default Google color palette, Seaside (formerly known as Mother
Earth). In the near future, we plan to update the default palette to
Open Air, a new palette containing the same set of colors, but
without the blue border. We've found that many publishers prefer
the cleaner look of this palette and have also seen that a
blended color palette performs better for them — attracting user
interest while still maintaining the distinction between ads and
content with the 'Ads by Google' label.
This only affects ad code that doesn't explicitly specify colors. This will affect mostly inexperienced publishers who don't choose a different color palette. Most experienced AdSense publishers already blend their ads.
Looks like Google is looking for another easy way to bump up revenue. They've done this kind of thing before with tweaks to the ads they show on their search result pages.
Sponsored Link: Buy my Understanding the AdSense Patent special report, only $14.95!
Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. You can read this blog by mail if it's more convenient for you, just send a blank email to memwg-blog@aweber.com to subscribe.
Text Link Ads: A new reason to game Alexa rankings
So lots of hoopla here, here and here about Text-Link-Ads' new Link Worth Calculator. Besides a great way to sneak in affiliate referrals (see the embedded referrer ID?), it's also been a great way for them to get some link-love from the unwashed masses. TextLinkAds (who seem to have an identity crisis around whether or not to include hyphens in their name or not… it's definitely in the domain, but it's not used consistently on the site… hello, marketing?) has been around for a while, but this is giving them a big boost. (Let's hope they learn from Chitika's mistakes.)
Not to throw any water on anyone's excitement about how much their blog is worth, but this post in their blog describes how the calculations are done. The first item states:
Traffic of your website – the lower the Alexa ranking, the higher the price. (emphasis added)
Um. Um. Alexa ranking? Hello? Read Are Alexa rankings relevant? to see why this bothers me.
So if you want bragging rights on the worth of your blog, just get as many of your friends to install the Alexa toolbar and surf your site with it multiple times a day for a few weeks. Bingo, instant rise in text link worth…
Listen, I know they don't depend only on Alexa rankings. I'm just surprised to see them trumpet it so loudly to the general public. Alexa is the SEO equivalent of a brown-paper-wrapped pornographic magazine. Sure, you'd like to believe that what's inside is real, but you know that there's a lot of airbrushing (oops, showing my age, I mean “photoshopping”) happening inside. I bet if you graphed sites based on their potential worth (someone write an app to do this) then you'd see a definite skew towards the sites that SEO types (who like to skew Alexa data their way) favor.
Sponsored Link: Hey, I've got nothing against Text Link Ads, so be sure to join today. It's good to have AdSense alternatives. Keeps Google on their toes.
Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. You can read this blog by mail if it's more convenient for you, just send a blank email to memwg-blog@aweber.com to subscribe.
Joel Comm pushes "The AdSense Code"
Today, Joel Comm is really pushing his new book, The AdSense Code. If you're on any AdSense-related mailing list, you're probably seeing messages from the list owners urging you to buy Joel's book on Amazon. If you do, you get access to a bunch of free bonuses from a variety of Joel's partners. Not a bad deal. I haven't read The AdSense Code yet, but I think it's basically a repackaged (and much cheaper!) form of his Google AdSense Secrets e-book (which I have read).
You might wonder why someone like Joel, who has a very successful e-book and a bunch of other AdSense and Chitika products is bothering with a printed book, especially one that's so cheap. The royalties on a $16 book are very minimal, about $1 or so would be typical. When Joel sells his e-book for $97, he pockets half that money if the book was sold through an affiliate and all of it if it wasn't. Even after you subtract promotional fees and so on, it's a lot more money on a per-copy basis than you get for a printed book. So why bother?
There are various reasons to write conventionally-published books. One of them is distribution: Joel will reach a different market with this book. Another is legitimacy: putting out a printed book that's been professionally edited and that a publisher's been willing to pay for (because it takes a lot of money to print several thousand copies of a book, design a cover, typeset, etc.) is considered much more legitimate than an e-book. Up until now, for example, when journalists and others have been looking for someone to interview about AdSense, one of the first places they turn to is Amazon where they would find… me, of course. Now they'll find Joel, too. There are other ancillary benefits, too, like exposing Joel to a larger audience for his e-books and other products.
