Book Review: The Adsense Code - What Google Never Told You About Making Money With Adsense, By Joel Comm

Posted on 23 March 2008

Before I dive into the pros and cons of this book, I think it’s important to acknowledge how significantly the book has impacted the way thousands of Internet publishers use and understand Adsense. At this writing, the book is just over a year old and it has been heralded as an instant classic in the growing world of Internet marketing. After making the New York Times best sellers list in 2006, The Adsense Code firmly established Joel Comm as an authority in the world of contextual advertising. Regardless of what I say in this post, the numbers tell the story. This book was a hit. Here’s why.

Although countless millions of websites run adsense ads, very few sites actually generate enough traffic to really see large, consistent adsense earnings. When web site traffic is low, infrequent and unpredictable, it’s tough for site owners to see how small tweaks in the placement or configuration of ads on a page affect click rates and earnings. This makes maximizing your adsense income difficult. But big numbers don’t lie. When a website is getting large amounts of consistent traffic, small changes in the way ads look and where ads are placed can make a big difference to the number of clicks they get.

At the time that Google released their Adsense program, Joel Comm was running sites like WorldVillage.com, which were generating hundreds of thousands of visitors daily - You might say that Joel was in the right business at the right time. Exposing large numbers of daily visitors to adsense ads can mean big money…we’re talking “6-figure-income” big for the ones who’s pages are really sticky and popular. Joel experimented with his traffic by filling his sites with different types of adsense ads, making changes in placement and configuration of the ads over time and tracking his income and clickthrough rate results. Joel’s documentation of the results of those experiments, found in chapters 3 4 and 5, make up the heart and soul of this book. They provide data-driven answers to a gamut of basic, but elusive questions like “Where Do I Put Ads On My Page so that People Click more? and “What Colors make people click the most?”. Because clicks are what generate revenue, these three chapters alone make this book a must-read for people who want to learn how to maximize their adsense income. The book has definitely influenced my adsense strategy for the better, and I refer to it often when building sites that run adsense ads. Most importantly, the fact that it’s available under $20 on sites like Amazon begs the question, why not buy this book? You can probably find it on amazon used for under $15. I got my used copy for $6 on a holiday special.

What This Book is Not

Maxing out your pages with Adsense doesn’t do anything if your website isn’t getting any traffic. If you’re looking for answers about how to drive traffic to your website, this book is not for you. The core of The Adsense Code focuses on strategies for converting existing traffic into clicks, not how to get the traffic in the first place. If you’re looking for information on how to drive traffic, I highly recommend The SEO Book. It’s a bit pricey but it’s the best resource available today for getting the traffic you need to make money. You also get a bunch of free software tools that professionals use included in the purchase price.

Criticism of The Adsense Code

Although this is the best resource out there for learning about how to amp your Adsense earnings, not everything in this book useful for non-novices. You probably wont be surprised to find out that a lot of the later chapters in this book act as advertising for some of Joel’s sites that are riddled with Adsense ads and affiliate links. He does give good high-level advice, though, and he helps novices find good resources and tools to get started. Affiliate marketing professionals and webmasters that are already using powerful tools like Wordtracker and Affiliate Elite may not want to waste their time reading the whole book because Joel doesn’t offer much beyond high-level advice and recommendations on commonly known strategies and resources. Novices, however will benefit from the general awareness his overviews provide.

Summary and Final Thoughts

This book is not just for novices, it’s for everyone using Adsense to make money online. The people who will benefit immediately from reading the book are going to be those that already have large numbers of repeat visitors coming to their sites. Bloggers, newbie web designers and affiliate marketers, however, will gain a good awareness about how to build content around adsense to maximize their earnings in the future as they build a web presence. On the whole, The Adsense Code is a quick, valuable read, and for the price you can get it for on Amazon used, it a steal.