First of all, the answer is VERY DIFFERENT! Sorry for using bold capitals, but I wanted to stress that the Adsense 101 bootcamp is entirely different from the approach those two guys advocate.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying those methods do not work, they do and a lot of people are making money from using the techniques they demonstrate. In fact before the techniques became known as the “XFactor method” or the “Clickbump method”, they were just known as building minisites or even microsites. I have been building those for years and using the exact same techniques as XFactor and Clickbump advocate.

The thing is, even though those methods work, they are NOT the best way to earn a living from Adsense and I can foresee over the coming years a trend very firmly away from those type of sites in Google’s index for a number of reasons.

Here is why my advice is to turn away from building small sites like these and instead adopt the authority site model I advocate.

Even though it seems quite alluring to say “you can make money from sites with just 5 or 6 pages of content”, the truth is you are going for low competition keywords that get little amounts of traffic in the big scheme of things. Nothing wrong with that, by the way and I shall explain why in a minute. However, if that is the only strategy for building 1 site then it isn’t the best way of doing things.

You see, to make any real income from Adsense, you will need maybe 30, 50, 100 or many more minisites like these, right? Suddenly that allure of only having to create 5 or 6 pages to make money from Adsense doesn’t seem quite so appealing. That means 100 sites X 6 pages = 600 pages of content to make good money with Adsense! Then, a year down the track, you have suddenly got a 100 domains that need to be renewed and then there is all the duplicate IP addresses etc for all these domains.

I liken the scenario above to getting a bumper bag of “fun size” Mars bars. Even though a fun size mars bar looks easy to eat and better for you, before you know it you have gorged on the whole bumper bag and you feel sick! Okay bad analogy, I know.. However, the point is why waste all that content on isolated, small sites that flounder around in Google’s ocean at the mercy of all the big authority sites that can blow them away in an instant?

It is far better to build a site in a competitive niche.. Yes, “COMPETITIVE” niche but the approach that I advocate in the bootcamp shows exactly how to do it. The secret is to “start small to grow big”.. It might not sound as catchy as the clickbump method or the XFactor technique but trust me, it IS the future of not only making a success with Adsense but with everything you do from now on in Internet marketing!

Sign up to the Adsense 101 Bootcamp notification list to find out more..

The secret is to create great content that people in your niche will love. It might seem over simplistic and to some people downright crass, but it is the truth. Of course there are a gazillion other factors that when combined together make for Adsense success but the overiding factor above everything is good content.

You see, good content is the seed for a positive spiral effect culminating in your Adsense income getting involved in that positiveness as well. This is the chain of events surrounding good content..

1. You write or create great content for you blog with Adsense on it.
2. Other webmasters find value in your content and tell other people by offering links on their sites to your content.
3. Google picks up on this buzz surrounding your content and indexes your content for the keywords you are writing about.
4. As more people get to see your content via searches on Google, links from other people’s sites, social networking and various other web 2.0 properties, your content receives more backlinks.
5. As your content receives more backlinks, your content gets indexed higher in Google.
6. Go to Step 2. (This carries on infintely)
7. You add more content.
8. Your visitor count increases.
9. Your Adsense income increases…

Compare this scenario with…

1. You create 50 autoblogs with 1000 pages of scraped content on each.
2. You create masses of automated linkwheels and links from various other schemes for backlinks.
3. Google spots patterns in all your backlinking efforts
4. Google sees all your content is either duplicate or very poorly spun.
5. Other webmasters see your content for what it is and avoid it like the plague.
6. Go to step 2. (This carries on until you finally realise, it’s crap)
7. Google might index a few very obscure keyword phrases that get you 3 visitors a week.
8. You build more crappy sites.
9. Your Adsense income stagnates into mediocrity.
10. You give up/lose your Adsense account/Move onto the next bandwagon (delete as appropriate)…

It is true, great content is the secret to success with Adsense but before you click away in disgust, the real secret is that it isn’t that hard to do.. You just need to learn how to do it, the tools that can help and a detailed plan of action. The Adsense 101 Bootcamp will be the blueprint you need to follow and I urge you to get your name down onto the notification list today.

It is time to put right the bad teachings out there and show the ONLY way to build great, quality sites that Google will love and your bank balance will love even more!

Here is a video explaining what 3rd party ads are all about…

What Does It Mean For Adsense Publishers?