Then there's the coveted cachet of “bestseller” status. What you're seeing today is a concerted effort to get Joel's book into the top 10 on Amazon, possibly even to #1. (As I write this, it's currently at #147.) Then Joel will be able to call himself a “bestselling author” and have the Amazon ranking to back it up. A lot of book authors do this these days using outfits like ZeroCostPromotions.com (tell Warren I said hi, he's a good guy). If you have a large mailing list, or access to partners with large mailing lists, you just send out an email urging people to buy the book and once they enter their Amazon order ID they get access to a bunch of free bonuses “worth” hundreds or thousands of dollars.
So if you were thinking about buying Joel's e-book and have been held back by its price, maybe today's the day to buy The AdSense Code instead and help Joel reach his goal. Hey, I'd love to get my own book up in the top ten too, but I know it's not going to happen — I wasn't smart enough to get hooked up with all the right people when it was first published. But I do wish Joel luck in reaching his bestselling-author status!
Sponsored Link: Join Mr. OverDeliver to get free e-books and software
P.S.: I'm working hard on my own e-book, of course, kind of the reverse of Joel's strategy. I'd love to here feedback from you guys as to what kind of pricepoint would be acceptable. Would you pay $97 for it or not? Do you want an affiliate program for it? Just drop me a line and let me know…
Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. You can read this blog by mail if it's more convenient for you, just send a blank email to memwg-blog@aweber.com to subscribe.
Are article directories ethical?
If you'd read Profiting from AdSense article directories or Instant AdSense sites reviewed, you might think I'm quite cynical about article directories in general. A reader even sent me this comment:
All interesting stuff, but all it does it continue to populate the web with yet more rubbish. None of this stuff is of any use to people. The only motivation to any of this is make money off of Google with no real business case or compelling case for visiting these sites. It would be much better if sites of real use value where promoted and not Adsense value were promoted. I hope Google works to flush out this junk in time, but then if they get paid for the clicks will they? I think they should because it serves to improve the quality of the web. What do you think?
That's an interesting question, and I'd like to thank Jeremy C. for sending it in.
Let me first state that I have nothing against themed article directories in general. An article directory is basically a compilation of articles. Compilations can be extremely useful. An encylopedia is a compilation, for example. A phone book is a compilation. There are, of course, many music CDs/DVDs that are nothing but compilations.
Many people don't realize this, but copyright law actually protects and encourages compilations. Let me quote the definition of compilation in the United States copyright law, though most countries have similar definitions:
A “compilation” is a work formed by the collection and assembling of preexisting materials or of data that are selected, coordinated, or arranged in such a way that the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of authorship. The term “compilation” includes collective works.
And, for clarity, the definition of a collective work:
A “collective work” is a work, such as a periodical issue, anthology, or encyclopedia, in which a number of contributions, constituting separate and independent works in themselves, are assembled into a collective whole.
In other words, the person/company that creates something unique using other people's documents (WITH permission, I should point out — you can't just put someone else's material into a compilation — you only get a copyright to the compilation, not to the individual pieces in the compilation) is also entitled to copyright protection for the entire collective document. This is called a compilation copyright. Obviously, the government wouldn't be promoting a compilation copyright if it wasn't useful in some way. If you go to a lot of effort to create new material by collecting other people's material, you should be protected. But what's the definition of originality? Are all compilations useful?
Look at the phone book market. The white pages and the yellow pages are both lists of essentially the same phone numbers (let's restrict ourselves to business numbers for this discussion). But they're organized differently — the white pages are alphabetical by name, the yellow pages are alphabetical by category — and no one would dispute there's a use for both.
Where things get confusing is when there are multiple white page directories around from competing phone companies. Which one do you choose? Who has the latest listings? They all get their data from the same places…
That's the big problem with the AdSense article directories I see. They're just random collections of unedited material thrown together in hopes of grabbing a search engine's attention. There's no thought put into their organization. There's nothing special or unique about them. Even adding things like reviews, additional commentaries, definitions, etc. to the articles that were gotten somewhere else would be useful. Something to distinguish that kind of site from everything else.
So no, article directories are not by themselves unethical. Yes, they pollute the web space. Yes, Google and the others keep working to find and remove duplicate content from the search indexes. But directories can still be useful, so we shouldn't just ban them outright. I listen to compilations all the time, and I refer to article compilations as well. Of course, no one seems to want to be original these days, which is the bigger problem.
