10/9/07

Intro to Google Adsense 101

Monetizer first learned about the benefits and possibilities of Adsense about a year ago, and decided to purchase a great book about it The AdSense Code: What Google Never Told You About Making Money with AdSense by Joel Comm. By then Adsense had already been used and abused for success by many people either blogging or running their own websites. Adsense still remains one of the top choices for monetizing your blog, and despite the fact Google can yank your account down at any time with no reason provided, it seems to be a smart choice for the beginning blogger to use. In fact, Blogger.com allows it to be easily integrated into a blog by using their widgets. Here's a quick look at what Adsense is and how it can work for your site or blog.

What is Adsense?

Adsense is a contextual advertising program. You sign up for the program and once approved you go about selecting the size, color and style of ads to display on your website or blog. Google will "crawl" your site's content to become familiar with the topics presented most often, and then strategically match relevant ads to your site. The importance of this is making the ads work well with your content as well as the look of your blog or website. The colors are varied that you can choose for your ad's borders, backgrounds, text and links. Sizes go from small 125x125 blocks to the large "leaderboard" of 728 width by 90 height. You can check out the styles and sizes of ads here.

Adsense not only offers text and image ads, but it also offers a Google search box you can set up as well as various referrals you can use to earn money (Firefox, Adwords, Adsense). It offers a good variety of ways to make money from your blog or website. Money is made from your Adsense ads based on clicks or page impressions. Or referral money is earned due to the download of a Google program, or use of Adwords/Adsense from your referral link or button.




How Do I Qualify for Adsense?

1) You'll need to submit your valid website or blog address on Google's application.

2) You'll need valid payment/pay to info as well as Social Security and tax documentation filed online.

If you don't have a blog or website, consider Blogger.com for blogging and Google Page Creator to create your own free website (on googlepages.com). Both are free to use and you can integrate Adsense into them. On the other hand if you can afford a domain name and monthly web hosting, consider Wordpress which is a great feature-packed blogging platform to use.

The Blogger platform will allow you to use "widgets" to insert Adsense in spots on your blog. You need to have an approved account to do so. The drawback to using the widgets will be you may have trouble matching them to your site. Using the Google Adsense site itself, selecting your size and style of ads and inserting the code yourself is the way to go.




Will Adsense pay me well?

The thing that will be stressed over and over is you won't make money from any advertising money maker online without having quality content first and a good amount of traffic to your site or blog. In that sense, the Google Adsense program can pay you well based upon what your site is about (certain topics pay better than others), and based on how many visitors your site is getting. If the ads are relevant and you have a high traffic level, you'll make some money from it. Some claim thousands a month in earnings.

How does Adsense pay me?

Adsense can either issue you a check or make an electronic deposit to your bank account. You only receive this if your account reaches $100 or more in Earnings. If you were to earn $100 from Adsense this month (October), you would receive your $100 by the end of November. Your earnings accumulate, so that if you don't reach $100 in Adsense earnings in a given month, they roll over to the following month.




What Rules Are Important for Adsense?

In a nutshell, all of them. Adsense has canceled user accounts with no warning leaving site and blog owners confused with what they may have done wrong. Things such as click fraud or ad promoting are usually the big reasons, so it's a good idea to be familiar with the Adsense Terms and Conditions. Things such as how many ads you can display of each type on your site and which other advertising programs you can use on your site with Adsense are always good to know.




The book mentioned above, "The AdSense Code: What Google Never Told You About Making Money with AdSense" is a great starting point for those who want to get into Adsense or try to increase their earnings from it on their site or blog. A good thing to keep in mind is even if you lose your Adsense account at some point, there are other similar programs out there you may be able to use such as the ad programs by Yahoo, Azoogle Ads, and Bidvertiser.

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