God, am I the ONLY person out there in the big wide world who is not frothing at the mouth about the newest “trend” to hit the get-rich-quick Internet Marketing community?
Joel Comm (of Adsense Secrets fame) has been promoting his 500words.com site around the net lately, and when I saw the site, a sense of deja vu wafted over me in a major hurry!
Reminds me of the pixel selling craze of a year or so ago, where everybody went ballistic buying 1 pixel ads on a site to get link popularity benefits from Google & co.
That was great for the first 1-2 players in the field, and it got a LOT of press and some good dollars for the early mover, but have you noticed that no one seems to be paying much attention to it these days?
Why, you ask?
Simple really – because it goes against what Google (in particular) and the other major search engines are looking for when it comes to measuring the worth of incoming links.
My philosophy when it comes to the “fad of the month” brigade is simple: If I can show it to a Google Search Engine “cop” and have him or her be happy that it’s legit and fair and honest, and give me full value for the link, then it’s all good.
However, if the Google cop laughs at me and asks me if I’m on drugs, I know it will ultimately be a waste of time. It might work temporarily, but once Google figures it out, they will add a small routine to their algorithm to ignore the value of links from sites like this.
Even more than that, I am really disappointed that Joel Comm is the one promoting this. Mr Adsense himself should know better than to try and get one past Google!
If his idea was SOOOO good, he would keep his mouth shut & just build these sites for himself to get the link popularity.
Instead, he’s selling the script to build the keyword sites instead – THAT’s where the money is. He’ll sucker in hundreds of get-rich-quick starrey eyed individuals who think they will make a fortune with it, and in reality, HE will make a small fortune and probably only 1-2 others will as well.
Folks, use some critical thinking here PLEASE!
If this was really as good as he says it is, why is he selling the system instead of using it for himself?
Simple really – he makes money on the people who buy the links AND he makes money on the people who buy his script.
However, I can guarantee you that within 6 months (probably less), Google will be giving links from these sites little or NO value. All these word links are doing at the moment is drawing traffic from the buzz, which is nice, but not sustainable long term!
If you want link popularity, spend the money you would have paid Joel to buy his script and/or buying a word on his site, and pay someone from rentacoder or elance to write you some unique articles instead.
Link your primary keyword/s in the author resource box and publish the articles on your own site. THEN, modify the articles sufficiently so that they have at least 25-50% different wording & content to the original, and publish them on the major article sites like ezinearticles.com.
The value of the link popularity you will get from doing this will far outweigh any value you will get from the 500words site over the medium to long term.
Just this technique alone has got my biggest client to #1 GLOBALLY on Google for one of their primary keywords in less than 6 months. It took me about 2 hrs of work to publish the articles for him, and that’s all I’ve had to do since.
The link popularity he has earned from those published articles has steadily climbed and climbed, until it is now at #1 against 115 MILLION competing pages!
Now, THAT you can take to the bank. It’s a solid strategy, it keeps Google happy, and obviously it thrills my client and makes me look good.
What more can an SEO ask for! 
I love Internet Marketing, but I despair at times at how many people just chase the newest fad, hoping to get rich quick, instead of working smart & hard and putting together a quality site.
These types of fads are just amazing. And the affiliate program payout that Joel offers on this particular one is just huge that it’s no wonder that it’s being promoted like crazy.
No one wants to work at creating and promoting their sites. That’s really the biggest problem and why these kinds of products become so popular. I have to say that Rich Jerk had it right when he said that most people who buy e-books and software to make money don’t actually go and do the work necessary to succeed!
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Hmmm… Well it looks like he can laugh all the way to the bank.
@Sam, be that as it may, does it make it right?
My post wasn’t about whether he made money or not (obviously he did), but whether it was a product that offered true lasting value to buyers, which I don’t believe it was.
Eran
Everytime I received a newsletter from him, there must be something for me to BUY, nonstop .
Okay I subscribed just to find out how nonsense it’s.
=VERY Nonsense.
hi,
hmm the adsense templates i have them and have never done a thing with them.
i doubt that even if i had there would have never been much money made.
i have adsense on my sites and hardly ever made money worth mentioning.
all these guru’s make money with there large list selling their own sh*t and other peoples sh*t.
i have unsubscribed from so many marketers lists now.
steve