As Adsense publishers we might actually see some benefits from this change. With more ad networks competing for the same ad space on our sites then it is sure to increase the cost of that ad. However, how much of that extra income that Google will share with us is open to a lot of debate but as always, time will tell.

Opt Out

If you don’t want to receive 3rd party ads on your sites then you have the option to opt out in your account settings. If you decide you want to keep the default option of 3rd party ads then ensure that your privacy policy reflects this and you HAVE to include a section about using the DoubleClick cookie on your site. See a previous post on updating your privacy policy for info on this..

What is interest based advertising?

Interest based advertising is all about showing web searchers adverts based on their actual interests overall. For example, Joe Bloggs is interested in cycling, wind sufing, chess and tropical fish. Google will now show Joe Bloggs adverts on chess, tropical fish and wind surfing when he is visiting a site on car insurance.

Privacy Issues

There are many ad networks already that use interest based advertising and this form of advertising has always been controversial because it brings into question the web user’s privacy. To know what ads to show then the ad network need to know your interests. To know your interests they have to track what sites you are visiting. To achieve this they plant a cookie on your computer which tracks the sites you visit.

Thankfully if this fills you with fear then Google say that they only track sites which are not sensitive and not medical sites etc.. However if you still don’t want Google to know what sites you are visiting then you can opt out altogether from interest based advertising. You can do that by visiting this page.

What Do I Need To Do As A Web Publisher?

In short, nothing really as it is mainly based on the preferences of the web user. However, you do have the option as Adsense publisher to switch Interest based advertising on or off under your account settings page in your Adsense account. Just go to My Account/Account Settings and you will see the option there.

What this will mean to you though and it is fairly fundamental is that your site will show ads that are not necessarily relevant to your site’s content anymore. Also, the ads that will be displayed will be relevant only to the web user visiting your site.

This will also affect the ads you see on your own site so don’t be suprised to see irrelevant ads when you visit your own site.

Is This Going To Be A Good Or Bad Thing For Us Web Publishers?

Time will tell how this affects our bottom line and whether it will result in higher click throughs. One interesting aspect is that you could have a site in the relatively unlucrative niche of tropical fish. A visitor to your site could be interested in mesothlioma and be shown very lucrative ads about mesothelioma on your site! However, the opposite might be true also..

This also could impact on the way we choose niches for our Adsense sites if the content is no longer as relevant to the ads shown. It might no longer be as important to pick expensive keywords. Of course conetnt based relevance is always going to be used for the ads shown as well so don’t throw the baby out of the bath water yet but just be aware of how this might change things for you.

To read more about interest based advertising then take a look at this..

I am not talking about affiliate marketing or any other Internet marketing strategies in this case. I am discussing advertiser networks that offer similar services to Adsense.

Thankfully there are quite a few good alternatives to Adsense and in this first post in the series I offer a review of Adbrite’s publisher service.

Adbrite

I like adbrite very much, their service is a bit more relaxed with regard to their terms and conditions than Adsense. For example you can place ads on sites about gambling as well as the normal stuff. However, they don’t accept sites related to adult themes. Just like adsense they do not tolerate sites that are made for ads or any type of gimmicks and incentivising.

Adbrite pays their publishers after 60 days have passed since the click on the ad. They then will payout on the 10th of every month. Basically this means you have to wait initially for 60 days from the first click before you get paid and only if it meets your minimum check amount. Unlike Adsense they also only offer payment by check currently.

Adbrite works by setting up zones on your site which will be filled by ads. Adbrite can either place these ads automatically, or you the publisher can approve or reject ads accordingley. This is the major difference between Adbrite and Adsense, with Adsense you cannot approve the ads on your site, although to fair you can reject certain URLS from publishing ads on your site. They also offer some pretty neat “in-context” ads that generate ads when you hover your mouse over certain keywords.

Earnings from Adbrite are pretty comparable to Adsense generally speaking and I also see similar click through rates also.

Signing up for a publisher account is fairly painless and is usually set up for you very quickly.

It is all to do with the use of the “DoubleClick Dart Cookie” that Adsense places on users computers when they visit your site. This cookie in essence tells the Adsense team how the visitor interacts with the advertiser’s website once they have clicked on an ad on your site. The idea being that google can then get a better idea of what each visitor to your site who clicks an adsense ad is interested in. They can then use this information to display more relevant ads to that visitor in future.

