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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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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Last month I came across a new script called My Contact Station (MCS.) It’s a regular contact form script, but it’s supposed to be great at stopping spam, and it uses Ajax for that coveted Web 2.0 look!

I’ve been messing with contact scripts, and this looked neat, so I did a little more research… only to find that this one cost a mere $7. So I couldn’t resist for that price and picked up a copy. Even better, you can resell the script and keep 100% of it!

Unfortunately, it wasn’t until after my purchase that I realized how you can get the 100% commission for yourself, even if you haven’t purchased your own copy yet!

Yep, if you’re reading this, just follow the simple steps below to claim a totally free copy of this script!

First, you need to find the affiliate page. Or just click here and go to it.

Once you read that page and find the reseller link format, it’s pretty simple to get the script for free. All you have to do is plug-in your PayPal address into the linking code. Then copy and paste that link into your browser.

What happens is that you are sending $7 to yourself! No one else is involved.

Now go try it out and get your free contact script!

Wondering how Joel Comm makes money?

It’s all about the upsell. After you purchase the $7 basic version, you are presented with the one-time opportunity to upgrade to the “Pro” edition for $27. If you get suckered into that, the $27 is going to the guru. So the $7 product really doesn’t matter to them. It’s basically a “loss leader” to get you started.

Once they get you in the buying mood, you’re more likely to fork out the $27 than if you were presented with the $27 (or $34 total) price tag in the first place.

It’s not shady practice, it’s smart business. But we’re smarter. We’ll take the $7 product for free and skip the upsell.

One more thing - do you think I shouldn’t be revealing this?

I see no reason not to. First of all, the original creator of the program gave out that affiliate info URL before the product was even for sale, so anyone with access to Google can find it. Second, if I wasn’t telling people how to get it for free, I’d be using my affiliate URL. So either way, the guru loses the $7 (but can still throw in the upsell, which is all that matters to him.)

So this is a win-win situation

Edit: It looks like the reseller links listed on that page are outdated. But it looks like you can get around that by deleting the taf=1& from your URL.

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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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