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Why Joel Comm's Monthly Adsense Templates Package Sucks
Something I've been doing the last few weeks is building websites with the sole idea of earning Adsense revenue from them.
The websites need to have 3 basic criteria for this idea to work:
They must be able to be built quickly
They must have a reasonable amount of content to make visitors stay, read (and click ads)
Search engines must be able to pick up on the websites fairly quickly
The first criteria means using website templates that are pretty much plug-and-play. So no time wasting building header graphics. No time wasted designing each site uniquely. But something where you can easily plug in new content with the minimum of time and effort.
The second criteria is where most people fall down (including me). It takes a huge amount of time to write quality content for a website let alone 5, 10 or 100 websites! There's only one solution for this - PLR articles. PLR, if you don't already know, stands for "Private Label Rights". These articles allow you to attach your name as author and you can modify them in any way you want. Generally, however, you cannot repackage and resell them (if you were thinking along those lines!)
Criteria number 3 requires that a website be updated frequently. That comes down to two possibilites - writing a page or two of new content on an almost daily basis or using embedded RSS feeds in your pages for constantly (and automatically) updating content.
Mix 'n' Match
Putting Criteria 1 and 3 together meant I needed website templates that allowed the inclusion of RSS feeds as standard.
Joel Comms's Monthly Adsense Templates (a cool $97 per month) seemed to fit the bill. You get 50 Adsense-ready website themes each month, in a number of formats (HTML, XSitePro, HyperVRE) with header graphics and 5 articles per theme to get you started.
Now I already have the Gold Edition of HyperVRE which lets you pull articles from various article directories, embed RSS feeds and affiliate links, so I figured that was the way to go with my website development.
I soon encountered some problems, at least as I saw them. Bear in mind that what I say below is a personal, subjective opinion...
I think Comm's Monthly Adsense Templates are crap. And they're overpriced (I've cancelled my subscription). These are supposed to be professionally created website templates. Frankly, I can do (and have done) better myself. Secondly, they're cookie-cutter website templates. There's maybe 5 or 6 basic template designs. All they do is change the colors and maybe the Adsense ad placements. The header graphics are, again, supposed to be created by a professional graphic artist. Ha! They make a big kafuffle about you getting the Photoshop .PSD file to play with so you can modify the header but all they contain are some cheap graphics that you can move about. The templates are cheap, in every sense of the word (except for the price).
You may have heard that Google are clamping down on duplicate content on the web. Any site using duplicate content will get lower rankings in their listings. In the next couple of months, Google will be introducing new technology that will be able to analyze webpage content to see if it's duplicate or not.
What does that mean? If your webpage is less than 30% different from another page, your page is considered a duplicate. Think about that. There's no point in using/reproducing articles directly from the article directories. It's pointless, and actually counterproductive to now use that source of material.
Ok. back to Comm's Monthly Templates. These template packages are available to anyone who subscribes. There is a notice on the website that says subscriptions will be limited. His previous Instant Adsense Templates packages (which amounted to the same thing) were released in "limited editions" of 2500 packages. Yup, that 2500 people with the exact same website templates, header graphics and webpage articles. It's unlikely that Monthly Adsense Templates will be restricted to a number as low as 2500.
A Better Solution
With all that in mind, I looked around for another solution, and boy did I find one! In fact, I found two!
Adsense Real Estate (ARE) is the first one I found. They create pre-made websites (as does Comm's Monthly Adsense Templates) but instead of being released in a limited edition of thousands, they're released in a limited edition of only 30. You've far less competition to contend with from the outset.
Their website templates are fairly standardised but they look professional (unlike Comm's). You get 7 articles to start your website with (Comm gives you 5). What's more, the websites are keyword driven so your site pages will be picked up by the search engines. Keywords become page names and can be linked to a particluar article you have on your site, or set to randomly display any article on your website. So even though you start out with just 7 articles, you also get 50-100 keywords to get you going, each of which is a webpage in its own right, randomly displaying one of your 7 articles. That's just your starting point!
From there, you add new articles, links keywords to specific articles and add/delete keywords as you want.
