The key "trick" that he's using is to have unique, relevant, helpful content. That's the whole secret, imho, to good SEO ranking (obviously using the right tags, keywords, etc... helps).
He's just doing it backwards from what you and I would do, i.e. he's finding ad money, and building a site based on that, versus building a site, and then working on building traffic (ad based or not, you want traffic).
He's working smarter not harder. Finding a market and then delivering what they want, which is old news in business. He's just being tech savvy about doing it online. Most entrepreneurs build something they want. He's building a products that he has empirical proof someone else wants.
I was intrigued by the $8 for a 500 word article. Some commenters were complaining that it was too expensive, but when I compare that with my consulting rate for my writing, it's a real bargain. I wouldn't farm out a technical article, but it makes sense for consumer oriented ones. I would spend more than that on coffee while I wrote.
EDIT: does anyone know what the going rate for a well written 500 word consumer article from a US/CA/UK based writer would be? Back in the days when I was using PR firms, it was quite expensive.
Oh, they go lower than that, but you're not getting the kind of "quality" you might normally think of. It is more geared toward SEO and often in broken English. Using the acai berry theme, here's what you might get:
Acai Berry Supplement
When looking for an acai berry supplement for weight loss it is very important that you choose a good acai berry supplement. Acai berry supplements vary in quality so one might not supplement your diet with acai berry the way you expect. Look for a top-quality acai berry supplement that has acai berry taken from the Brazil acai berry trees fresh.
I have a couple friends who are freelancers (as well as myself) that do consumer-based articles. For a good 500 word article you're looking at $25-40, depending on the writer and topic. With a tech/gadget article you may only need to pay $10 for 500 words, but if you get into health/sports/fashion/whatever other topic, the prices go up a bit.
(Guy owns some websites you've likely never heard of, not getting masses of traffic, but he knows how to do PPC and make money).
The thread is from 2005, and at that point he was spending $300k a month on adwords, and making a ton more from affiliate networks including adsense. (Attached bank statement screenshots)
I did the same for a while (Ad arbitrage), and got up to about $2k or so profit/month, but as odd as it sounds, it didn't really seem fulfilling. Probably the lack of contact with real users etc.
There's money in this 'advertising' thing though ;)
What's a good place to start learning about this, if you wanted to try it out? The site you linked to?
I have a suspicion I would suck at this or would not be willing to stick it through long enough to be successful - sounds like a lot of busywork - but I'm definitely curious to know more.
I totally agree. His article starts out feeling like a "get rich quick" scheme, but what he does is to create a reasonable quality site in a short time. All along he promotes it using low cost methods.
The linking strategies he employs could be used by any website. I think one could use these strategies to start any number of websites.
Edit: last sentence didn't make sense so I fixed it.
Not really. The linking strategies he talks about will likely get your site removed from Google's index. That's part of the cost of doing business for guys like this, and it's why he maintains hundreds of Made For AdSense sites. He knows that he'll lose a certain percentage of them every month.
This sort of thing would be suicide for a site you actually care about. As a startup, having your website de-listed by Google is pretty much guaranteed to kill you.
I think that's the kicker - he's providing a real service!
People are looking for this information. He's providing it for them. The fact that he's choosing both what topics to provide and is not personally an expect and outsources is really more a product of an intelligent business operation that it is a nefarious idea.
This actually sounds like something that could revolutionize modern media really.
Sure makes sense to me. Spend a year or two building a business that returns $10-15K a month. I then have a choice of continuing to build my income, pulling a Tim Ferris, or putting it into maintenance mode and working on something for the fun of it.
It is a real job, but if he makes that kind of money every month it's quite alright. I assume that he could stop doing that and it would still pay off for quite some time.
Remember the guy who was loudly complaining that google suddenly changed its algorithm and his site, which was nothing but an auto-generated directory, suddenly was excluded? Good for them.
Despite providing some ways for folks like this operator to partly game the system, Google has been on the for-front of forcing sites to have something of unique value in order to reach top ranking.
It really is. That's why I don't understand why he wouldn't channel that creativity towards a business that has more meaning. Still, he he won't, you and I can by learning from him. Seems like a smart guy.
Yeah, doing what he says might sound like a real job, but doing what he does is probably fun. Why would anyone who is making 15k a month tell others how to make 15k a month for free! I don't see business people going around telling others how do to business for free. I mean literally he is giving away "trade secrets".