The implications for us as webmasters is that we now have to tell our visitors via our privacy policy that we are using 3rd party advertising companies to serve ads on our websites and that they can use information gleaned from the visitors visits to other websites to serve ads to them. You must also provide a link to more information about this and how they can opt out of it if they want.

There is a great resource recommended by Julia Anderson on the warrior forum for creating a privacy policy tailored to your own needs, take a look at http://www.freeprivacypolicy.com/ so thanks to Julia for that link.

We all have until April 8th 2009 to make the necessary changes, they don’t say what will happen if we don’t but I suggest you do make these changes.

Whilst it is definitely true to say that a lot of money can be made using the afilliate model, it is not true to say that it is a better model to use all the time over Adsense or even other ad networks come to that and here is why..

The thing is with Adsense is that it is all about getting targeted visitors looking at your content and it is NOT about trying to presell them with a big hyped up sales pitch. The beauty of Adsense is that you can actually write some decent, honest and informative content, you needn’t concern yourself with getting the sale at the end of it, your icome is very passive, you just need the click. The rewards when done properly are great with Adsense and that is why I choose to use this model.

Having said all that, I also use the affiliate model an awful lot and have made just as much income if not more from doing it. I don’t prefer one method over the other, it is all part of an income machine that will hopefully keep churning out the bucks! The main point I always make is “don’t put all your golden eggs in 1 basket”.. Diversify and earn an income from as many sources as possible and you will survive in this business. Adsense is a great model for both beginners and experienced Internet marketers and this is why it should become part of your arsenal.

A few years back, google in their wisdom decided to give advertisers the opportunity to regulate how much they want to bid for ads on the content network which had a massive effect on how much income adsense publishers suddenly made. Instead of $1 per click they were getting 5 cents per click. This lead to the spate of adsense is dead theories that circulated around the IM community.

Since then, google have evolved their content network mechanism for advertisers to the point now where they have massive flexibility as to where they can place their adverts on adsense sites. An advertiser can now bid on any page that has adsense on and either pay per 1000 impressions or per click. This is where it gets interesting for us adsense publishers.

The system that most advertisers are having great success with is to find the top adsense sites for their keywords and locate the actual page that is ranked highly and place an adwords ad directly on that page. Why is this good for us? Well, when we get our sites ranking highly for certain keywords they become very hot targets for advertisers who do placement targeting. When they become hot targets you will start to see massive increases in earnings per click.

This is why it is better to find the pages that are doing well on your site and get as many good backlinks using your target keywords as anchor text. So long as you have done your on page SEO right and understood how to create a good site for adsense then you will eventually hit the top spots for the best keywords. When than happens, you will see the both edges of the sword, high amounts of visitors and top advertisers placing ads on your site.

Here is an outline about what the membership site will be about..

Membership Goal:-
To get every member earning $100+ a day income from adsense.

What The Membership Will Be About:-
It will include detailed instructions on what steps are needed. These will be tailored to the level of experience and expertise each member has. In other words, no matter whether you are a newbie or experienced you will get your own plan of action to reach $100 a day in adsense.

It won’t JUST be a set of pdf’s, tutorials and videos to let you get on with but it will be an interactive plan of action.

I want this membership to be very different to anything else out there and as such, it will require that members follow the plan and they will have tasks that have to be achieved each week. (tough love).. They will be reasonable tasks suited to your lifestyle, experience and free time.

I will probably introduce some sort of team structure as well so that members can interact online and keep each other motivated.

Adsense is the main focus of the membership but it is important to diversify income into other areas like affiliate marketing and info product creation. This will probably be structured as add on modules. Once again it will be tailored to members experience and expertise.

This is just the bare bones of what the membership will be about and it is up to me now to put the flesh on those bones and structure it properly. There will also be many benefits like monthly downloads of WP themes, niche research, content for starters. I will also look at creating useful tools, plugins and services for the membership. If you have any ideas about what you would like to see from the membership then please let me know.

As for the price of the membership, I haven’t decided yet but it will be affordable and will certainly be worth the money you invest initially. The whole point of the membership is to get everyone earning $100 a day and more, its not just an aspiration, it is the ACTUAL PURPOSE of the membership. It won’t be for the faint hearted, it is for people who are willing to work hard and not just learn. The mentality will be more like a bootcamp than a school but I promise it will be fun also.. If you are willing to put in the graft, you will reach your income goals!