Article directory template systems

Referring back to our recent discussion about themed article directories, I just acquired a copy of something called “Desktop AdSense Cash Machine” really cheaply via ListDotCom. (I think the offer's past, though.) I've wanted to buy one of these for a while just to take them for a spin, but I was balking at paying $100 or more for something I can do myself for free. I'm going to post a full review, including screenshots, here within a day or two. It's a very simple system geared for non-techies who want to build an “instant site”, although you have still have work to do in creating your own site templates, choosing the right articles, etc. But these systems make it easier to get going. Oddly enough, I received resale rights with this purchase so maybe I'll make it available to my readers for $10 or $20 — but wait until I post the review!

Do these systems serve a purpose? Well, yes. Any professional AdSense publisher has some kind of templating system for building new sites quickly. I have my own homegrown version built using the open source fmpp. It's not user-friendly at all and is all command-line driven, so it's not exactly something I can sell. The non-blog pages of my CluelessAbout site is built using this sytem, for example. Whenever I want to add a new question-and-answer page to the site, I just create a file that looks like this:

<#include "/include/page.ftl">
<@header title="Who is Eric Giguere?"
            description="Eric Giguere is a good guy."
            keywords="Eric Giguere, AdSense, books"
            ads=true/>

<@question ads=true>Who is Eric Giguere?</@question>
<@answer categories=["AdSense", "biographies"] ads=true<
<p>Eric Giguere is a great guy. What else is there to say?&lt/p>
</@answer>
<@footer ads=true/>

I place the file in a directory and run my program and it converts it to an HTML file for me. It also creates sitemap files and index files automatically. Check the live site to see what I mean.

Automation by itself is not a bad thing, and in fact if you really want to succeed with AdSense it's probably the best thing you can do — so you can focus on content creation. That's why blogs are so popular — they're the ultimate in automated content management.

More on this later.

Sponsored Link: You can get free stuff from Mr. Over Deliver.

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.

Comments