I’ve been reading a bit about how people can make money off their Web site by joining up with the Google AdSense program, but I really don’t understand how it all works. Do I need to find advertisers? Do I bill them for showing up on my site? Or does Google do all this? Thanks a million (hopefully!)
You’re not alone in being interested in the terrific Google AdSense program. Leveraging its powerful page analysis system, Google’s AdSense program automatically matches the best possible advertisements with the content on your Web page, making the ads magically quite relevant to your content.
Behind the scenes, it works like this: an advertiser goes to the Google AdWords system, signs up, and creates one or more advertisements that they want to pay to have appear either on Google’s search result pages or on “content pages”. Those content pages are Web sites run by individuals and organizations that include AdSense, which is the “consume” side of this equation.
What makes this more interesting is that advertisers don’t pay to have their adverts show up on either Google or separate content sites, but instead pay when the ads are clicked by customers, what we call “pay per click” or PPC. A percentage of the amount that the company pays Google for displaying the ad is then shared with the AdSense-enabled web site owner.
If, say, the advertiser pays $1.00 for a visitor to their site through AdWords, then Google will pay a percentage of that amount (the exactly amount has not been stated by the company) to you, perhaps $0.20, perhaps more.
I realize that $0.20 doesn’t sound like much money, but if you have a few hundred visitors a week, and some percentage of them click on these adverts, you could easily make $20-$50 or much (much!) more from your site each week, without having to do any work other than add the special AdSense code to the pages in the first place.
It’s simple, easy to accomplish, you never have to negotiate (or even talk) with advertisers, you don’t have to bill anyone at all, and every month or two you’ll get a nice little check from Google corporate. Nice!
So let’s talk about the exact steps required to actually get going with the AdSense program. First and foremost, you need to sign up for the AdSense program, which you can do by clicking in the cheery button:
Note that when you sign up, you’ll need to specify a Web site or weblog that you plan on incorporating AdSense: not every site is approved, however, so make sure yours has valuable and unique content and a design that doesn’t include too many advertisements.
Once you’re approved, it’s time to log in and configure your new AdSense advertisement to include on your site!
When you first log in, you’ll see the following navigational bar:
Click on “AdSense for Content” and you’ll be ready to configure your ad. Now, don’t worry: configuration is pretty easy and kinda fun too, you get to pick colors, sizes, and much more.
Once you’ve clicked on the “AdSense for Content” tab, your next step will be to decide what type of advertisements you want Google to serve up on your own pages:
I suggest you start out with a text “Ad unit”, as shown here: the other type of content adverts are less generally useful, less flexible, and typically also have a much lower payout, according to the grapevine. When you are ready, note that you can learn more about the different formats by clicking on any of the last three lines in that view.
The next section of your task is to specify the format and layout of your AdSense ad, and there are a rather amazing number of different size and format options. Google has a helpful AdSense Ad Format Reference Page that’s worth a quick peek.
Here at Ask Dave Taylor, I use a Leaderboard (728×90) on the top of the home page and a Large Rectangle (336×280) on this very page. Your layout will inevitably be different and you might choose a different layout entirely. Further, you are allowed to have up to three different ad units on a given page, so you can experiment with them one atop the other, adjacent to each other, or interspersed with your content. Just try to remember that if there’s no content, there’s no page. 🙂
Now that you’ve picked an ad layout size (and yes, you can change it at any time too) it’s time to have the most fun: changing the color scheme of the ad itself. My handy tip: use a border color that’s the same as the background color of your page (as I do on this page) so that it’s less overt that the ads are actually advertisements. It helps people not gloss over them and, hopefully, click on the ads a bit more frequently.
The built-in color schemes are nice too, of course, if you want to use them, but just as with the sizes, I strongly recommend that you experiment with different color schemes and see if you get a better percentage of clickthrus and greater revenue. Perhaps every Sunday night you can change to another color scheme and then track week-by-week what works best?
The next step is to specify an alternate Ad URL or color, and a specific channel for your ad:
The idea behind alternate ads is that sometimes no advertisers have bid on advertising for the keywords, leading Google to a pickle: what to display? By default, it instead displays public service ads (PSAs), but if you want to create an HTML snippet that produces the same size content, you can use that instead, or, you can simply have a solid box in the color of your choice that blends into the design of your site.
I am a much stronger supporter of channels, however. Channels let you organize your AdSense results by Web site (if you have more than one site) or by areas of your site. On this site, for example, I have a channel for “home page leaderboard” and another for “large rectangle” so I can compare how each format is doing, rather than just guessing in the aggregate. It’s much easier to start correctly than to retrofit this sort of thing, so take the time and set up a basic channel or two to begin categorizing your results.
