Sleazy sales pages

You know, I think I went overboard with the home page for my upcoming ebook, Uncommon AdSense. I'll be changing it over the next few days to a less pushy, more-like-me page describing what the book's about without the hard sell. Kind of like the existing sales page for Make Easy Money with Google. I know the “hard sell” pages are supposed to convert well, but there's something about them that makes me feel queasy. That page was an experiment to see how much I can stand the “Dark Side”, but I think I've gone over the line too much.

A good tongue-in-cheek example of a hard-selling sales page is found at Click Here You Idiot. While it's truly a parody, it manages to list all the main attributes of those “buy now!” pages.

Part of the reason for my change in heart was this sleazy page I came across as I was flipping through the ClickBank Marketplace. ClickBank is the retailer I plan to use to sell the book, mostly so I don't have to deal with the hassles of collecting taxes and so on — my time is better spent writing. I was looking at some of the other e-books they're selling, many of which (like Joel Comm's) are quite legitimate. But then you run across ones like “Make Extra Cash Typing Data At Home”. Here's an example of sleazy sales page that actually tells you too much. Take a look at it (it's not an affiliate link, and I certainly don't recommend you buy it!) and see if you can figure out what I mean.

If you're an AdSense publisher who's been following my advice, you should be able to spot something very fishy right off the bat. Look closely at the images in the section titled “The forms you'll be typing on will look something like this…”. Look familiar? Yes, those are screenshots of the AdWords console. (Remember how I recommend that every AdSense publisher become intimately familiar with AdWords?) What this “system” is, then, is a course that shows you how to place AdWords ads to promote affiliate links to ClickBank products. This isn't wrong in and of itself — lots of ClickBank products get promoted this way by affiliates who do it on their own initiative — but what I don't like is the characterization of this as a “home typing” opportunity. They make it sound so easy… just fill in a few forms… oops, doesn't seem to tell you you'll have to actually pay to place the ads in the first place, and that writing a good ad with click appeal is not simple.

Here, let me save you $97. You want another way to make some money? Here are the steps:

• Become a ClickBank affiliate (it's free)
• Join the AdWords program (you'll need a credit card)
• Visit the ClickBank Marketplace and find a product you want to promote.
• Figure out what the “hoplink” is for the ClickBank product. The hoplink is a link that looks like this: http://egiguere.jcomm.hop.clickbank.net. The first part of it (egiguere) is your affiliate ID, the second part (jcomm) is the product ID, the rest is just to get to the right ClickBank server.
• Place one or more ads in AdWords for the product. The destination URL for the ads must eventually lead to the hoplink. Of course, you'll be on the hook for all ads that get clicked, whether or not you make money.
• When someone clicks the ad they get sent via the hoplink to the vendor's sales page and a ClickBank cookie is sent to the browser.
• If at some point said person purchases that product or any other ClickBank product (within a certain time) then you make affiliate commissions for those products.

So there you go, an “easy” way to make money with only “30 minutes of typing” per day.

Like I said, I'm going to tone down the sleaze factor on my sales page. I don't want people to think I'm selling something similar to that “system”. I don't care what anyone says, it still takes work to make money with AdSense or any Internet-based activity. Beware the sleazy sales page!

Eric Giguere is the AdSense expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and the new e-book Uncommon AdSense.

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