A quick search in any major search engine for an AdSense ebook will find Joel Comm's AdSense Secrets, Janet Smiths Nomad's Guide to Make Money Online, AdSense Revenue Exposed, The Beginners Guide to AdSense, Making Money with AdSense, The AdSense Report, The AdSense Mint, AdSense Techniques, Google AdSense Secrets Revealed, and probably many more.
If you're a complete beginner who doesn't even know how to blog then some of these books may be what you're looking for, sadly several assume you're an idiot savant who can't even tie your shoelaces, but amongst the AdSense ebooks there are one or two gems that you should read.
First, answer this question, are you a complete beginner who doesn't even know what AdSense is? If the answer to this question is yes then you'll be delighted to know several of the ebooks cover an introduction to AdSense exhaustively.
Those who already know about AdSense and Google's policies for publishers will probably be disappointed with most of the AdSense ebooks available, you're probably more interested in traffic generation and niche keyword research than the basics of copy and pasting AdSense code into your site.
On a personal level I consider myself to be an advanced AdSense user, I know how to create ads, change their colors, I know about the rules on how many ads to place on a page, and I know about the things we can't do such as encourage visitors to click an ad or placing the ads too close to other elements so that visitors assume a connection.
Internet Marketing, Make Money Online
Comparison of AdSense Ebooks
Sunday, January 17. 2010
However a lot of AdSense publishers aren't aware of Google's rules for ad placement, but frankly you'll get as much value out of reading Google's policy pages than you will by reading many of these ebooks. You need to read the AdSense policies, AdSense basics, and you should definitely subscribe to the Inside AdSense blog in your feed reader.
Books such as Joel Comm's AdSense Secrets are overly long, and most of the answers he provides can be found by asking a question at Netbuilders or Digital Point with a lot less reading. He makes a few good points about maximising visibility of ads and using colors to blend ads or make them stand out, and I certainly agree with him that banner ads from Google AdSense rarely get clicks.
One of the real advantages of AdSense is that the ads are text based, and each format typically includes at least two text ads, some as many as half a dozen. A graphical ad by contrast only allows one advertiser per ad block, and in my opinion, one that I share with Joel Comm, is that if an advertiser wants to be on my site I expect something back in return. Typically image ads don't get as many clicks which means you're giving the advertiser free brand exposure, but not getting as many clicks in return.
Joel Comm really likes video ads, but I have to say I've rarely seen them on my own sites and when I have seen them they've been brand building exercises, so once again I doubt their money making potential unless your website is highly relevant to the brand being promoted. An auto review site might do very well with GM or Ford video ads, but I doubt the average blogger who rambles about anything and everything in their lives would get any value from them, yet these are precisely the bloggers who are most likely to want the video ad.
Reading Joel's SEO advice I was struck with how basic his advice is, frankly I already knew everything he mentions and I think most people wanting to make a good income from AdSense will probably feel the same way.
As far as getting traffic goes, Joel recommends some methods that I think are dangerous and should only be attempted by people who really know hoe to cover their tracks, such as creating gateways and using automatic submission software. He does offer a disclaimer and advices against cloaking but overall I'd be wary of his SEO advice if I wasn't a confident webmaster.
Black hat SEO methods are those that game Google's search index, effectively you're thumbing your nose at one of the world's largest corporations and saying you're going to do whatever it takes to make money online, but if you're using Google's AdSense program you need to be careful.
You can of course develop a network of websites in a niche, but each site really needs to have its own purpose. As well there is nothing wrong with befriending other webmasters and linking to them or asking for links from them, and it's a widely known secret that many of the biggest AdSense earners own many other sites that link into their money sites, anonymously of course.
Janet Smith on the other hand deliberately ignores all of the basics of setting up AdSense in her Nomad's Guide to Make Money Online and focuses almost all of her 170 pages on keyword research, analyzing search result competition, creating websites that are optimized for earning money with AdSense, and getting traffic including detailed sections on white hat and black hat SEO.
Whilst any AdSense publisher who uses black hat methods will most likely be banned by Google from their AdSense program, knowing about black hat methods makes it possible to avoid them and protect your AdSense account, and it can make for fascinating reading. Nobody will ever admit to using black hat methods but Janet tells you how to spot competition that does, and gives solutions to overcoming a black hat competitor.
One of the main reasons I like Janet's AdSense ebook is that she really takes the time to talk about keyword research and competitor analysis. Without exception all of the other AdSense ebooks ignore this critical part whilst they bore you to tears describing the AdSense program. Enough already, show me how to make money, don't bore me to tears about how wonderful you are.