Finally, you’ve made all the settings you need and it’s time to grab the HTML snippet that’ll generate the ad block on your own site!
Your specifics will be a bit different from what you see in this screen shot, but the code will generally look identical. Just select all the text in the box, then use Edit –> Copy to get that code into your copy/paste buffer.
Now open up a page where you’d like to include the AdSense code, or a template if you’re working with something like a weblog system, and paste in the new code by using Edit –> Paste.
Save your template and rebuild your site, or, if it’s just a page, save the page back onto the server and bring it up in your web browser. That’s it!
Important Warning: do not click on your ads!
I think one of the most common mistakes that new AdSense participants make is to click on an advert or three to “make a quick buck”. Sounds good in theory, but you’ll end up kicked out of the AdSense program if you click on ads shown on your own pages, which is not a good strategy for earning money!
Anyway, that’s the basic set of steps. Don’t delay and don’t wait for tomorrow: pop back up to the beginning of this article to sign up for AdSense, then go through these steps and you can start turning your cost center of a Web site into a revenue generation system, modest or otherwise!
.. and who knows, maybe you’ll see one of my own advertisements on your site!
One final tip: If you’re serious about increasing your AdSense earnings, you might want to consider buying a copy of my friend Joel Comm’s AdSense Secrets. It’s jam-packed with great advice and ideas about maximizing your clickthru rate and traffic.
Hi
Thanks for this great explanation. One question – can you target the ads for keywords or does it all rely on the pages content?
Please let me know how is the mode of payment if I am living in Nigeria or India .
Thanks
Regards
Nimisha
Bruixa, sounds like a frustrating situation to be sure!! First off, make sure that you have changed the default language on your AdSense account to be Polish too, it’s possible that they use that as a “hint” to help target things properly. Generally, though, I think you should explore using the section targeting tags to ensure that AdSense is scanning only the relevant parts of your page, not every single line of text. You can learn more about that here:
https://www.askdavetaylor.com/what_is_adsense_section_targeting.html
Hope that helps!
Hi Dave!
I put google adsense on my blog but I hardly earn anything: CTR is very, very low. One of the reasons (besides that the blog is quite new and doesn’t get much traffic) is that google places ads that has nothing to do with my content. My blog is in Polish and contains reviews of books; I’ve also placed there some banners and bottons of some online bookshops of which I’m an affiliate as well as books’ covers (pics) with my affiliate links. And the adsense (or rather ad-nonsense) ads are for… Forex, acne treatment, poker, unicycle etc., some of them in English or even German. No wonder none of my visitors clicks on them.
Is there anything I can do to change this absurd situation?
Regards
Bruixa
Rahul, you know the answer without asking. If you are clicking on an ad to make money, rather than having your readers / viewers click on an advert because they’re interested in the product or service, you’re defrauding the advertiser and earning money from Google under false pretenses. If Google catches you, it’s quite reasonable for them to terminate the account.
In a nutshell, focus on bringing good quality traffic to your AdSense site and offering up useful information. Then you’ll see the long-term benefit without having to resort to anything illegal or against the terms of service…
Guys,
thanku for the informations that all of you have posted here.
i have a question, what if someone clicks on his own google ads diplayed on his webpage from different computer or different city.
kindly reply.
I have used AdSense following your advice on Scrabulous – http://www.scrabulous.com – where users can play Scrabble online.
I never knew AdSense would be so helpful!! Thanks a lot, keep it up 🙂
In thinking about the site you offer, you are brilliant! The more subjects that people approach you with, the more pages you have online that need new and different Ads. I take my Cornhuskers hat off to you and will be venturing into AdSense with all of my varied sites I run. I am a website developer professionally and at heart…so I have a ton of sites to work with. Bummer that the new Dreamweaver program is so buggy that I am going to load my old version. I hope it is compatible with the new intel-based Macs. Hopefully I will be buying you another Chai soon when I make my first $100!
One question: Do you advertise your own site on Google? No traffic=no clicks. I found you through a specific search engine request.
Another question: Do you offer your photos for sale on sites like iStockPhoto.com? Another nice way to make some ching! Those are some cute kids (yours?) I am working on organizing my bizillion photos to sort out the good from the mediocre so I can start uploading. I have recently been approved as a photographer that can upload photos to sell! Yay!
