Adsense Template Overload

So Joel Comm launched his Monthly AdSense Templates yesterday. You have to hand it to Joel, he certainly knows how to launch a product. My email inbox was flooded with messages from Internet marketers big and small telling me to buy the templates. And if I was kind enough to buy it using their affiliate link, they'd throw in all kinds of wonderful bonuses. One marketer offered me 1361 (odd number) private label articles. Another offered all kinds of ebooks. A third tried the reverse psychology angle and didn't offer anything, saying Joel's package was more than worth it on its own. All told, I received over 20 different offers over 2 days — the offers started coming before the official launch.

Mind you, I'm just as guilty as they are. I sent a message to my list offering them a free copy of Uncommon AdSense if they bought the templates through my link.

Hey, can't blame a guy for trying. But I didn't expect to sell any, since my list is full of Internet marketing skeptics. And rightly so. The following email from one of my readers explains the problem quite nicely:

The problem is that most of these gurus send daily requests to buy this great! new! product! which will make you millions! I have come to believe that most internet and affiliate marketing is about getting people to buy someone else's product which most likely works no better than any other product.

But he surprised me by saying he was planning on buying Joel's templates:

Which is why I have been ready to jump at Joel's product rather than a “system”.

First, I hate building websites.
Second, I hate messing with existing website code to figure out where the best place to put a link is.
Third, I hate graphics. Generic, royalty free graphics in the correct format (gif vs jpeg, etc) is a fulltime job if you want to build nice websites, make money but not get sued later.
(I hate squeeze pages too, but that is for another day.)

Which is why I like this product. I have dozens of good domains which have nothing on them (except for domain spa links). I want a package which will allow me to quickly build and upload an adsense and affiliate ready site.

These are valid points. Despite the AdSense template overload we've just experienced, there are some AdSense publishers out there who are looking for these kinds of products. Like my reader, they have domains they could be putting to better use — they have traffic and are looking to monetize it more than they are. (How many dormant domains do you have?) And they're willing to take the templates and work with them a bit to make them into better sites — they're just looking for a launchpad, really.

But not everyone's in the same boat. If you're a newbie, you should realize that any template package you buy is going to do diddly-squat for you unless you can get traffic to the sites you deploy. If you've never created an AdSense site before, a monthly template package probably isn't a good investment. You're better off building one site or blog (I'd start with a blog first — they have some built-in traffic features) and work on getting traffic to it. Learn the ropes a bit. Then put out another site. At some point you'll feel confident enough to deploy a raft of sites based on a template package. Just don't buy them too early, because you'll just be wasting your money.

Notice that I'm not saying “don't buy Joel Comm's templates”. It's very likely a good product. But you may not be ready for it.

Sponsored Link: If you've found this blog useful and have been helped by my advice, why not show your support by buying Uncommon AdSense? It's the same quality of material that you'll find in this blog, and I bet you'll learn a few things that will help you in your quest to maximize your AdSense earnings.

Eric Giguere is the author of Uncommon AdSense and
Make Easy Money with Google. His award-nominated AdSense blog is a lot of work to write, but also a lot of fun…

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