The latest news from Google Adsense is that you should NOT be aggressively blending your ads.

They give you a couple examples, and it goes without saying that some Adsense placements I’ve shown you before fall under these restrictions!

But as long as you aren’t using these tactics, you should be fine.

[Via WhyDoWork]

P.S. Make sure your Privacy Policy is updated, too.

I totally forgot to mention this crap that if you run Adsense, you have to add a long Privacy Policy to your site or else you’ll be breaking Google’s TOS. Instead of complying with these new terms, I decided to remove Adsense from quite a few of my sites…

But if you want to keep Adsense and be in compliance, here are a few good links:

www.jensense.com/2008/02/26/tracked…adsense/

www.jensense.com/2008/03/05/adsense…use/

http://techtites.com/2008/03/08/privacy-policy/

http://www.techspikes.com/privacy-policy/

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The local favorite Joel Comm has hit yet another home run today. As if the confusing Adsense placements weren’t doing enough for him, today he emailed me about about a new service that works out great when used alongside Adsense. He says it’s “something new which pays off INSTANTLY!”

Well, are you excited??!

Me too. Now get ready for the shocker…

It’s “called WidgetBucks, and it is probably the most sophisticated and ingenious contextual product unit I have ever seen!”

Holy crap, look at that. WidgetBucks. Really, I’ve never heard of that one before. I can’t wait to go and be the first to post about it at the Digitalpoint forums!! I will be so cool, totally pwning those n00bs that only use Adsense.

There’s also a $25 bonus, which is great for Christmas. But I wonder if it’s the same $25 bonus I got back in October? The same one that you only get when you earn enough for the minimum payment that is certainly higher than $25…

Nah… couldn’t be.

I’m sure that this is a brand new service that no one has heard about yet, let alone written about before. Why else would someone call it “something new which pays off INSTANTLY!”

If you want $25 for nothing, keep dreaming. But if you want to join WidgetBucks, put lots of work in, and then get a $25 bonus when you get paid a month or two later, take a look at WidgetBucks.

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If you’re pulling in big Adsense checks like Shoemoney and showing them off, you could be exposing private bank account information! That is, if you are blurring out your personal information.

In a simple 4 step process, computer hackers with nothing better to do could re-create the check image with their mathematical formulas and determine what you’re hiding. It’s like they’re traveling back in time to see what the check said before it was blurred! (OK, so it’s nowhere near as cool as time travel, but if these people could travel through time they wouldn’t need to do little stunts like these…)

Put simply, some people might actually spend hours “unblurring” blurred images. I guess it’s a safer version of spelunking (aka cave exploration) and the true numbers are their version of buried treasure. If it wasn’t for fun activities like watching paint dry or watching the grass grow, I’d probably take up this “unblurring” sport myself.

Just think of all the blurred Adsense screenshots you could look at!

Now down to business… what can you do to protect yourself?

If you’re actually worried, you might want to “cut” the data out of your screenshots and images. For example, you could “layer via cut” in Photoshop then fill the empty area with the color bucket. Maybe even put “F&#! you” under the blur in case anyone tries to figure out your home address.

Of course, these counter-measures require time that could be better spent watching paint dry!

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For each and every “how to make money with Adsense” ebook, there is some exorbitant earnings claim. Something like “I went from pennies a day to $500 a day with Adsense.” There has to be a claim like that, because not even a gullible newbie would buy Skyrocket Your Adsense Earnings From $0.03 to $0.05 In Just Six Months!

But what kind of techniques are these “gurus” teaching you?

Are they telling you to blend your Adsense ads?

Google recommends that you make the ads look nice and fit in with your color scheme, but they explicitly state that you cannot make the ads look like the site’s navigation. You also cannot label them anything other than “Sponsors” or “Advertisements.”

So I’m going to reveal the mystery guru behind that site I talked about…

It’s none other than Joel Comm, the Adsense guru himself. And the site is DealofDay.

It seems that the author of What Google Never Told You About Making Money with AdSense could also write What Google Never Told You About Enforcement of Adsense Policies. I guess either title makes sense, but I’ve never read the book, so I can’t say for sure.

But none of that matters, because today I’ll reveal the techniques used by this guru in real life. (Which might be the secrets that Google never told you… and chances are, Joel Comm never gave out these secrets either…)

Site 1: World Village
URL: http://worldvillage.com

(Click the image for a larger version.)

Take a look at the links in the left navigation menu. Those are navigation links. It looks like the uppermost links are actually Google ads, but they can’t be, because it’s against Google’s terms to disguise their ads as content…

Site 2: Deal of Day
URL: http://www.dealofday.com

(Click the image for a larger version.)

Again, in the left menu, I swear that is an Adsense link unit disguised as part of the navigation menu.

Even worse, that yellow arrow sure looks like an animated graphic pointing at the ads! Well, Joel actually points the arrow at a real navigation link, but that navigation link (and subsequently, the arrow) is deceptively close to the Adsense unit!

Site 3: The Map Game
URL: http://www.themapgame.com

(Click the image for a larger version.)

There’s another one from Joel Comm and Infomedia, but I don’t see anything shady though. It’s just some Adsense ads plastered across the top, with the flash game towards the bottom. Very typical for MFA sites.

So it’s really just WorldVillage and DealOfDay that really get me going.

Sure, Joel probably sends a ton of clicks to Google. But why is that an excuse for breaking the rules? I thought that these deceptive practices were banned in order to protect the advertisers?

Oh now I remember… Google wants to make money however possible. (But they do reserve the right to screw over the smaller publishers as they see fit.)

