Review: AdSense Whizz Kid

Well, it's review day today, isn't it? Only this time it's a new book about AdSense called AdSense Whizz Kid, which promises to show you how to make piles of money with AdSense using automated techniques.

AdSense Whizz Kid

AdSense Whizz Kid curently retails for $77 and claims that its regular price is $197. I have my doubts that the price will be raised, though, because the sales page is just too hyped up to be believable.

Let's start at the sales page, in fact. Near the top of the page is this statement: “The only catch is that I will be letting 125, 76, 51, 39, 18 lucky people into the secrets“. I've been watching the page for a few days now, and — oddly enough — they apparently haven't been able to sell more copies. OK. Scroll down through all the hype about the system the author “discovered” and perfected through painful experimentation and you'll see testimonials from the authors of Google Wealth Wizard and AdWords Miracle, which should raise a few red flags right there.

[A side note: Ken & Chris, the authors of Google Wealth Wizard and AdWords Miracle, have been searching for an AdSense book to promote. I know, because one of them approached me about my promoting my book. Now, I wouldn't mind having Uncommon AdSense promoted by them, it would surely drive a lot of sales, so I gave him a free copy to look at. But I also pointed him to my Google Wealth Wizard review, which wasn't the most favorable review if you recall. Haven't heard back from them since, and now I know why... they found an AdSense book more suitable to their promotional styles.]

Before we get to the book, let's talk about a popup window that appears on the sales page. From it, you can sign up to receive the “free Whizz Kid website” that is “available to select few ClickBank affiliates” and has an “RRP” (regular retail price) of $1997. No, that's not a mistake, it's $1997, not $19.97. It's free, yes, but you must first create a new hosting account with midPhase in order to access it. Through the Whizz Kid affiliate link, of course. This is not surprising given that the other authors mentioned above have similar programs available, all based around creating a new midPhase account. A quick look at the midPhase affiliate program payouts page shows you why they do this — affiliates make $85 per sale. That's a quick way to earn a few extra bucks for giving away a website that promotes your own product.

But let's not judge a book by its sales page or its “free” offers. AdSense Whizz Kid is 95 pages long and attractively laid out. The first 37 pages cover pretty basic stuff: how to find a profitable niche, how AdSense works, how to get an AdSense account, where to get cheap hosting. Nothing new here.

The rest of the book is effectively about two approaches to AdSense site creation. The first is the “authority site” approach, which is essentially the kind of site creation I recommend in this blog and in my books, the second is the “generated site” approach. Yes, AdSense Whizz Kid promotes “black hat” techniques to make money with AdSense, with no qualms about it.

Let's start with the authority site approach. This is where you choose a niche and build a content-rich site around that niche. Again, most of the material here isn't new, it covers the basics about putting AdSense code on your pages and where to place the ads, how to blend the ads, etc. Then it covers the usual ways for getting traffic to your site: building a mailing list, blogging, etc. One thing that's perhaps different about this book is that the author advocates automating as much of these tasks as possible, such as using automated tools to rewrite (or “synonymize”) private label rights (PLR) content and using Blogging Equalizer (which he warns is particularly black hat) to get the site indexed.

What will probably interest most readers is the section on the generated site approach. Generated sites are nothing new, of course, tools like Traffic Equalizer have long been available, although the book also points you to some free site generators as well as other black hat tools for scraping content and cloaking sites. The main idea here is to apply the classic “pump and dump” approach to the web: generate sites, get them indexed quickly, and then make as much money as possible from the traffic you get until the sites are banned. (And they will be banned eventually.) Rinse and repeat. To do it properly, though, you need to invest some money up front in various tools and content sources, as you'll need to vary how the sites are generated in order to keep under the search engines' radars, at least temporarily.

The book ends with a small section on tracking revenues with AdSense channels and various tracker tools.

I can't say I expected much from this book given the sales pitch, and the book certainly lived up to my expectations. If you are firmly on the “white hat” side of things, do not touch this book. If you want to explore the “black hat” side, this book is only a starting point, you'll still need to do lots of work researching, purchasing and learning to use the tools necessary to automate your “AdSense empire”. Automation is definitely key to the black hat approach, which is why all those helpful tools are out there, of course…

If you're a regular reader of what I write, don't bother buying this book, you won't learn anything that isn't found in this blog (now approaching 2 years of AdSense advice) and in my books — except, of course, for the black hat stuff.

Sponsored Link: For a complete set of AdSense best practices, read Uncommon AdSense.

Eric Giguere is the author of Uncommon AdSense and the award-nominated (that just means it lost!) blog Make Easy Money with Google and AdSense.

Comments