Okay, Noelle, you tell me how old you are and how much you weigh and I’ll share my AdSense revenues, okay? 🙂
More seriously, let’s just say that AdSense is paying my mortgage right now and I’m darn happy about that, as it lets me focus on creating more valuable content and helping out more people rather than working at McDonald’s flipping burgers.
Ok..today I had some time to actually go to your homepage. I see that you use Google Adsense. Can you give a ballpark range of the income you make with a website of this size and the adwords you have incorporated? It must be worth it if you have the ads on your pages. Otherwise you would have taken them down?
Signed, Nosey Nate Noelle
ps…Does that qualify as one of the questions you should never ask someone? Just dont ask me how old I am or how much I weigh ; )
I received a spam email and I cant quite put my finger on why I opened it. I NEVER open spam. The basic gist was that you pay this guy $49 and he will tell you all about how you can make money writing ads. I noticed in the fine print, that you will be charged $39.95 a month for ‘membership’. I figured that anything you want to learn on the internet can be found…FOR FREE. Hence, I found your site. I have used Google’s adsense keyword advertising for some of my customers. (I’m a website developer) It’s good to know that I can utilize this aspect of it for some of my personal sites and maybe make some money!
The hilarious part about the spam that I received…as I read the “agreement contract”…line item #4c stated “The Site is vigorously against the practice commonly referred to as “Spam��?.” It went on and on…but I felt that their contract was full of IT since they practice spam themselves.
Anyway, thanks for the good info!
Great Odil, no no no, clicking on ads if you aren’t interested in the product or service being advertised is bad and messes up the entire system. I can say definitively:
Please don’t click on any advertisements on this page if you aren’t genuinely interested!
Thanks. 🙂
hello,am new in adsense programe,i am using a blogsite,and they have template tag,where i added adsens ads to my pages ,please check and see if am on track:www.afrikng.blogspot.com,i wanted to added the referal codes to my blogs but it did not work.i will clik on the adds on your pages for u,click mine too to help me on all my blogs.
can i give friends my site who can navigate my site and click adds also or must it be by search engines.
thanks
great odil
Nice article Dave,
I think the biggest secret of Adsense is “How to raise your visitors”. Without huge amount of visitors, you will never earn much with Adsense.
Enzo Chiu
Freelance Programmer & Web Developer
http://www.makemoneyathome-idea.com
Thanks for the guide! It’s wonderful, and I’m sure beginners will find the pictures very helpful.
Joe: Bidvertiser is another AdSense alternative. It’s not a very good one in my opinion though..
To answer your question Joe, the Yahoo Publisher Network is probably the most direct competitor against google adsense.
publisher.yahoo.com
It’s still in beta (as it has for a very long time) and it doesn’t have all the great tools that adsense has, but it does the job.
Very clear explanation. Good idea with the screenshots. I suggest that you go one step further by explaining search engine optimization essentials – good for anybody with a site. I use these techniques not only on my own hobby sites but on sites that I create for businesses. It is important information yet simple. If you learn about search engine optimization, you can apply the simple principles and then watch your ranking get better over time. A higher ranking gets more visitors and more visitors will make you more AdSense money too.
You have given useful info on adsense.
I had an invalid clicks problem with adsense.
What are the other alternatives (other
than adsense) that are available to a
publisher based here in India?
I have added adbrite ads, do you recommend
any others?
Joe.
First of all, I would like to thank you for writing this great explaination of Google’s AdSense system!
I am developing a website with both a free and pay versions of a service in the IT industry. I’m not sure that I would do this, but if I chose to, would it be against the terms of service for me to place google ads inside the ‘pay-only’ areas of the website?
Since much of my website will be a free service, and I can’t be certain that the pay areas will pay too much, I’ve been trying to find some reliable information on actual dollar amounts for well designed google ad placements. The only reliable information that I’ve found is on the AdSense case studies webpage. Perhaps you can shed some light on this for me?
My final question that I can’t seem to find answers on is, can I mention that my website is partially advertisement funded in my website faq? Usually when I sign up for a free service, I ask why the service is free, so I think it would be helpful to be able to answer that in the faq.
Thank-you for your time
-Chris
Excellent topic and you covered it nicely. Adsense is indeed a huge player in the online advertising world and I believe any tips and guides are appreciated. Of course, while millions of publishers are running Adsense, only a handful are making serious money off it. As far as I’m concerned, the best way to make money with Adsense is to develop a website or blog on a niche topic that should also be something you are interested in. Hobby-related sites have the best chances of keeping you, as their webmaster, happy and involved, and this will soon show in the number of visitors and the amounts of money you make.
