How well do websites like this work?

It's almost certain the quality of the content will be subpar. If you're ok with that, go for it. If you have a conscience, then maybe you'd reconsider.

 

well, since what I really want is the outline or structure of the site, I can easily re-write some of the pages before I use them. But I know nothing about using RSS feeds (or whatever they're called), and it would be nice to have that sort of thing setup for me. I also don't know much about setting up tables, etc on my pages, so at the moment I have a banner across the top, then my article, then a search box at the bottom. The pages work, but they could work better.
If I'm going to pay someone to build a website, why not get the content too? I'm not saying I'm going to, but it doesn't hurt to look into the pros and cons. His price isn't bad for 2 sites.
And I've been looking, but I'm having a hard time finding someone who will build an AdSense site, even without the content. It takes a lot of time to build a website from the ground up, when you are employed full time.

 

It's all about traffic, don't waste your time on ''quality content"! As long as they're not too crappy, it'll work, you don't want to give visitors all they need anyway.

 

You know what I do when I get to a site that doesn't have the information I'm looking for? I don't click on ads. I leave and never come back.

I wish more people would do the same.

 

Hint: not everyone is like you

I would guess a majority of web users are not like you either.

 

I realize that. It's the reason that email spam is profitable too, but that doesn't mean that I should like spam.

 

Did you know we're discussing how to make more money, and not moral issues? And email spam is not allowed per TOS, so you can't use that to make more money with adsense, why did you even bring that up?

 

I was comparing spam to Made For AdSense websites, not implying someone would need to spam in conjunction with creating such a site.

I think spam and Made For AdSense are a fair comparison.

With spam, the spammers have the potential to make lots of money.
With Made For AdSense sites, webmasters have the potential to make lots of money.

But since you mention that we're discussing how to make money, here's a comparison that would affect the bottom-line.

Spamming has a lot of opponents, and both technological (e.g filters) and legal methods have been devised to help curb spam. Has this put a dent in spam? Probably not, but hopefully the barriers to entry have risen in the spam market.

Right now the barriers to entry in the Made For AdSense market are very low. What's going to make it tougher to succeed? Not laws for sure. Maybe there might be some copyright related laws for scrapers, but besides that there's nothing illegal about having a useless website.

So what will be a factor? Technology. Google has a stake in making its search engine results relevant, and its advertisers happy, so I think there will come a point where making a Made For AdSense site successful will become very difficult.

But hey, if you want to get-rich-quick in the meantime, be my guest. I just don't think this party is going to last long.

 

But there's 2 different things here. Not all AdSense clicks come through search engines. My eCommerce site has AS on it, and it's a legitimate source of clicks. If I then hire someone to write articles about the same subject as my website, that's not made-for-adsense, that's just good sense. If I get that guy to make a website about things my customers would be interested in, I see that as using a tool to help me.
I don't see it as much different than hiring a web designer to make me a site, except that it would (presumaby) have the RSS feeds into it.
Anyhow, now that I've learnt more, I think I'll just pay someone to write some articles for me, and add them to my existing site.

 

I think you're confused. I am talking about making a subpar content site, not a made for adsense site. This argument has been a huge waste of my time, I am off to making more sites now.

 

Yes, I agree in a way. But, there will never be a law against scrappers - it would put the search engines out of business
Google is in the business of providing clients to it's advertisers. It wants/needs to provide visitors that convert. One thing that spam email should have taught everyone is that visitors from those emails convert, I think it's probably the same with so called 'spam' sites. Why should visitors from 'spam' sites convert well, the answer is actually very simple. Most of the spam pages are very very highly targetted towards very specific keywords - note pages, not sites. So it follows that visitors looking at those pages are going to be interested in whatever keyword they're targetted to, thus if they click on the ads they should convert pretty well.
That's the bottom line, do the click thru's convert on the merchant site. My bet is that spam sites convert better than so called content sites.