Here’s what you’ve been waiting for - an example of Adsense ads that are totally blended into a website’s design!

Did I do it? Nope. I was just kidding about getting banned from Adsense. I’d prefer to keep my account.

All I did was find someone that was breaking Google Adsense TOS.

Here’s the screenshot:

(Clicking the picture brings up a larger version.)

Do you see the ads? No, not the squares in the middle. I’m talking about the ad links in the left navigation menu. You wouldn’t notice the ads at all if it weren’t for the “Ads by Google” hiding in the corner.

I blurred out the logo to protect the innocent, but I hesitate to say innocent - this site is owned by one of the popular internet “gurus.” Even better, this guy is an Adsense guru.

Is he behind the times? Does he have a special relationship with Google? Is he hoping he doesn’t get caught? Is this placement alright if it’s an ad link unit?

Whatever it is, I’m pretty sure this technique will cause visitors to click the ads thinking they are navigation links. And Google doesn’t like that.

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Life’s a journey, not a destination. You only live once. Just do it.

Hearing all those nice sayings makes we want to live life to the fullest. And one thing I haven’t done yet is get banned from Adsense. Have you? If not, let’s get moving!

There are plenty of ways to do it. A popular one would be to put images beside our ads. Or place our ads on proxified pages of a proxy site. Hell, we could just click our own ads all day.

But I’d rather push one of the grayer areas (and ride the wave into the black.)

This gray area is blending your ads into your website. There are plenty of legitimate ways to do this, which is why it puzzles me right now, but I know some ways are darker than others.

But before we start blending, we have to figure out how to match the ads to our website. The catch is… we can’t manipulate the ads. So we must manipulate our websites around the ads!

John Chow posted about blending Adsense ads last year, so read his post to get up to speed.

Basically we are going to view the CSS for the ads (using Firefox) and then match our website colors and fonts to those same styles. It’s a great technique and it’s allowed by Adsense, you just can’t blend the ads into the rest of your content. If you did, the user wouldn’t know what was an ad and what was a navigation link!

Wait! Does that mean that we’ll get lots of extra ad clicks and make more money because of this? I bet it does!

Now I know what to do this weekend! [insert evil laugh here]

***2008 Update*** Blending your ads is now against Adsense terms…

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Want to increase your Adsense earnings and provide a better experience for your visitors?

There is a simple fix that will do just that, and it has worked for me. It involves blacklisting any sites that suck. Pretty simple, and not really a new concept, but it is easier these days.

You just go to AdsBlacklist and put in your URL. It will generate a list of low-paying and/or MFA sites that you should put into your “Competitive Ad Filter” section in your Adsense account.

Instead of going into great detail, I’ll just refer you over to John Chow’s site. He has a blog post that covers pretty much everything, including a list of these crappy sites.

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I just wanted to mention a neat tool for creating blocks of images to place beside your Adsense or YPN ads.

The tool is totally free and does banners for square ad blocks and leaderboards.

You can find it at: http://dev.shoemoney.com/public-tools/imagegen/

It’s great and easy to use. Automatically resizes the images and everything. Just take a look and you can probably figure it out.

It sucks though because I used to spend too much time making images just right and then lining them up, and this does it better in a fraction of the time!

P.S. Don’t forget to separate your images from the ads with a visible border, or you might get kicked out of Adsense!

Update: Images next to ads is now against Adsense terms of service.

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And the verdict is…

Adsense Is Alive!

From the jury of Joel Comm comes a new report titled “Adsense Is Alive.” Man, this subject just isn’t going away…

I was weary of downloading this free report, mainly because I am sick of hearing about this stuff! But I did it anyway so I could report back to you, and I’m glad I did.

First, I’ll remind you that Joel Comm was pushing the Instant Adsense Templates product and that is probably why he wrote this ebook. But, if you get past that, this is a great book!

Not only does Joel do a good job of sticking with the truth, the book is hilarious! Honestly, I highly recommend checking it out. You’ll be glad you did.

I enjoyed it enough to give you the link, too: Adsense Is Alive

(Just watch out for the upsell once you request the free report…)

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Adsense, that is. Adsense is most definitely still alive, and Scott Boulch even admits to that in his Life After Adsense report. I’d go as far as to say that Adsense is alive and well, although my thoughts are in line with Boulch’s books.

But how can that be if Adsense is dead?

Well here’s the deal with that. A book titled You Might Not Make As Much Money With Adsense Anymore just would not have the appeal or create the buzz that The Death of Adsense did. Simple marketing principles.

Adsense is past its prime, though. When it first came out it was pretty simple to add it to your website and make quite a bit of money. That was before Google, and their Adwords advertisers, lowered payouts to publishers like us. Adsense can still make you money, but there are many other methods that can make you much more with just a bit more work!

If you haven’t read Life After Adsense, you should do that as soon as you finish reading this post. And I’ll tell you why you should…

1. It’s free.

2. It doesn’t take all that long to read.

3. Boulch is totally right about the earnings drop, whether you have junk sites of nice, white-hat sites.

4. Like me, Boulch calls himself a “disgruntled webmaster.”

5. Boulch has real business experience. Read about that on page 32 of the report.

6. The methods taught in this book have always been known to be more lucrative than Adsense.

That’s right, the stuff he talks about isn’t really new. But it has been pushed aside in favor of Adsense, which promises earnings with very little effort on your part.

7. The people telling you that this report is a lie are the same people that are selling products to help you make money with Adsense.

And one minor complaint…

1. The ebook seems to conveniently leave out the fact that some of these techniques are pretty hard and require quite a bit of work.

There you have it. Head on over to lifeafteradsense.com and get your free report.

And don’t forget to check back here, as I have some more thoughts on what Scott Boulch is doing…

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“Do you still think it’s possible to make living on Adsense?”

“It sure is!” says Jay Young, who put together a package of adsense background images, aptly named Adsense Backgrounds. They are claimed to be a “click thru booster,” and they quite possibly could be.

Yeah, they could be, but why is this such a big deal? I’ve seen this technique used before, and it is pretty sweet, but it’s not a miracle. I’ll go as far as to say I like the idea. But I don’t care for the idea of selling a huge package of these images like you see at adsensebackgrounds.com.

Why not?

Because once people have them, they will become extremely annoying. You will start seeing the same images on all sorts of sites. So for any publishers who have been doing this for a while, they will get screwed. All so this Jay Young guy can make some money.

The concept is great, but not this execution. People will soon become immune to these images just like they became immune to banner ads.

Remember, give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime. (In other words, don’t give out the background images, just share the concept behind them.)

Now I’m not necessarily saying not to buy them, I’m just saying it’s not the greatest way to spend $67. You’re probably better off doing what I plan to do…

And that is, just wait for these to get real popular, then make my own ad backgrounds that are different than the ones out there (from this package) used by hundreds of sites.

P.S. Did anyone catch the poor grammar in that first line I quoted?

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