Well, that is the illusion of course as most probably he does none of that but sit in his chair and think up ways of how making money through adsense may be done and turn it into awesome sounding language with plenty of cliche and then get plenty of posters saying ohh thank you you are my god I love you so much and most probably hardly any of them will implement what he said and if they do they will prob not make as much as he says cus the work sounds very time intensive.
Actually, Google has an Adwords tools which allow you to estimate what it would cost you to run an ad.
IIRC, that has estimated Cost Per Click (CPC) and Cost Per Thousand (CPM) columnns, along with estimated impressions and a sweet API to pull it all together.
Many people estimate Google takes a 20-40% rip from the advertiser, and gives the adsense guy the rest of the payout. So from that you can estimate what the adsense ads pay.
Google provides a lot of this data to advertisers -- so they bid for more word combinations.
Even though Made-For-AdSense microsites are polluting the infosphere, in the short term they probably even make Google money. Overstuffing natural results with repetitive, poorly-written information? Great, you're more likely to click a paid ad instead! Making it so all the top 10 natural results are AdSense-holding pages? Great, no matter where you go, you might click a Google ad!
You can automate a lot of this once you get the hang of it down.
The spammy part kind of sucks. I would say, if you're going to do this, at least make sure there's useful content. There's nothing wrong with that. People search google for information, they click an ad or find you organically. If you've given them good information, then it's not spam, but actually something useful. Sadly, this ideology isn't the adopted norm.
Is this a veiled advertisement for adsenseheaven.com? His whole strategy is based off of that data and you have to pay at least $10 for the list of keywords.
He's probably an affiliate, but he's not blowing smoke. This method works. I suspect he's not afraid to tell people about it, because it's a lot of work.
If that is his site, then I don't really have a big problem with it. The information was semi-alright and it looked legit enough (although there were a-LOT of google ads).
This is basically what some paper journal or even book editors do. It is just a bit unexpected and new on Internet.
As long as everybody in the ring wins, I've the impression that it is Ok.
Thought if the rational is just to give what people are looking for and want, with just enough quality and pertinence to remain undetected from google's garbage detectors, where could this lead us ?
This is not "black hat." He's web developer. That's how he makes $15k a month with adsense. As a web developer outsourcing content creation and working his ass off on low cost SEM. You can do it, too!
The first part is interesting. The second part is lame (link sharing/spamming, albeit manual spamming, but still spamming) but necessary to pull it off.
Seems to me the second part is only lame because he's doing it strictly to make money. If he were doing it for a more creative project it would just be self-promotion.
I can't really blame anyone for making money on what is essentially arbitrage, but the bottom line is that they add no value to the system and they make it harder for legitimate sites to get advertising revenues (by preempting traffic and ad $$).
In theory, arbitrageurs will arbitrage away the gap until the margin revenue outweighs the cost. So, in a sense arbitrageurs are good for the markets as they bring them closer to "perfect markets".
As far as adding value bit is concerned, if the articles provided are worthwhile to users, then some value is created. (Although I feel very strongly against the idea of creating spammy blogs that he advocates.)
Sometimes I do a search on google, and roughly half the results are meaningless gobbledegook. Clearly these results are this kind of project. It makes me wonder what percentage of websites are just revenue-earning sites with absolutely no useful real-world content. Like a newspaper or magazine with 50% of its pages taken up by advertising.
[+] [-] modoc|17 years ago|reply
He's just doing it backwards from what you and I would do, i.e. he's finding ad money, and building a site based on that, versus building a site, and then working on building traffic (ad based or not, you want traffic).
[+] [-] wmeredith|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] russell|17 years ago|reply
EDIT: does anyone know what the going rate for a well written 500 word consumer article from a US/CA/UK based writer would be? Back in the days when I was using PR firms, it was quite expensive.
[+] [-] coglethorpe|17 years ago|reply
Acai Berry Supplement
When looking for an acai berry supplement for weight loss it is very important that you choose a good acai berry supplement. Acai berry supplements vary in quality so one might not supplement your diet with acai berry the way you expect. Look for a top-quality acai berry supplement that has acai berry taken from the Brazil acai berry trees fresh.
[+] [-] mikeyur|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] axod|17 years ago|reply
http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=345974
(Guy owns some websites you've likely never heard of, not getting masses of traffic, but he knows how to do PPC and make money).
