Is The Adsense Bubble Ready To Burst?

Des Scahill

You see them everywhere now.

Offers of off-the-shelf websites that you purchase, update with
your Adsense account details, and upload to your host to start
earning from Adsense immediately. Prices are attractive too,
some offers working out at less than $1 per site.

Sounds good doesn't it? I've even purchased a few of these sites
myself. In most cases I've found the quality of the products to
be quite good for the small outlay per website.

So whats the problem?

There's two actually. The first one is simply the law of supply
and demand. Its inevitable that as the supply of available web
sites wanting to display Adsense advertising increase, the price
advertisers are willing to pay for display will decline. This
economic principle has been around for centuries and is not
likely to disappear any time soon.

If all you've got is a 'clone' site, set up just for the sole
purpose of earning Adsense dollars, you are going to be left in
the dust by smarter competitors.

Still, if you've got two thousand of these sites and made only
$5 a month average from each after expenses, you wouldn't
complain. But how realistic is that for most webmasters or a
newbie wanting a share of Adsense dollars? Not very.

The second problem is perhaps less obvious. If history is any
guide manias are a basic part of human nature. The most
well-known mania of course is the Tulip Mania that gripped
Holland in the 17th century. This speculative frenzy, which
began in the early 1600s reached its height in 1633-37. Many
were ruined financially when the tulip market crashed in 1637.

We don't seem to have learned much since. The stock market mania
in the 1920's that lead to the Great Crash in 1929 comes to
mind. And we are all familiar with the mania that can surround
some film stars or rock bands even today.

Adsense shows all the early warning signs of impending mania.
Everyone's talking about adsense, products claiming to boost
your adsense income abound, and articles about adsense flood the
article directories.

This must be making Google and paying advertisers very happy.

But this tidal wave of adsense web site owners - particularly
those who purchased a package deal that locked them into hosting
of their brand new adsense web sites - might become a tad
unhappy in the not so distant future.

Here's what you can do to minimize any effects when the adsense
bubble bursts.

1) Add original content to the site. This helps set yours apart
from the other clones.

2) Change the 'look and feel' of the site eg. graphics and
navigation

3) Revisit the keyword and other meta tags on every page. Do
your best to make your site search engine friendly.

4) If its an article based site, go through the articles and see
if some of the better ones can be used as content on another
website you own.

By all means take advantage of some of the offers around. Just
make sure that you have the skills to use the material wisely
and adapt it as you see fit. Uploading a site as-is to a cheap
host, and then forgetting it, seems likely to prove
disappointing.

About the author:

This article was written by Des Scahill. If you want more tips
on how to get started in making money online and avoiding some
of the traps visit his website http://www.trawl-for-cash.net

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