Books such as Joel Comm's AdSense Secrets are overly long, and most of the answers he provides can be found by asking a question at Netbuilders or Digital Point with a lot less reading. He makes a few good points about maximising visibility of ads and using colors to blend ads or make them stand out, and I certainly agree with him that banner ads from Google AdSense rarely get clicks.
One of the real advantages of AdSense is that the ads are text based, and each format typically includes at least two text ads, some as many as half a dozen. A graphical ad by contrast only allows one advertiser per ad block, and in my opinion, one that I share with Joel Comm, is that if an advertiser wants to be on my site I expect something back in return. Typically image ads don't get as many clicks which means you're giving the advertiser free brand exposure, but not getting as many clicks in return.
Joel Comm really likes video ads, but I have to say I've rarely seen them on my own sites and when I have seen them they've been brand building exercises, so once again I doubt their money making potential unless your website is highly relevant to the brand being promoted. An auto review site might do very well with GM or Ford video ads, but I doubt the average blogger who rambles about anything and everything in their lives would get any value from them, yet these are precisely the bloggers who are most likely to want the video ad.
Reading Joel's SEO advice I was struck with how basic his advice is, frankly I already knew everything he mentions and I think most people wanting to make a good income from AdSense will probably feel the same way.
As far as getting traffic goes, Joel recommends some methods that I think are dangerous and should only be attempted by people who really know hoe to cover their tracks, such as creating gateways and using automatic submission software. He does offer a disclaimer and advices against cloaking but overall I'd be wary of his SEO advice if I wasn't a confident webmaster.
Black hat SEO methods are those that game Google's search index, effectively you're thumbing your nose at one of the world's largest corporations and saying you're going to do whatever it takes to make money online, but if you're using Google's AdSense program you need to be careful.
You can of course develop a network of websites in a niche, but each site really needs to have its own purpose. As well there is nothing wrong with befriending other webmasters and linking to them or asking for links from them, and it's a widely known secret that many of the biggest AdSense earners own many other sites that link into their money sites, anonymously of course.
Janet Smith on the other hand deliberately ignores all of the basics of setting up AdSense in her Nomad's Guide to Make Money Online and focuses almost all of her 170 pages on keyword research, analyzing search result competition, creating websites that are optimized for earning money with AdSense, and getting traffic including detailed sections on white hat and black hat SEO.
Whilst any AdSense publisher who uses black hat methods will most likely be banned by Google from their AdSense program, knowing about black hat methods makes it possible to avoid them and protect your AdSense account, and it can make for fascinating reading. Nobody will ever admit to using black hat methods but Janet tells you how to spot competition that does, and gives solutions to overcoming a black hat competitor.
One of the main reasons I like Janet's AdSense ebook is that she really takes the time to talk about keyword research and competitor analysis. Without exception all of the other AdSense ebooks ignore this critical part whilst they bore you to tears describing the AdSense program. Enough already, show me how to make money, don't bore me to tears about how wonderful you are.
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Comments (3)
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Learning Spanish and Making Money Online
As an Internet Marketer, I now look for opportunities to make money from everything I do, and one of the things I'm doing is learning Spanish. It isn't an easy language to learn for an English speaker, so a schools that teach Spanish are very popular.
As an Internet Marketer, I now look for opportunities to make money from everything I do, and one of the things I'm doing is learning Spanish. It isn't an easy language to learn for an English speaker, so a schools that teach Spanish are very popular.
Weblog: Internet Marketing, Make Money Online
Tracked: Jan 17, 18:41
Tracked: Jan 17, 18:41
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Chad said,
Monday, January 18. 2010 at 13:08 (Reply)
Cheap Coffee said,
Monday, January 18. 2010 at 23:57 (Reply)
Carl said,
Tuesday, January 19. 2010 at 15:32 (Reply)
The problem with making money from AdSense is that people forget the fundamentals.
They are;
1. Produce a website with good quality information, if it's a blog, write every day, sometimes more often until the blog is established.
2. Get backlinks from as many relevant and non-relevant sites as you can. Forget about commenting on other websites, forum signatures, stumble, digg or any of the other sources of links. They rarely help with the SERPs.
If you can do those two things, and if you get several hundred visitors a day from search engines, and you've chosen good keywords with reasonable CPC, then I can guarantee your website is going to make money from AdSense.
After that it's all about scaling up to a bigger site, or increasing backlinks, or starting another website and doing the same thing again.
AdSense ebooks are great for rank amateurs, but if you already have a website and you already have AdSense on the site, then really you aren't going to learn much from the typical AdSense ebook like Joel Comm.
Janet Smith's ebook is different because she doesn't waste a lot of time telling you what AdSense is, she takes a good hard look at keyword research and building backlinks, those are the two MOST important things you need to do if you want to make money online with AdSense.