AdSense earnings reports are easily faked
Recently, I responded to someone in the Digital Point AdSense forum who was asking about trusting an ebook author based on a screen capture of their AdSense earnings report. While this particular author (Joel Comm, who sells Google AdSense Secrets) is in fact a legitimate guy, so he's not faking his stuff, I wanted to point out that in fact it's very easy for someone with a bit of HTML knowledge and a simple program like PaintShop Pro to fake up an AdSense earnings report. The proof? Below is part of an earnings report that I faked up in a few minutes:
If you look closely at the columns, you'll see they all form a special kind of sequence. Can you name the sequence?
The upshot is that you can't depend on the “actual screenshots” used by sites promoting ebooks and such. There was one ebook out there that was selling for $22 that used this very technique, but when you bought the book you basically got a single page of dubious information. They were using one of those screenshots.
As always, you want to listen to people you trust and/or read in-depth reviews of these books before buying them. Or, and this may work better for some people, buy the book through a reputable source like ClickBank that offers an unconditional (but time-limited) money-back guarantee.
P.S.: I gave Andrew Bourland permission to reprint a book review I wrote for my last newsletter. Check it out at Bourland.com.
Eric Giguere is the AdSense expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google. Subscribe to his AdSense newsletter for more tips and advice on AdSense and content monetization.
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