Google Adsense Secrets: Review by Raymond Camden

 
Sep 22, 2005

by Raymond Camden

Ebook
132 pages
Author: Joel Comm
Publisher: Joel Comm
www.adsense-secrets.com

A few weeks ago, I was visiting the web site of a professional blogger (in other words, someone who makes their living from blogging). One of the things he suggested was a book by Joel Comm called Google AdSense Secrets or What Google Never Told You About Making Money with AdSense. The title and web site (http://www.adsense-secrets.com/) for the book immediately set off alarms in my head. Everything about it screamed scam and spammer and everything else the typical "Get Rich Quick" scheme does. At the same time, though, I was intrigued. I did a Google search and was not able to find any negative reviews, but I did find a few positive reviews.

At this point, I was thinking to myself that it might be an interesting read. I've used AdSense on my sites for a while, but I've never really earned any significant cash from it. The main thing holding me back, however, was the price: $100. That is a significant amount of money for a book, especially an e-book. The price alone raised more feelings of "scam" in my mind - but when the opportunity came up to review the book - I leapt at the chance.

The book begins squarely in the "Get Rich Quick" mode. I ignored this, though, and continued on. Joel starts off by covering the basics of web pages and getting online. This is for the true beginner, however, and is thankfully over quite quickly. For the briefness of it, though, he does give a good, if high level, overview of getting your web site up on the Internet.

It's when he starts getting into the meat of things that I thought it became most interesting. Some of what he says is common sense (and I'll return to that later), but a good part of it are things that the common AdSense user would simply never know. Tips and suggestions for size, coloring, and placement can be guessed at, but this book makes them quite plain and simple.

So, again, I hate "Get Rich Quick" schemes - but by doing the "quick" items covered in his book, I quadrupled my daily earning average. Yes, you read that right. My income went up four times. Of course, that was the simple stuff.

Where things get interesting are the 'not so quick' style changes. Obviously I can't detail these items, since that would ruin the need for the book, but I'll cover one thing in particular that I thought was interesting. Joel makes the point again and again that you need to check your logs and your AdSense stats. This is obvious, but I never thought of it in terms of my AdSense income. Now I happen to have a web site (www.whatthethundersaid.org) about T.S. Eliot. This site is pretty ugly. If you visit the URL, you will probably laugh. I built it almost ten years ago as a project for a class I was taking in college. By checking my logs, I found out that most people visiting my site via Google were getting there by searching for T.S. Eliot. (In fact, the top six keywords were related to Eliot.) I slapped some ads up on the site. While the money I've earned from it is pretty small, it's money I wasn't making before.

I would have liked to see more detail on content. There are things you can do to help improve the quality of your ads. Joel covers this, and it's not a simple subject per sé, but I wanted to see more examples that back up his theories. For instance, I thought that the example he gave concerning the Google AdSense for Search was very weak.

One very strong point of the book is how specific information is provided for blogs and forums. If you run either, and many of us do, this specific content is very useful.

So - the big question you want to ask yourself: Is this book worth the $100 price tag? (Actually, it's $97.00.) The answer depends on what you want to do with your web sites. I never wanted to get rich from my web sites. I created CFLib (http://www.cflib.org) and my blog (http://ray.camdenfamily.com) because I wanted to share cool ColdFusion code and talk about what I thought was cool. Both of these sites get a "significant" amount of traffic. Let me be clear. They don't get a lot of traffic. - But they get hit quite often compared to the vast majority of sites out there. Because my sites had traffic already, it was easier to increase the revenue from them by applying what Joel talks about in his book. I would have paid off the cost of the book in one week. Will the same happen to you? Maybe. Maybe not. While some of the "tricks" in the book were quickies, many required time and thought to implement correctly. I don't want to live off of my sites, but I do like getting some return for the work I put into them. Therefore, the book has been more than worthwhile for me. While I don't think I can retire any time soon, I now have an extra source of income that makes me more encouraged to expand and enhance the content I share for free anyway. That being said: If you do want to run a profitable web site, I would encourage you to purchase Joel's book.
Raymond Camden has been programming in ColdFusion since the Middle Ages and is currently an undercover spy for a secret, alien-run organization. He shares software and tips (as well as his plans to take over the world) at http://ray.camdenfamily.com.

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