The thread is from 2005, and at that point he was spending $300k a month on adwords, and making a ton more from affiliate networks including adsense. (Attached bank statement screenshots)
I did the same for a while (Ad arbitrage), and got up to about $2k or so profit/month, but as odd as it sounds, it didn't really seem fulfilling. Probably the lack of contact with real users etc.
There's money in this 'advertising' thing though ;)
[+] [-] curej|17 years ago|reply
I have a suspicion I would suck at this or would not be willing to stick it through long enough to be successful - sounds like a lot of busywork - but I'm definitely curious to know more.
[+] [-] AndrewWarner|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JeremyChase|17 years ago|reply
The linking strategies he employs could be used by any website. I think one could use these strategies to start any number of websites.
Edit: last sentence didn't make sense so I fixed it.
[+] [-] jasonkester|17 years ago|reply
This sort of thing would be suicide for a site you actually care about. As a startup, having your website de-listed by Google is pretty much guaranteed to kill you.
[+] [-] tptacek|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] run4yourlives|17 years ago|reply
People are looking for this information. He's providing it for them. The fact that he's choosing both what topics to provide and is not personally an expect and outsources is really more a product of an intelligent business operation that it is a nefarious idea.
This actually sounds like something that could revolutionize modern media really.
[+] [-] russell|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abossy|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 3ds|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joe_the_user|17 years ago|reply
Despite providing some ways for folks like this operator to partly game the system, Google has been on the for-front of forcing sites to have something of unique value in order to reach top ranking.
[+] [-] AndrewWarner|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Ardit20|17 years ago|reply
Well, that is the illusion of course as most probably he does none of that but sit in his chair and think up ways of how making money through adsense may be done and turn it into awesome sounding language with plenty of cliche and then get plenty of posters saying ohh thank you you are my god I love you so much and most probably hardly any of them will implement what he said and if they do they will prob not make as much as he says cus the work sounds very time intensive.
[+] [-] sadiq|17 years ago|reply
Surely it's something google keep pretty close to their chests?
[+] [-] sidsavara|17 years ago|reply
IIRC, that has estimated Cost Per Click (CPC) and Cost Per Thousand (CPM) columnns, along with estimated impressions and a sweet API to pull it all together.
Many people estimate Google takes a 20-40% rip from the advertiser, and gives the adsense guy the rest of the payout. So from that you can estimate what the adsense ads pay.
[+] [-] gojomo|17 years ago|reply
Even though Made-For-AdSense microsites are polluting the infosphere, in the short term they probably even make Google money. Overstuffing natural results with repetitive, poorly-written information? Great, you're more likely to click a paid ad instead! Making it so all the top 10 natural results are AdSense-holding pages? Great, no matter where you go, you might click a Google ad!
[+] [-] callmeed|17 years ago|reply
- Relevant, well-written, and keyword-laden content on your site is important
- Getting links to your site is important
- Getting links with good anchor text is even more important
- Having keywords in your site's browser titles is important
[+] [-] jasonlbaptiste|17 years ago|reply
The spammy part kind of sucks. I would say, if you're going to do this, at least make sure there's useful content. There's nothing wrong with that. People search google for information, they click an ad or find you organically. If you've given them good information, then it's not spam, but actually something useful. Sadly, this ideology isn't the adopted norm.
[+] [-] imp|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wmeredith|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] imp|17 years ago|reply
http://www.acaiberryproducts.org/
#4 result for "acai berry", lots of small articles, and tons of AdSense.
[+] [-] 3pt14159|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] utnick|17 years ago|reply
it wouldn't surprise me if this article is just a clever advertisement for this guy's article writing website
[+] [-] chmike|17 years ago|reply
Thought if the rational is just to give what people are looking for and want, with just enough quality and pertinence to remain undetected from google's garbage detectors, where could this lead us ?
[+] [-] wmeredith|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] igorgue|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] johns|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ObieJazz|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcxx|17 years ago|reply
Can somebody confirm that? I have never heard about this before, seems cool.
[+] [-] cedsav|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fatbat|17 years ago|reply
On a seperate note though, how does the top keyword provider mine the google trends data without Google flagging their IPs, etc.?
[+] [-] cedsav|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hardik|17 years ago|reply
As far as adding value bit is concerned, if the articles provided are worthwhile to users, then some value is created. (Although I feel very strongly against the idea of creating spammy blogs that he advocates.)
[+] [-] weegee|17 years ago|reply