Since every once in a while someone here starts a thread asking if a specific AdSense e-book is any good, I thought others might be interested in Andrew Bourland's blog where he's setting out to review many of the popular "Get Rich Quick" e-books. His first target is AdSense Gold. From what I can tell, most of these books are all about building lots of pages with little or no original content and making money on sheer click volume, i.e. it only takes a few clicks per day per site to make money because you're spreading your overhead costs (hosting, etc.) over so many sites. But I guess we'll find out. Andrew seems to be very objective about the whole process, there are no affiliate links in his postings (which is the biggest problem I've seen with the "reviews" out there to date).
Eric, you probably know this, but many of the ebook publishers encourage their customers to write reviews, and to put in their aff link. The Rich Jerk does it, I'm not sure if Joel does, but I suppose that's all part of their marketing scheme. Plus, does it matter to you if you click an aff link or go to the site directly? If you purchase, what does it matter to you who gets the money?
Oh, it's absolutely part of the marketing scheme. Affiliate programs are great for pushing products, because the affiliates are motivated to sell your product for you in order to get their commissions. It's the online equivalent of network marketing. I have nothing against affiliate programs. I've been a long-time member of Amazon's affiliate program, for example. What I'm pointing out, though, is most of the reviews are quite positive, because of course the affiliates want to encourage people to purchase the product and earn a commission. So the appearance of objectivity is lacking. This blog looks interesting because of its objectivity. As for the e-book publishers, I agree they don't really care which way you come to their site. In fact, most probably prefer that you come to them directly because they get to keep most of the payment, instead of having to share a significant portion of it with an affiliate.
Certainly, affiliates write reviews of products and link to them. It's no different than any merchant attempting to sell product. They carry that which they think will be of interest to their customers. Affiliate programs just make it easy for anyone to carry whatever product they want. The real question is whether people will write about absolutely anything for a buck. I get approached by ebook authors and software developers ALL the time, asking me to affiliate with them. I am very selective and only promote those products and/or services that I approve of. Joel
Dude I am ned Why do you put your name at the end of your post, Jeol? Its not like you are signing the decleration of independence or something. Just a stupid post.
My point was that it's good to have (seemingly) objective reviews of things. You get lots of those for books up on Amazon, but it's hard to find objective e-book reviews.
I just came across another site that's doing something similar: Internet Marketing Product Reviews This one has affiliate links, but he's got nice summaries of all the chapters, which is useful, because it seems hard to find that kind of basic information. I also find it interesting to see how few or many pages you get with these books. Note that of the two books he's reviewed so far, one of them isn't specifically about AdSense.
Well, looks like Andrew Bourland's decided to use affiliate links in his reviews... still, the reviews are getting pretty detailed. He's reviewing "The Rich Jerk" right now. The funny thing is that the Rich Jerk says that starting an e-book review site is a great way to get started, which Andrew finds quite ironic given that's exactly what he's doing...
Thanks, that's very kind! That blog doesn't really make me much money by itself, but it's good publicity, and I'm glad some of you find it useful. Of course, if you really want to be inspired then check out what one of my co-workers has done with his earnings (and see what I have to say about it -- to summarize: work hard and diversify).
Look how many replies blog got! Damn thats alot no wonder he makes enough money to buy a car. I made a blog I think I was the only one who read it..lol