Another vital thing to consider is ad style and placement. I prefer to use a similar structure for all my websites – one that was proven to work. I will share this with you as I believe in reciprocal help through free advice – I also learned A LOT from browsing blogs such as this and other webmaster resources on Adsense. Ok, so getting back to ad placement: I love the idea of placing a 120×90 or 160×90 adlink box on the left side menu of my sites, in the top left corner, just below the banner. Have a look at my website – web2earn.com, and get more tips on how to make money with Google Adsense and look at the area below the graphic saying “Online money��? – it will house a nice 160×90 adlinks box soon after my site receives enough traffic.
The second good spot to place a 250×250 or 300×250 ad box is in the article text. Loose the border and make the background of the ads the same as your web background (same is true for the adlink placement mentioned above. The final touch comes with a final ad placed at the end of each araticle. Consider the article a path that leads to the final conclusion – exactly where the ads are. You can also place a small graphic image to the left of the ads, so that they are more attractive from a visual point of view.
By using such an ad placement most of my sites get CTRs of 10%-15% all the time
Give it a try and let me know if this sort of ad placement worked in your particular cases – I am also doing a study on this which I will eventually publish on web2earn.com
Best regards,
Mihai
thanks for the article
AdSense: Google’s Hidden Payroll
This is an excerpt from a darn interesting article in the Christian Science Monitor of 29 March, 2006, entitled Google’s Hidden Payroll. Jayant Kumar Gandhi, a former software engineer in New Delhi, is one of hundreds of thousands around the world on G…
Not necessarily, Joe. In fact, the best performing ads are those that are integrated into your content, because they’re the most contextually relevant to the reader. If I go to a site and the first thing I see is a monolithic block of adverts, I’m outta there before you can finish loading the last graphic.
Is it true that all people should first see when they come to your AdSense site is the header and the large AdSense box. I notice you do that on this site.
Jen, I definitely have, and much of what I’ve figured out has been clearly memorialized in Joel’s ebook:
http://d1taylor.jcomm.hop.clickbank.net/
Malc, you should assume that you’ll get about a 1-2% clickthru rate, so if you see about 100 people/day coming to your site, it should take approximately one day to see at least one click.
Thanks for the clear explaination of using Google adsense. How much time should one have to wait before people start clicking on your ads?
Dave – this is a really useful introduction to Adsense. Have you experimented with different colour combinations for your ads at all? If so, did you find it made a difference?
Naveed and rajiv, what you’re asking about is click fraud and it’ll get you instantly kicked out of Google’s AdSense program, without receiving any accumulated income or anything. In fact, click fraud is the #1 threat to Google’s long term success as a business: if advertisers start to feel that they can’t count on Google’s traffic as legitimate, they’ll be less willing to advertise, and since AdWords generates the vast majority of Google’s income, that’s a serious threat.
As you can imagine, there are a lot of people at Google trying to automate the identification of fraudulent ad clicks and I believe that they can cross-correlate values, can certainly compare the IP address of ad clicks versus the IP address of the computer that logs into that AdSense account to retrieve reports, etc.
Generally, though, it’s also unethical to defraud advertisers so you can make a buck anyway. So whether or not Google doesn’t like it, you shouldn’t do it anyway.
Me? I’m so clean with this stuff that if I see an advert that catches my eye, I’ll type the URL into my address bar rather than click on it. It’s only another 10-15 seconds and ensures I never get flagged by their antifraud system too.
i also want to know in the same case as Naveed, about two guys having their own websites decide that they will click on eachother’s ads (Google AdSense ads) daily then what happens? Or a group of guys decide that they will click on eachothers’ ads?
What are the top searches used in my AdSense for Search box?
On your recommendation, I’ve signed up for AdSense and added a simple search box on my pages so that I can also profit from AdSense for Search. I haven’t seen much money from the search component, but all of a sudden I’m wondering if there’s any way th…
What are the top searches used in my AdSense for Search box?
On your recommendation, I’ve signed up for AdSense and added a simple search box on my pages so that I can also profit from AdSense for Search. I haven’t seen much money from the search component, but all of a sudden I’m wondering if there’s any way th…
What are the top searches used in my AdSense for Search box?
On your recommendation, I’ve signed up for AdSense and added a simple search box on my pages so that I can also profit from AdSense for Search. I haven’t seen much money from the search component, but all of a sudden I’m wondering if there’s any way th…
Can I figure out if anyone’s targeting my site through AdSense?
