Mistake #5 – Blindly Following Advice

Many webmasters follow certain AdSense “gurus” blindly, taking their advice as law. The problem with this is that the gurus can only give you broad, general advice. Their solutions can’t possibly take into account every factor and every situation.

I’m not saying their advice isn’t good. Most AdSense gurus tend to give advice based on their own experiences, and it probably works out just fine for them. But it’s not necessarily going to work out well for you. It might, so you should certainly test out their techniques.

Just remember not to blindly follow that advice, expecting it will work for you. Maybe Guru X does have a 25% CTR and maybe Guru Z makes $15,000 a month from AdSense alone, but it’s not practical to follow their advice without testing.

Another major reason you should never follow advice blindly is the fact that some advice is just dangerous. Just because someone is considered an AdSense expert doesn’t mean their advice will always be the right advice, especially when it comes to things that could get you banned.

For example, Joel Comm is widely considered to be one of the world’s experts on AdSense. He put out an eBook about it that was very successful, and then he released a print book called “The AdSense Code” which became quite popular.

Some of the tactics in the book became outdated very quickly. For example, Joel advocated certain tactics for drawing attention to ads that Google later said they didn’t like. This wasn’t Joel’s fault, and the information was great at the time, but anyone blindly following this advice now would be at risk for having their account banned.

Since the AdSense TOS can change at any time, you should always be sure to check out any advice you’re given thoroughly. Read the terms regularly, keep an eye on the official Google AdSense blog, and be very careful to ensure you’re always following the rules.

If you have any questions about a particular tactic and whether or not Google would find it acceptable, you can always just contact them and ask. They would be happy to let you know whether a tactic is acceptable.

Just remember, do NOT put an example live on the web. Some Google reps are rumored to be a bit overzealous, so it’s best to sendthem a screenshot image and not a live example.