Adsense Scams
Be careful!!!!
Adsense has become very popular lately, people even refer to it as the new "internet gold mine". And yes, it is true that Adsense is unique and a very interesting way to earn money on the internet with one or more websites. Sadly, as with anything else new and popular, there are always an increasing number of scam artists that are monetising on peoples urge to learn. Together with the popularity of Google Adsense, a whole new breed of scam artists have been born - The Adsense Scammers.
The Adsense Scammers usually use some very intriguing ad copy (marketing text) on their websites, and tries to lure new customers in with screenshots claiming big Adsense income or big increases in Adsense income from a certain date and forward. The truth about most of these screenshots are sadly, that anyone can do such a screenshot - and then alter it in any graphics program like Adobe Photoshop. The image then reflects a very "coloured" truth, and this is possible due to the changes Google has made in its policies to allow publishers to disclose their earnings, but on the same time not to allow publishers to reveal impressions, clicks and ctr.
So what kind of products should you be careful about purchasing ?
The Adsense scam products can actually be categorised into the following:
1. "The BIG Adsense Secret" E-book.
Adsense Scam claim: Several websites claims to have the "unrevealed Adsense secret" that you simply can't live without! Usually it is claimed that these secrets will "skyrocket" your Adsense earnings virtually overnight. You can buy yourself access to this "untold information" for only $30-$100.
Adsense Fact: There are no secrets to reveal about Adsense. Anyone can earn with Adsense, and to improve performance read up on ad placement, ad colours, website content and website traffic. All this information is freely available here on Adsenseguide, and can also be found on various forums on the internet.
2. "Million Dollar Keyword Lists".
Adsense Scam claim: When you purchase a list of "fresh top paying keywords" you can literally skyrocket your Adsense earnings, simply by changing a few words on your pages. These scam sites claims that they have developed new techniques to finding these keywords, and that their members/customers are making a "killing" creating pages based on these keywords. It is not unusual to meet claims of people making $10-$20 per click using these lists. The Adsense Scam Keyword lists can be yours either on a monthly subscription from $20 per month, or for purchase for anything from $20-$200 per list.
Adsense Fact: Yes, you can improve your earnings per click by changing/optimizing your page content. However, the obscene claims of clicks that pays $10-$20 or more are nothing more then "clever" marketing in 95% of the cases. The reason is that Google (and the advertisers), are very selective about which sites that are allowed to display these high paying keywords. Usually, advertiser select to only show these ads on Google's search result screen, meaning that they never get displayed on publisher websites. The so called "new techniques" used to generate these keyword lists, are freely available to anyone interested, and only requires a bit of work on your part. You can download a 100% Free list of keywords here, and if you want to further examine keywords simply do the following:
Signup with Google Adwords, and then use the keyword sandbox tool to find a lot related keywords to your initial keyword idea. Then simply copy/paste the results into the traffic estimator tool at Adwords, and you will get an idea of the value of the given keyword.
It is crucial to understand that there are many factors that are at work determining keyword value and the actual payout. First off, Google will take its share of the click price (educated guesses is in the range of 30-40%). Then we have the earlier ad placement factor, advertisers might only want to pay high for ads displayed on Google's own sites, meaning that they will never reach your site. And then if the ad does get to your page, your visitors needs to click on the exact ad. The last factor I will discuss here is Country/location. Advertisers can choose to only display their ads based on specific regions/countries/languages. What this means is that they can choose to display their ads on websites that are hosted in i.e. Spain, with Spanish content, and are only interested in visitors from let's say Spain. So if one of these ads, does get served on your site for some reason, there are many factors that will drive the click price down.
Often the same keyword lists are sold on many domains, always claiming to be fresh and "unshared". So be careful not ending up buying the same lists more than once ;-)
3. "Automated Adsense Software".
Adsense Scam claim: This is one of my "favourite" Adsense Scams! Visitors are encouraged to purchase some "set and forget software" that will generate Adsense income on "auto pilot". Most of the software does nothing more then steal (yes, I said steal) content from sites through various scraping methods (reads a webpage and gets the content from it, or through rss feeds). All you will have to do is upload the script to your website, enter a few details and the script creates thousand of content pages - just waiting to put cash in your pocket. Each of these "unique Adsense cash scripts", can be yours for somewhere between $100-$1000+.
Adsense Fact: Scripts can be good to help you in the process of writing content (note: Writing). This is usually called CMS scripts (content management systems), and is a great way to create your design once, and from then on only focus on writing content for your pages in a simple web based text editor.
The "Automated Adsense Software" is basically nothing more then a very basic CMS system, but instead of you doing the content the script is configured to grab it from all over the internet. These scripts use many more or less sneaky methods of doing this, but the end result is the same - they are cluttering the search engines with duplicate and useless content. If you decide to use any of these scripts, you should be very careful for several reasons that are not so obvious to most people :
* You risk getting banned from Adsense, because you are very likely to violate the terms of "creating websites purely for Adsense".
* You risk getting blacklisted from the search engines, because you are using "scraped" content.
* You are likely to "turn on the warnings lights" at the search engines, because you have a new site with 1000's of content pages from day 1.
* Don't count on any visitors returning to your site (actually you need return visitors to perform well with Adsense), because they only find useless duplicate content.
* You often have little or no control of SEO optimizing the outputted pages.
* You are likely to getting yourself a "bad reputation". Your name is a "big asset" on the internet.
* You have no idea of what the script is doing, it could be driving traffic to other sites, stealing e-mails etc.
4. "Read/Listen - Learn to how I made thousands with Adsense".
Adsense Scam claim: Oh boy, this is another great Adsense scam category. By simply reading a short report or even a long e-book about Adsense, you will have an "arsenal of Adsense secrets" ready to bring in the big bucks. The first chapters are usually filled with general Adsense information, then followed by the "life story" of the author or a friend of the author. Then we arrive at the "juicy" part (usually only 1 chapter), that again and again describes how to position your ads, what colours to use, ad blending and perhaps you will even find a way to "Skyrocket Adsense CTR". Often these reports and e-books tells you to purchase this and that software, so that you have anything you need ready at hand. These Adsense reports and Adsense e-books are sold from anywhere between $9.95 and up to over $100. Lately it seems that these reports and e-books have "evolved" a bit, so that you now can simply listen to the author or even view a few "power packed videos" online.
Adsense Fact: The first thing that comes to mind with all these products are "Damn - this guy must be a nutcase!". He or she has found the "one and only Adsense secret" and is making a killing (see the usual attached screenshot). If they had really found the "big secret", why on earth would they share it with anyone else? Sure they claim to be a nice person, want to share information etc. The real fact is however, that 95% of these products are nothing less then created to scam innocent people like you to pay. Flashy e-book covers, income statements / examples - usually both Adsense screenshots/checks, affiliate checks, bank statements are all displayed with the only purpose of talking to your greed. It is not unlikely to find testimonials or statements from people worldwide like "John/Canada , Lisa / New York" etc. Adsense statements and testimonials like these are part of the sales page psychology - to make you think "wow! Lisa is from New York like me, and had never done it before - if she can then so can I!".
Often these products are "backed" by a 100% refund policy if you make no money using their Adsense tips and tricks. Great huh? Well, actually they can refuse to give you a refund at any time, because if you use Adsense - how will you prove that even a small increase isn't based on the information they "provided"?
Be careful!!!!
Adsense has become very popular lately, people even refer to it as the new "internet gold mine". And yes, it is true that Adsense is unique and a very interesting way to earn money on the internet with one or more websites. Sadly, as with anything else new and popular, there are always an increasing number of scam artists that are monetising on peoples urge to learn. Together with the popularity of Google Adsense, a whole new breed of scam artists have been born - The Adsense Scammers.
The Adsense Scammers usually use some very intriguing ad copy (marketing text) on their websites, and tries to lure new customers in with screenshots claiming big Adsense income or big increases in Adsense income from a certain date and forward. The truth about most of these screenshots are sadly, that anyone can do such a screenshot - and then alter it in any graphics program like Adobe Photoshop. The image then reflects a very "coloured" truth, and this is possible due to the changes Google has made in its policies to allow publishers to disclose their earnings, but on the same time not to allow publishers to reveal impressions, clicks and ctr.
So what kind of products should you be careful about purchasing ?
The Adsense scam products can actually be categorised into the following:
1. "The BIG Adsense Secret" E-book.
Adsense Scam claim: Several websites claims to have the "unrevealed Adsense secret" that you simply can't live without! Usually it is claimed that these secrets will "skyrocket" your Adsense earnings virtually overnight. You can buy yourself access to this "untold information" for only $30-$100.
Adsense Fact: There are no secrets to reveal about Adsense. Anyone can earn with Adsense, and to improve performance read up on ad placement, ad colours, website content and website traffic. All this information is freely available here on Adsenseguide, and can also be found on various forums on the internet.
2. "Million Dollar Keyword Lists".
Adsense Scam claim: When you purchase a list of "fresh top paying keywords" you can literally skyrocket your Adsense earnings, simply by changing a few words on your pages. These scam sites claims that they have developed new techniques to finding these keywords, and that their members/customers are making a "killing" creating pages based on these keywords. It is not unusual to meet claims of people making $10-$20 per click using these lists. The Adsense Scam Keyword lists can be yours either on a monthly subscription from $20 per month, or for purchase for anything from $20-$200 per list.
Adsense Fact: Yes, you can improve your earnings per click by changing/optimizing your page content. However, the obscene claims of clicks that pays $10-$20 or more are nothing more then "clever" marketing in 95% of the cases. The reason is that Google (and the advertisers), are very selective about which sites that are allowed to display these high paying keywords. Usually, advertiser select to only show these ads on Google's search result screen, meaning that they never get displayed on publisher websites. The so called "new techniques" used to generate these keyword lists, are freely available to anyone interested, and only requires a bit of work on your part. You can download a 100% Free list of keywords here, and if you want to further examine keywords simply do the following:
Signup with Google Adwords, and then use the keyword sandbox tool to find a lot related keywords to your initial keyword idea. Then simply copy/paste the results into the traffic estimator tool at Adwords, and you will get an idea of the value of the given keyword.
It is crucial to understand that there are many factors that are at work determining keyword value and the actual payout. First off, Google will take its share of the click price (educated guesses is in the range of 30-40%). Then we have the earlier ad placement factor, advertisers might only want to pay high for ads displayed on Google's own sites, meaning that they will never reach your site. And then if the ad does get to your page, your visitors needs to click on the exact ad. The last factor I will discuss here is Country/location. Advertisers can choose to only display their ads based on specific regions/countries/languages. What this means is that they can choose to display their ads on websites that are hosted in i.e. Spain, with Spanish content, and are only interested in visitors from let's say Spain. So if one of these ads, does get served on your site for some reason, there are many factors that will drive the click price down.
Often the same keyword lists are sold on many domains, always claiming to be fresh and "unshared". So be careful not ending up buying the same lists more than once ;-)
3. "Automated Adsense Software".
Adsense Scam claim: This is one of my "favourite" Adsense Scams! Visitors are encouraged to purchase some "set and forget software" that will generate Adsense income on "auto pilot". Most of the software does nothing more then steal (yes, I said steal) content from sites through various scraping methods (reads a webpage and gets the content from it, or through rss feeds). All you will have to do is upload the script to your website, enter a few details and the script creates thousand of content pages - just waiting to put cash in your pocket. Each of these "unique Adsense cash scripts", can be yours for somewhere between $100-$1000+.
Adsense Fact: Scripts can be good to help you in the process of writing content (note: Writing). This is usually called CMS scripts (content management systems), and is a great way to create your design once, and from then on only focus on writing content for your pages in a simple web based text editor.
The "Automated Adsense Software" is basically nothing more then a very basic CMS system, but instead of you doing the content the script is configured to grab it from all over the internet. These scripts use many more or less sneaky methods of doing this, but the end result is the same - they are cluttering the search engines with duplicate and useless content. If you decide to use any of these scripts, you should be very careful for several reasons that are not so obvious to most people :
* You risk getting banned from Adsense, because you are very likely to violate the terms of "creating websites purely for Adsense".
* You risk getting blacklisted from the search engines, because you are using "scraped" content.
* You are likely to "turn on the warnings lights" at the search engines, because you have a new site with 1000's of content pages from day 1.
* Don't count on any visitors returning to your site (actually you need return visitors to perform well with Adsense), because they only find useless duplicate content.
* You often have little or no control of SEO optimizing the outputted pages.
* You are likely to getting yourself a "bad reputation". Your name is a "big asset" on the internet.
* You have no idea of what the script is doing, it could be driving traffic to other sites, stealing e-mails etc.
4. "Read/Listen - Learn to how I made thousands with Adsense".
Adsense Scam claim: Oh boy, this is another great Adsense scam category. By simply reading a short report or even a long e-book about Adsense, you will have an "arsenal of Adsense secrets" ready to bring in the big bucks. The first chapters are usually filled with general Adsense information, then followed by the "life story" of the author or a friend of the author. Then we arrive at the "juicy" part (usually only 1 chapter), that again and again describes how to position your ads, what colours to use, ad blending and perhaps you will even find a way to "Skyrocket Adsense CTR". Often these reports and e-books tells you to purchase this and that software, so that you have anything you need ready at hand. These Adsense reports and Adsense e-books are sold from anywhere between $9.95 and up to over $100. Lately it seems that these reports and e-books have "evolved" a bit, so that you now can simply listen to the author or even view a few "power packed videos" online.
Adsense Fact: The first thing that comes to mind with all these products are "Damn - this guy must be a nutcase!". He or she has found the "one and only Adsense secret" and is making a killing (see the usual attached screenshot). If they had really found the "big secret", why on earth would they share it with anyone else? Sure they claim to be a nice person, want to share information etc. The real fact is however, that 95% of these products are nothing less then created to scam innocent people like you to pay. Flashy e-book covers, income statements / examples - usually both Adsense screenshots/checks, affiliate checks, bank statements are all displayed with the only purpose of talking to your greed. It is not unlikely to find testimonials or statements from people worldwide like "John/Canada , Lisa / New York" etc. Adsense statements and testimonials like these are part of the sales page psychology - to make you think "wow! Lisa is from New York like me, and had never done it before - if she can then so can I!".
Often these products are "backed" by a 100% refund policy if you make no money using their Adsense tips and tricks. Great huh? Well, actually they can refuse to give you a refund at any time, because if you use Adsense - how will you prove that even a small increase isn't based on the information they "provided"?