Oh well, what are we gonna do? I’m sure plenty of jealous webmasters have reported his sites to Google for breaking the terms, but like I said, Google is getting paid through all of this so they don’t care.

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Adsense arbitrage is one of those dumb business ideas that won’t seem to go away. Kind of like tag cloud pages. And the “million dollar [insert noun here]” sites.

If you’ve been out of the loop for a while, Adsense arbitrage involves buying cheap clicks and sending them to a page full of Adsense ads, hoping to make more per click than you paid per click.

That covers the basics, and that’s all we need to cover today. That’s because I want to talk about that basic, core business model and why it’s flawed.

(Talking smack on Adsense arbitrage is nothing new, but this idea just popped into my head one day, so I just had to write it out.)

Think about this concept:

Even when you get past the scammy second-tier PPC sites and the crappy MFA pages… The business logic is crap!

See, advertisers don’t spend much per click on the content network; the search results are where it’s at. But unless you own Google.com, you’re stuck at the content network in the land of low-priced clicks…

It’s an uphill battle from the start.

But let’s say you get super lucky and do days of niche research and find a keyword that will pay you $5 per click on the content network.

Well, as soon as you send some non-converting clicks to that advertiser, they’ll notice the problem, and immediately decrease their content network bids. Then you’re done. Chances are your net loss is pretty bad, because you would have spent some money on all the testing.

And that is the outcome when you found your own niche. If you’re buying lists of hot niches, by the time you see the list, the niches are no longer profitable.

Try it again? Maybe there’s another good niche?

Quit while you’re ahead buddy!

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I found a blog entry from earlier this summer full of Adsense tips from someone who supposedly did very well with Adsense. The blog author apparently just stumbled into this mystery man who was very successful with Adsense and decided to share his tips. It could have been a “guru” or some random guy on the street, but he didn’t want his identity revealed.

However, he shared plenty of tips, so let’s dissect this article to see if he knows his stuff…

Adsense outperforms affiliate programs

The first thing we learn is that this dude sucks at promoting affiliate programs. If Adsense outperforms affiliate programs, sorry, but that’s pathetic. I guess it could depend on the site, but if you actually promote the affiliate program instead of using crappy banner ads, affiliate programs should outperform Adsense by far.

Ad placement

This sounds good. Put some rectangles in your content so the text wraps around it, yep, I do that a lot myself. Limit your ads, yep, you don’t want to display the cheap ads.

Ad design

Match the colors to your site, yep, pretty good here as well.

Alternating colors, yep, very good tip to prevent ad blindness.

Targeting ads

Mention the product on the page, yeah, basic stuff. How else are you going to target the ads?

However, I’ve never noticed improvements by using Google’s “ad section” crap.

Long-term strategy

This is definitely flawed…

If every page you make raises just $.04 per day from the time the page ranks and you put up 5 pages per day you’ll raise your income $.20 per day. With 365 days in a year you’ll make $73.00 more per day!

If a page makes 4 cents a day and you add 5 pages, you still make 4 cents. You won’t get 20 cents unless you bring in more traffic. That 4 cent click you got also meant that the visitor left your site…

Defense

Gotta disagree again here. Several “not much” sites will cause you to be overworked and annoyed and not get anywhere long term. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

You’re probably better off with a flagship site and defensible traffic.

Build a good site and don’t get too concerned about updates.

For example, how many big sites get wiped out all at once from some little update? I can’t think of any…

Squidoo got a spam penalty from Google recently. Whoopity doo, their Alexa rank is still under 500. I think they’re doing fine, maybe even better (since they’re cracking down on spammers.)

When Google puts more work into banning link exchanges, what will happen to all your puny sites that only got indexed thanks to link exchanges?

Don’t work with partners.

It’s true that working with partners can lead to disputes and trouble, but how many big businesses have only one person? Johnny Cupcakes is big and run mostly by John, but he still has help keeping things operating smoothly.

Link building

Get one way links. Really? That’s priceless advice. How do you suggest new little sites get lots of one-way links?

Maybe that can be the subject of your next article??

“Make a good helpful site: don’t pull tricks and you’ll get there.”

OK, that’s a good way for him to sum things up.

Overall the article is worth a read, especially if you’re new to Adsense. Even if you know your stuff, you might get an idea from it, but don’t expect much. Just don’t take this guy’s advice when it comes to affiliate marketing!

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You know how clicks on Google’s own search pages are more expensive than ones through the Adsense publisher network? I think Google claims that people using search engines are in the buying mood, whereas people browsing websites might randomly click an ad. (And this is commonly accepted, as advertisers pay more for clicks coming straight from Google.)

Did you ever think that Google was just greedy? Perhaps they display high-paying ads on their search pages (where they keep all the revenue) while displaying the cheap ads on Adsense publisher pages (where they have to split the revenue.)

There was an interesting discussion at the Warrior forum last month that revealed an Adsense exploit that allows publishers to take advantage of this. A member found that if you remove your publisher ID from the Adsense code for a couple days, Google will start to display some very high-paying ads (compared to what they were displaying.)

Then you can put your pub ID back in and reap the rewards for a few days, until Google replaces the ads with more low-paying ones. It’s a shady tactic and could get you banned, but the results were interesting.

So in situations where Google is not splitting revenue with anyone, they display the highest-paying ads. Switching your pub ID to someone else’s will not do this, so that’s further proof that the big G is keeping it all to themselves!

Warning: Removing the pub-ID alters the Adsense code, and could very well get you banned. Try this at your own risk.

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