Industry guru Dave Taylor offers free tech support on a wide variety of technical and business topics, including HTML, Apple iPhone, online advertising, Cascading Style Sheets, Web design, management, Unix, Linux, search engine optimization, online dating, Mac OS X, shell script programming and Microsoft Windows.

How do I sign up for Google AdSense for Domains?

I've been looking at various options for my many registered but unused domains so that they could generate a bit of income for me and was psyched to read about Google adding AdSense for Domains to its many services. Don't know if anyone's seeing good money with it, but, heck, I'm willing to try!

Dave's Answer:

Thank you for the reminder to dig into this service. As it happens I have about forty domain names and the majority of them (cough, cough) are "coming soon" or simply have nothing on the site at all. Even $10/month would make them profitable for me with $8.50 annual registration fees and a server that costs me the same regardless of how many domains are associated.

Problem is, most of the domain parking revenue generation services are ghastly ugly, have zillions of ads, and look so obviously spammy that I have figured for a long time that they're pointless and can't possibly produce any income at all. Of course, I could be wrong. :-)

On the other hand, Google has a tendency to do things nicely and professionally, so you're right, it's worth trying.

And here's how ya do it...

Log in to your Google AdSense account (or sign up for one if you don't already have one) and on your main page you'll see:

Click on that and you'll be presented with their rather lengthy terms of service agreement. Scroll to the bottom (after carefully reading it, of course!) and you'll see a check box to click so you can proceed:

Finally, you're on the main AdSense for Domains area:

Click on "Add new domains" and...

I add two domains that I've had parked for quite a while (it is my intent to sell one or both of these at some point, though, so if they spark your imagination, email me!) and click on "add" and you'll get a typical little confirmation message:

And the system shows you what you actually have to do to have your domain actually point to an appropriate page on the Google AdSense server:

As you can see, you need to modify the domain name record (aka DNS) information so that when people query the domain they get to the right place. Not hard, but finding out where to do so might be a bit tricky.

Finally, note that you'll need to have your domains approved by the wizards in Mountain View too, so for the first few days, you'll see:

How's it look? I don't know yet. Once it's up and online, though, I'll write a followup piece that talks about how it looks, how to customize it and some information about what kind of payout you might see.

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Categorized: Pay Per Click (PPC) (Article 8727)
Tagged: adsense for domains, domain parking, google adsense, ppc
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Comments

Wow, I never knew that Adsense was available for parked domains. I've got one I'm sitting on and waiting for it to expire (Nobody's had any interest in buying it at least!)...Might be time to explore into this option. I'm sure it won't make as much as I make on the sites with actual content, but its worth a try :)

Posted by: Chelle at January 30, 2009 3:58 PM

Thanks Dave, you write clear explanation. Hope this can help people to understand about adsense

Posted by: Garett McGregor at February 5, 2009 3:28 AM

Hi Dave, can't wait to read your "results" after trying AdSense-for-Domains for awhile. A few searches show people complaining about it. I'm a newbie who hasn't tried it yet, so I can't say, but definitely interested.

Unfortunately, I hear domains bought at NETFIRMS.com can't be entered for AdSense-for-Domains because the @ symbol for the "A Record" won't work at NetFirms.

Any ideas or tips? Is there a workaround for this? I've got a good batch of domains sitting at NetFirms doing nothing, and sure would like to try it out. Bought my first domain ever in February, totally not ready to build a website, so when I heard of AdSense-for-Domains I was excited, but now that I heard via misc. searches that NetFirms won't work using that @ symbol, I'm totally bummed!

Thanks Dave!

Posted by: BG at May 12, 2009 4:59 AM

PS to Dave: It appears your articles are not dated, so I can only guess that your above article was first published around the same date as the first Comment below your article. Is that about right for all your articles? (as to how to gauge the date you wrote them?)

Posted by: BG at May 12, 2009 5:02 AM

BG, I don't tend to date my articles because I think that it can be confusing: most things change far more slowly than people think, and I don't want you thinking "oh, three months old? it's not current or relevant any more..."

In terms of AdSense for Domains, true confession: I never actually figured out how to get it working with my domains at Network Solutions and since a pretty new butterfly flew past, I got distracted and just moved on the next thing. Not so good. :-)

Perhaps others who are using this program can add their comments about how it's working for them?

Posted by: Dave Taylor at May 12, 2009 2:02 PM

Hi,
when I tried to sign in for Google ad sense from the below link :
https://www.google.com/adsense/login/en_US/

I m unable to get in though I've an account and there is no error message even.
Can you please help me with this?

Thank you

Posted by: Harsha at October 3, 2009 3:52 AM

I have something to say, now that you mention it, but ...

I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a cup of coffee!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!