A couple of days ago I interviewed Interviewed web entrepreneur Joel Comm who authored the e-book What Google Never Told You About Making Money with Adsense (affiliate link).
Since that time I’ve had a number of emails from people asking for my opinion of the book as they are considering making a purchase of it so I thought I should give you a brief review here to help readers work out if its the book for them.
I should say right up front that I’ve been using Adsense for over 18 months now on my blogs and whilst I won’t pretend I know everything there is to know about the program, I would classify myself as an advanced user of the system. It makes up a significant part of my income from blogging.
So with this in mind I’ll say the following about Joels E-book:
– What Google Never Told You About Making Money with Adsense is a 55 page e-book which is full of good solid adsense advice. Joel uses real examples to illustrate his tips. The e-book is well laid out and is easy to look at and read.
– It is not tailored specifically for blogs but information contained in it is easily adapted to blogs.
– Joel does mention one other product within his e-book that costs money, however the rest of his tips are free.
– Joel makes $15,000 per month from Adsense – I can see why from his tips. They are good tips, sensible tips and easy to implement.
– Joel writes in an easy to read fashion – his tips are accessible to even beginning publishers.
– I would classify Joels tips as excellent for beginners to medium users of Adsense. As someone who has been using the program for 18 months I did not read too much (if anything) that was new to me. However I still think it was worth the purchase price for me as it reminded me of a few tips that I’d forgotten or gotten slack with. I’m pretty sure that the tweaks I made as a result of these reminders will earn me more than the book cost over the next few months. Likewise I would expect that beginner and medium Adsense publishers who follow Joels tips should find themselves making their money back.
– The only qualification I’ll make to this statement is that to be successful with Adsense you will need at least a good basic traffic level for your blog. You can have the best optimized ads in the world on your blog and have no or little traffic and you’ll never make much. So I’m suggesting that you take a more holistic approach to earning money from your blog and not only work on your ads but also other areas of your blog (see my archives for hundreds of tips on the many facets of improving your blog).
– Joel offers a 100% money back guarantee and writes – ‘‘I’m sure this will work for you, and so committed to see that it does, that if you apply the simple techniques I’ve outlined in my ebook and you don’t see results within 30 days, I will personally review your site and make suggestions to help you increase your AdSense revenue. If you’re still not satisfied, I’ll refund your purchase price in full!’
– I find Joel’s story pretty inspiring. He’s someone who has really harnessed the power of Adsense for the good of him and his family. In a relatively short time he’s found himself a very decent income for himself.
– Each Adsense expert has their own particular style of using the program. Its worth remembering that Joel is sharing from his own experience on his own sites. Use his tips as starting points – but as he recommends you should make them your own and experiment with them on your own site.
So should you buy What Google Never Told You About Making Money with Adsense? Only you can really answer that question but I’d give it some consideration depending upon the level of your experience with the program. Whilst I didn’t learn a lot from it I’m glad to have read it and won’t be asking for my money back because it’s given me food for thought on a few areas. In short – its a great introduction to Adsense and will give newer users a fantastic head start (I wish I’d read it 18 months ago). If you’re more experienced with Adsense you might use it as a refresher course – or maybe give it a miss if you are happy with what you know.
If you want to ask me clarification questions or have had some experience with it yourself please feel free to leave your thoughts in comments below.
Update: Joel has recently updated this e-book significantly. It now has many more tips and pages and is updated to include some of the newer Adsense features. While the first version was probably more targetted at a beginner level – the newer version is more helpful for intermediate users of Adsense.
Update: Joel has also released a couple of other similar ‘secrets’ book which you might like to try out also:
