A while ago I did some interviews with some bloggers friends or online contacts. One of the questions was “Have you ever used any Black Hat technique?”. The questions was intended for those who wanted to make money with their blogs or web sites. None of them answered positively. The answers were “No”, “None” or “I don’t know what Blach Hat is”.

OK, so the next logical question is “Did you earn enough from your online activity as to declare it a full-time job?”. The question was never asked, because, on some extent, it implies that only by using obscure techniques, one can earn lots of money.

And, in the end, aren’t we all using some [Insert Dark Color Here] Hat techniques when commenting just for backlinks, or writing the minimum number of posts on some forum just to be allowed to add a signature? I think we are.

Well, the title may fool some readers, however I’m sick of all the AdSense secrets. There are no such secrets. AdSense is a tool for webamsters to make money. If they make money, Google is happy, so why would there be any secrets that Google keeps away from us?

Because there are no secrets. There are only optimizations. And lots of work. I recently read some AdSense secrets e-books scattered on the Internet, which usual readers must pay for. A reasonable amount at first, but when I started reading the books, I realized that’s pure theft. The first half of the book states that this book is different and the secrets are real and the owner makes lots and lots of cash using them. Why would the author need to sell a book using an awful sales page with big red letters, insulting our intelligence?

Those sales page are absolutely ugly, they look like… but hey, I was talking about the e-book. The second half tells us about building link farms, joining some obscure networks, downloading software, optimizing keywords to the extreme, and so on and so forth.

Where’s the reader bond? Where’s the social part of blogging or having a web site? Apart from corporate sites, of course?

What about commenting and making valuable contributions? Not a word is mentioned in any of those books.

So, the conclusion? There are no secrets of AdSense, mark my words, NONE! It’s just building a blog or a web site, or 2 or 10 or 100, optimizing them, writing constantly, commenting, optimizing again, and more. It’s a lot of work, but it’s just like any other job. Work for money. Not try to game the system, as you will eventually get caught and expelled. Would you have the same enthusiasm and energy to start from scratch and bang your head at the wall as to why you had to try that technique you read in that book you paid 50 bucks or less?

Just out of curiosity, make a search on Google Images for “AdSense cash”. Fun, isn’t it?

This is a different tag cloud. It is created by Wordle and, in my opinion, the words in red define my blog best. I live by the sea, I like whiskey, and I speak (whenever I got the time*) about sharing, branding, media, recipes, blogs, great, air, always, morning, words, great, stop me.

* This long break was due to the fact that I’ve been busy getting high online some new web sites. One of them started off as a community idea, based on WordPress MU. It soon became a personal network of blogs specialized on various subjects. The blogs will be developed to form my own, personal encyclopedia. I will show it to you when it will be ready.

What’s more to say? The break has been too long, there must be something else. I discovered and learned new strategies on marketing and promotion, but currently they’re too chaotic in my mind to be shared here.

Hmm, I’m looking forward to the new WordPress 2.7 frantically announced in every dashboard in each of my blogs. The perspective of being able to move my categories panel back to the right side of the post where it belongs, makes me very happy.

Now stay close, I’m back.