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Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. You can read this blog by mail if it's more convenient for you, just send a blank email to memwg-blog@aweber.com to subscribe.
Profiting from AdSense article directories
In my last posting, Instant AdSense sites reviewed, I mentioned the potential problems you can have when you buy themed article directories. You know, packages like AdSenseReady - 150 AdSense Web Sites, Instant AdSense Empire, AdSense Business in a Box, AdSense PowerPack… hmm, I'm apparently on the wrong end of this business.
Anyhow, there's a reason so many people are selling AdSense sites like this. It's because they can work as income generators. The key, though, is that you need volume.
Let's look at some numbers. Say you have an article directory that averages $0.50 a day in AdSense earnings. Assuming there are enough articles in the directory and that you've done a half-decent job with search engine optimization and getting traffic to the site, this is probably not unreasonable. It's not much, really, only $15 a month. If this was your only site, you'd be waiting several months to see any money from Google because of the $100 minimum for payments.
But what if you do more sites? If you have 10 sites, that $15 a month becomes $150 a month. With 100 sites, you're looking at $1500 a month — hey, that's not bad income. Get your average per-day earnings up and you'll see even more money. Now you're starting to see why these sites are so appealing…
What about the expense of hosting all those sites? Well, it's probably not as bad as you think. Most article sites are static sites — the pages never change, they can be hosted anywhere. They won't use a lot of disk space and — unless you luck out with traffic — they won't need a lot of bandwidth. So you look for the cheapest reseller hosting package you can find. Reseller hosting is what hosting companies offer to people like web designers who want to offer hosting to their customers but don't actually want to maintain the servers and all that stuff themselves. So they “resell” someone else's hosting. The web designer gets a mega hosting package for a low price and then divides it up however they want — at the prices they want — among his or her customers.
Well, the article directory folks use the same reseller packages. For example, I have an account with ResellerZoom that gives me the ability to host 50 websites for only $4.95/month. That's basically $0.10/month per website. And that's just one service. There are tons of hosting services that offer reseller plans.
So the hosting is basically free. It's the domain names that will cost you money. I've been getting my .com domains lately from 1 & 1 for $5.99 each. (You can get them cheaper in bulk from various registrars, but I tend to do things incrementally…) So that's $0.50 a month for the domain name.
Total monthly cost for running an article directory, not counting your time, is thus $0.10 + $0.50 = $0.60 a month. So it really doesn't take much in the way of AdSense and affiliate earnings to turn a profit on these sites.
But setting up a site does take time if you're doing it from scratch. Time to find or create the content. Time to create a layout. Time to do some search engine optimization. Time to create and submit sitemaps. Time to create blogs that link to the sites. Time to create articles that reference the sites. The pros have tools that help them automate much of this. Someone with experience and tools can easily deploy one to five sites a week.
The key to making this work is to do it continuously. Not ever site you make will work out, either the pages won't rank highly enough or else they'll be dropped from one or more search engines. But you combat this by deploying new sites to take their place.
And then you package up the old, underperforming sites for sale…
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Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. You can read this blog by mail if it's more convenient for you, just send a blank email to memwg-blog@aweber.com to subscribe.
Instant AdSense sites reviewed
Yesterday I mentioned that purchasers of Understanding the AdSense Patent get the source code to some “instant” AdSense sites. Which brings us to today's topic — what exactly are “instant” or “pre-built” AdSense sites and are they worth the money?
First of all, an explanation of where these sites come from. To further my research, I join most AdSense-related mailing lists that I come across, just to see what people are offering. Sometimes I'll actually go and spend money to buy some of the products they're promoting. For example, I joined Secret Affiliate Weapon (only $10, luckily) and got access to a number of things including a set of screen captures showing how to build an AdSense site based on Traffic Equalizer, which was useful for dissecting the latter without actually buying it (because TE is not cheap). The latest one I joined was Mr. Over Deliver, which has both free and paid memberships available. It's actually not bad in terms of what you get, though the only thing they offer at the free level that might interest AdSense publishers is an e-book on AdWords and an e-book on article writing (but for article writing you might as well just start with my free article writing page). The pro level has some specific AdSense stuff, but at $97 it's a stiff upgrade from $0 (but I made the sacrifice just for you!).
