After my highly cynical comment on Darren’s article about Michael Cheney’s AdSense Videos course, I decided to take the advice of one of the other comments, buy the product and review it.

This will be a whistlestop review based on my impressions from viewing the product yesterday evening.

Firstly, for those who didn’t read the comment I made, I expressed my cynicism for these courses. Many of them are stock single-page web templates with large coloured fonts, pop-up windows, lots of inviting text, free bonus lures, time-limited offers (which almost never expire), nearly always valued at $97 or $197.

As an Internet user of over ten years, I have been burnt several times and wasted time and money on these kind of programs. And I’m not into the ‘get-rich-quick’ mentality either - though it would be nice, eh?

So, to Michael’s course.

Michael Cheney: British Internet Marketer

First, I’ll admit I was impressed that this is a British guy that’s being successful and making money online. I shouldn’t be surprised, but that did catch my attention.

Quality: First Impressions

I have a fast broadband connection and use a Mac, and found no problems accessing the course, though it stalled once in Safari and I switched over to Firefox.

The quality of the videos was reasonably good. There was some occasional glitching and distortion on Michael’s voice, but it was not so bad as to make the course unusable or unpleasant to use.

Diagrams, etc. were clear, even on my 12 inch Powerbook at 1024×768 resolution. I liked the style though I had been expecting to see Michael talk to camera at some point, which he doesn’t do.

Content Structure

The main course is split into 9 videos and covers the basics of Google philosophy, AdSense, applying for an account, getting content for your web pages, “Powering up” your AdSense income, testing, “exploding your earnings” and earning more from each page.

There are also bonuses which, to be honest, I was not particularly interested in: AdSense clinic, List Building, Traffic Stampede, Greatest Internet Marketing Secret (groan), and so on.

Starting the Course

The videos are all between 8 and 20 minutes each, so in quite manageable chunks. Michael quite specifically tells you not to skip through the videos, or play them out of order, which is a sensible recommendation if you are totally new to AdSense.

He made it sound as if there would be nuggets of unmissable information in every part of the video - hence the reason for not skipping through it - however I found the first few videos very standard fare, given that I already have content, have an AdSense account with reasonably well optimised ads, and am building traffic.

I was itching to get onto the ‘explosion’ and ‘power up’ sections…

Power up or let down?

I was hoping video 4: “Power up your AdSense income part 1″ would really set things in motion. Unfortunately, it didn’t move me.

By now, I had been introduced to one tool I already use, and another that I may well investigate.

Major insights or Same old freebies?

I was expecting to have at least one major ‘WOW, I didn’t know that” moment during the course - I didn’t. Admittedly, it reminded me to go and tweak a few things hear and there after each course, but certainly nothing life-changing.

Michael implores people to go through the action plan that is presented at the end of each course. Usually this involves testing out a strategy, getting content or using a service. I found that most of the action points were not relevant and I didn’t spend long on them.

So what did I learn?

I’m sorry to say that I didn’t learn anything new from this course, either in terms of content or in terms of how these courses work.

I know nothing more about AdSense, content and promotion than I did before the course.

I also have reinforced the image that most of these courses exist to cyclically promote other courses by other successful (rich) marketers.

For example, one of the action pages recommends another course by another marketer. Lo and behold, another garish page where you can buy a course for $97. And one of the bonuses? A complete AdSense guide. Wow! Err, but haven’t I just had a complete AdSense guide?

Oh yeah…

How many of these courses do we need? Lots, it seems, provided that there are a healthy group of rich marketers to promote each other’s work.

Conclusion and Advice

This course is not for even moderately competent AdSense users and website publishers. If you are an absolute beginner, with no website, no content, and no way to generate revenue, then you will probably get a lot from this information.

If you’ve read a few free Internet marketing sites, looked at successful websites, and are confident in testing on your own site, then I don’t think you’ll find much here to help you.

What you will get is plenty of links to other resources that you simply must have to explode your income.

Whilst I don’t doubt the sincerity or authenticity of Michael Cheney, the whole experience has done little to curb my cynicism for this whole game.

So much so that I won’t be recommending it in an affiliate link, despite the fact that I could make a few dollars from it.

You’ll need to make your own mind up, but I could probably tell you in ten minutes the actual AdSense optimisation tips that were shared here, and I’d do it for free (as would many other people)

Be careful with your money out there, people.

AdSense Videos (non affiliate link!)

Update: Jack has written a great summary of events over at Blog4Bloggers.