Instant AdSense Templates
I guess it had to happen: apparently I've developed enough of a following that people are starting to send me stuff unsolicited in the hopes that I'll promote it. It's not like I don't already have a lot of stuff to review and look at, either. There are several e-books and products that I plan to review on GeekAffiliate that aren't strictly AdSense-related, including very shortly a review of The ListFX. At least as soon as the fuss over my bad review of Keyword Niche Power dies down! (Check the comments.)
So: next week, Joel Comm and Eric Holmlund are set to release a new product called Instant AdSense Templates. I mentioned this before briefly, mostly because he's offering a free e-book called Getting Started with Blogging and Google AdSense to those who sign up for their mailing list. (The e-book's a decent intro showing you how to add AdSense ads to Blogger, WordPress and Movable Type blogs, certainly worth a look if you're a newbie and don't know what to do.) Since all I had to go on was the e-book (yes, I joined the list to get it), and not the actual product itself, I really couldn't say anything about Instant AdSense Templates. Now they've sent me some details and since it dovetails nicely with our recent discussions about private label articles and turnkey AdSense sites I thought I'd pass on those details to you.
First, let's get one thing straight: they're doing this to get some publicity for their product and hopefully some sales from some of the people reading this. I know this. You know this (I hope!). I don't pull any punches, though, as the Keyword Niche Power and Desktop AdSense Cash Machine reviews should prove. Also, I do not have the full Instant AdSense Templates package, so I can't actually do a full review of the product. All I can do is talk about the information they've sent me and the sample site that was built using their product. With someone like Joel Comm involved, however, I trust that the final product will be decent enough, unlike some of the other things I've seen.
What is Instant AdSense Templates?
Instant AdSense Templates includes three things:
- A set of templates for building AdSense-ready sites:
- 55 complete websites built with private label articles, one for each of the 55 HTML templates
- A website builder called “Your Own Original Content Site Builder”
Also included are some bonuses, including 250 “AdSense ad block enhancers”, which are basically strips (horizontal and vertical) of thumbnail pictures meant to be placed above or beside ad units.
The price for all this is $197, at least for the first 1000 customers. They say they'll raise the price for the remainder (they're only going to sell 2000 copies) but we'll see if that actually happens…
The Turnkey Sites
While this package is being angled as a “template set”, I suspect that many purchasers will buy it strictly for the turkey AdSense sites it comes with. Now, if you remember my analysis in Turnkey AdSense Site Economics, you can actually buy turnkey sites much more cheaply. So do you get more for your money with this package?
While I've not really analyzed the content, it does look like the Instant AdSense Template sites are better designed. For one thing, they don't take a cookie-cutter approach. And they make good use of those filmstrips (the images near ads). And they include seach boxes. And the pages have titles and headings. They're not perfect, though… for example, at least one page is missing its content entirely — presumably the final release will fix it.
The Template Angle
Putting the turnkey sites aside, however, it looks like the templates themselves are easy to use. The plain HTML templates are fairly clean HTML (CSS purists will dislike the use of tables, but let's be fair, even Google uses tables for its ad units). Each template comes with a CSS file to make site-wide style change easier, images, and an easily customizable header.
One thing I don't like about these systems, though, is that you have to do a lot of hand-editing of the pages. I prefer template-based systems that let you use macros and programming scripts to do things like generate lists of links, index pages, sitemaps, etc. But maybe that's what the software builder software that's included with the package is supposed to do — can't tell you for sure until I get my hands on it, though.
Instant AdSense Templates will probably do very well for its creators. I'll do a full review after the release.
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.
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