These websites also come with RSS integration as standard. Plus they also come with Amazon itegration - Amazon products are listed on your sites as an extra income stream - something that's completely lacking with Comm's offering.
You do only get 10 niche websites each month (Comm gives you 50). But I'd rather have 10 quality websites rather than 50 crap ones.
This Adsense Real Estate package costs $67 per month ($30 cheaper than Comm's). It's actually more than $30 cheaper. Comm sends out his templates on CD so you also have to pay postage over and above the basic $97 monthly fee. ARE's websites are all online and you can download them whenever you want. No waiting for a CD to arrive or worrying that it's gone astray in the mail.
You should remember that each website you create will need to have its own domain name and hosting package. That will get very expensive after you create more than a few websites, even using GoDaddy's cheapest $3.95 per month hosting package. Imagine eventually having 100 websites, each at $3.95 per month. That would mean you'd be spending $395 each month!
Adsense Real Estate allows you to host your websites on their webservers for free! So while the $67 per month they charge might sound a lot, it's buttons once you host a few websites with them. Again, this is something Monthly Adsense Templates doesm't offer.
ARE's package quite simply blows Joel Comm's package into the water!
Here are the Adsense Real Estate websites I've built so far. I've made some modifications to the basic templates provided, to add a couple of extra features (such as the SiteSearch) to make them a bit more unique:
Essential Blogging Guide
Las Vegas Expeditions
HDTV Home User
My Second Solution
This is PLR Pro. This is something of a half-way solution. PLR Pro are in the business of providing Private Label Rights (PLR) articles. They provide 10-11 niche article packages each month along with header graphics for the theme of each article set. Each pack contains 40+ articles (in 10 languages - so that's 400 articles in all), so it's a great way of boosting the content of an existing website or using as the basis of a completely new website.
PLR Pro also provide free webhosting for their clients. Their package is, admittedly, on the expensive side at $97 per month, but that can be offset against hosting fees as you build more and more websites.
PLR Pro don't provide website templates themselves (as I say, they're about providing articles/website content). So what I did was build a website using one of my ARE website templates, the header graphic and articles for one of the PLR Pro packages and had it hosted on the ARE servers.
In less than a day, I built a 40+ page professional looking website all ready to be indexed by the search engines. Then I built another one the next day! Those two sites are:
She's Getting Married
About Sky Diving
Now all I have to do is find the time to crank out new websites and start building my Virtual Real Estate Empire!
Comparison
Monthly Templates | ARE | PLR Pro |
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# Templates per month | 50 | 10 | 10 |
# Articles per template | 5 | 7 | 40 |
Delivery method | CD by mail | Download | Download |
Price per month | $97 | $67 | $97 |
Hosting incl. in price | No | Yes | Yes |
Final Comments
If you're thinking of starting your own adsense empire, steer clear of those Adsense Empire type packages you find on CLickbank. My recommendation is to subscribe to Adsense Real Estate. Yes $67 per month may seem steep, but remember that that fee covers 10 website templates plus 7 articles per template ($6.70 per website). And all your websites can be hosted free with Adsense Real Estate. That will amount to huge savings per month in hosting fees as you add more websites to your portfolio.
PLR Pro don't provide website templates, only the articles about the topics they've researched as being popular. You do get 40 articles per topic (400 if you count the 10 language variants). But PLR Pro do provide free hosting for their customers. You just need to provide the website templates. PLR Pro also have access to article writers and you can order packs of 20 articles (in limited edition of 25 packs each) on various topics to further bolster your website's content.
What I'd recommend (and it's what I did), is first take out a membership with Adsense Real Estate and get familiar with how their templates work. Once you're comfortable with that, join PLR Pro and modify the Adsense Real Estate templates for the PLR Pro content.
Time has prevented me from building more websites but using what Adsense Real Estate and PLR Pro have to offer, I know I can build a 40+ page website in about a day.
Even if I ony build 3 a week, thats 150 in a year. If each site earned just $0.50 per day from Adsense (conservative estimate), I'd earn an average of $75 every day just from Adsense.
No, it's not a get-reich-quick scheme. It's a solid business plan to build an online business.
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