Anyhow, at some point in my travels I managed to get ahold of the resale rights to 4 pre-built AdSense sites. So in theory I can resell these sites, but I'm not going to do that and am just throwing them in as one of the bonuses for customers who buy my e-books/reports. I was glad to get them, resale rights or not, because I always wanted to do a detailed analysis of what you got from these packages. I'm sure you've seen ads for them before, including on this site, and you're probably curious, too.
These “instant sites” are really nothing more than themed article directories. The articles comes from public repositories like EZineArticles or SearchWarp and were selected based on their topic, not necessarily on their content. They were then formatted into a set of web pages built around a simple template, with AdSense link and ad units as the primary revenue generator.
The sites you see in the links above are basically unmodified from what I received, though I changed the AdSense publisher ID and the URLs of the links as per the instructions they provide. But I didn't make any other changes.
So what are the problems with these kinds of sites? There are a number of issues to think about before buying pre-built sites:
- Duplicate content. These are articles that others have access to. Even if they're private label rights articles, and hence not in public directories, you can bet a pile of them are floating around on other sites. So you have competition from these other sites and the search engines may be lowering your rankings because of duplicate content.
- Uneven quality of content. You don't know where the articles actually come from (and you're never told). The quality can vary a lot.
- Static templates. Making changes to the look-and-feel of the site is hard because you have to make changes on each and every page of the site. Yes, there are tools to do this, but I never build my sites this way, I always have some kind of templating system in place or build a dynamic site that lets me include headers, etc., on the go.
- Unoptimized pages. The sites I've shown you could use some search engine optimization. For example, the title of each page is the same thing across the site — it should really be the title of the individual article on the page.
- AdSense problems. Actually, I did make one other change to these sites. Before they had a label above the vertical link unit that said “Related Links”, but the AdSense terms and conditions only allow for “Advertisements” or “Sponsored Links”.
I could go on with more problems, but let's talk about the biggest one: you need traffic to make money with these sites. With any AdSense site. So how are you going to get that traffic? How are these pre-built sites going to attract visitors? Especially when there are dozens (maybe hundreds?) of almost identical sites out there all vying for the same traffic stream…
These sites seem mostly useful to me as examples. Examples of laying out articles, mostly. (Though I'd use a horizontal link unit instead of a vertical one.) If I were to build a themed article directory, though, I'd do it differently.
I'm not saying you can't make money with pre-built sites. I'm sure you can. But I bet the ones that make a lot of money are the ones that are highly customized. So you end up doing a lot of work anyhow, which in some ways negates the appeal of purchasing a pre-built site in the first place…
Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. You can read this blog by mail if it's more convenient for you, just send a blank email to memwg-blog@aweber.com to subscribe.
Understanding the AdSense Patent
AdSense publishers looking for a deeper understanding of how AdSense works can get it from my new special report Understanding the AdSense Patent. This is my first special report, and it's priced at $14.95 (paid via PayPal or credit card). In it you get:
- The full text and images of Google's AdSense patent application. Sure, you can already get this (I just gave you the link) but you also get…
- Analysis of all the claims, including corrections to some obvious errors.
- A concise summary of the patent.
- Why search engine optimization plays a more important part than you think (and we're not just talking about keyword density here).
- How AdSense finds the keywords it uses to match ads to your content.
- Free updates to the special report.
- Some bonus items, including a set of “pre-made” AdSense sites.
Now that last item isn't something I normally recommend, but I got the resale rights to them from joining a mailing list like this one (I'm a spam junkie, it seems!) and I just can't see myself actually selling it to anyone, so I figured I'd just throw it in as a bonus.
It's delivered as a 34-page PDF file via Payloadz (a great little service for selling stuff, by the way, I highly recommend it — it was really easy to use). After confirming the transaction details, I then add you to a special mailing list that lets you get the bonuses.
You can buy “Understanding the AdSense Patent” from my special reports and e-books page.
OK, end of commercial. This is truly a niche product and I'm not expecting a huge number of sales, but I hope some of you will find it interesting. I did my first analysis of the patent a few months ago, so I thought others might also be interested in what I found out. And now that this is out of the way, I can work on finishing Uncommon AdSense. So many things to do, so little time…
Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. You can read this blog by mail if it's more convenient for you, just send a blank email to memwg-blog@aweber.com to subscribe.