Adsense Secrets is taking me longer than I had expected to finish.
Not that it’s difficult to read but I was trying out the ideas and the many links in the eBook. I was also a bit distracted by Ewen Chia’s Working From Home.

The 4th edition of Adsense Secrets does go through the basics of setting up a website. Basics like choosing the domain name, hosting, designing the website and creating contents, giving resources as well as links where all these can be found and done.
All these were for the beginner and if you’re not one, you can skip these and go directly to the meat of Adsense strategies.

What Adsense is all about and how to sign up for an Adsense account are explained with images.

The following are some topics covered:

• The type of ad formats like text ads, image ads, video ads, gadget ads, link units and referral ads are extensively described and also which type works best. 
•  The use of colors and which colors works best for the background, text and URL are also discussed and explained with lots of images and examples. An important piece of advice is to make the border blend in with the background with both having the same color. This is to ensure the ad appear as similar to the content as possible so that it does not appear like an ad.
• The position and placement of the various types of ads to enhance CTR (Click Through Rate) are explained. CTR is defined as the number of clicks divided by impressions as a percentage. What’s an impression? An impression is one display of your website. Eg. your website was displayed 100 times (or 100 impressions) in a day and your ads received 3 clicks. Your CTR = 3% 
• Various techniques of displaying ads are also discussed.
• Finding keywords, keyword density, placement and frames, meta-tags, section targeting, all of which are classified in the fanciful name of Search Engine Optimization are discussed. This is one topic that usually causes a newbie who’s starting his/her Internet marketing journey to stare blankly into space or the forehead to crease in information overload. This eBook makes a good attempt to explain this topic.
• CPM ads are ads that earns revenue by the number of 1000 impressions. Defined as cost per 1000 impressions.
• Google Slap and Smart Pricing and the strategies to benefit from, are explained.
• Strategies on how to use and place Google Search Box.
• How to build content for your website or blog.
• Tracking and monitoring of ads are strongly emphasized and the techniques of using channels and server logs are discussed. Using of custom and URL channels can be confusing for newbies but are explained in Adsense Secrets.
• The mechanics of Adsense Arbitrage.
  and many more.

The above are some of the many topics covered that includes other types of ads like Kontera, Intellitxt, ContextCASH, Chikita, Adbrite, Kanoodle, eBay and how to integrate them with Adsense on your websites. Images and plenty of website examples are used to explain as well as many resources and links are covered.

There’s also a list of 13 big Adsense mistakes to avoid. This is important to know as committing some of the major mistakes can get your Adsense account closed and you banned. The eBook also summarises the more important points of the TOS (Terms Of Service), very important but very dry stuff to go through to avoid infringing on Google’s rules and regulations.

More than 10 case studies of actual websites are also reviewed with screen shots.

I was trying to spot typo errors as it’s so common on websites and eBooks and was impressed with the lack of them until about two-thirds of the way through, typo and some grammar mistakes start appearing.
But that should not mar the gist of the lessons Adsense Secrets tries to put across.

In summary, Adsense Secrets is great for the novice who has just started on his or her journey in Internet marketing and wants to set up a blog. There are alot of ideas and resources well-explained with plenty of graphics, screen shots and links to resources. But I can’t help feeling there are a few tricks up Joel’s sleeves that he’s kept hidden. As expected there’s an up-sell at the last few pages. But hey, for $9.95, there’s alot of useful information to be found and applied. So I can’t complain.

 According to Search Engine Land Google paid more than $1 billion in first 3 months of 2007 and it’s growing! Now, isn’t it time to get your share of the Adsense pie?