I have an “advertise on this site” link on my site as you do, Dave, but I’m wondering: is there any way to know if anyone actually is advertising on my site, and if so, can I figure out what percentage of revenue I’m getting from that advertising?…
Can I figure out if anyone’s targeting my site through AdSense?
I have an “advertise on this site” link on my site as you do, Dave, but I’m wondering: is there any way to know if anyone actually is advertising on my site, and if so, can I figure out what percentage of revenue I’m getting from that advertising?…
Can I figure out if anyone’s targeting my site through AdSense?
I have an “advertise on this site” link on my site as you do, Dave, but I’m wondering: is there any way to know if anyone actually is advertising on my site, and if so, can I figure out what percentage of revenue I’m getting from that advertising?…
Can I figure out if anyone’s targeting my site through AdSense?
I have an “advertise on this site” link on my site as you do, Dave, but I’m wondering: is there any way to know if anyone actually is advertising on my site, and if so, can I figure out what percentage of revenue I’m getting from that advertising?…
Can I figure out if anyone’s targeting my site through AdSense?
I have an “advertise on this site” link on my site as you do, Dave, but I’m wondering: is there any way to know if anyone actually is advertising on my site, and if so, can I figure out what percentage of revenue I’m getting from that advertising?…
Can I figure out if anyone’s targeting my site through AdSense?
I have an “advertise on this site” link on my site as you do, Dave, but I’m wondering: is there any way to know if anyone actually is advertising on my site, and if so, can I figure out what percentage of revenue I’m getting from that advertising?…
Can I figure out if anyone’s targeting my site through AdSense?
I have an “advertise on this site” link on my site as you do, Dave, but I’m wondering: is there any way to know if anyone actually is advertising on my site, and if so, can I figure out what percentage of revenue I’m getting from that advertising?…
Can I figure out if anyone’s targeting my site through AdSense?
I have an “advertise on this site” link on my site as you do, Dave, but I’m wondering: is there any way to know if anyone actually is advertising on my site, and if so, can I figure out what percentage of revenue I’m getting from that advertising?…
Improving your Adsense Click-Thru
The leader in the pay per click (or PPC) market is Google, with its Adsense program, but if you’re already an Adsense subscriber, with adverts on your own pages, you might not realize the importance of the design of your advert and the placement of the…
How do I read a Google AdSense report?
Dave, as per your suggestion and encouragement, I have taken the plunge and signed up for Google AdSense. Now I’ve added it to my site and am getting some traffic and an occasional clickthrough. But I really don’t understand the nuances between all the…
How do I use Google AdSense Channels?
I just signed up for Google AdSense after hearing about how much money some people are making on their websites, and now I read that I should be using “channels” to allow detailed traffic analysis. What are channels and how do I add them to my AdSense …
How do I use Google AdSense Channels?
I just signed up for Google AdSense after hearing about how much money some people are making on their websites, and now I read that I should be using “channels” to allow detailed traffic analysis. What are channels and how do I add them to my AdSense …
How do I customize Google AdSense “advertise on this site”?
Much to my surprise, Google’s suddenly started including an “advertise on this site” link on my Google AdSense blocks. I don’t so much mind, but I would like to know how to customize or tweak the page that Google is showing when someone clicks on that …
Monty, I see a nice column of advertisements on your blogspot weblog. DId you get it working, or did you just not give Google time to “figure out” what to display there?
I read thru your page and I’m still in the dark.. I got my Adsense code I have tried pasting it in but I don’t see nothing…. My knowledge of HTML is very limited so I don’t know where to put the code.. I would like to have it on sidebar on the left but at this moment in time I’d jus like to see it on the page. I got the Google Search on but this i s just missin’ me…. PLZ could Help Me????
Thanx In Advance!!!
To be honest Google’s business model is a very wise one, not every company can implement that model. The philosophy is “make money by helping people make money” which is derived from the wise principle “to make money serve people” or “to make money put service first”.
I have a query — suppose two guys having their own websites decide that they will click on eachother’s ads (Google AdSense ads) daily then what happens? Or a group of guys decide that they will click on eachothers’ ads?
Naveed, I agree. There’s definitely an economic incentive for Google to offer and promote the AdSense program, just as there’s an economic incentive (or more than one, for that matter) for me to promote the program too. But that comes along with the territory when we live in a capitalistic society, doesn’t it?
What a fantastic explanation :)I think with AdSense program Google benifits more than the person who signs up for AdSense. Because if I use AdSense ads on my blog/website and make $10 per month, thats not a big deal for me, but there are 1000 people like me who are making $10 per month and trying hard to make more and in turn they are actually working hard to make Google rich. As $10 * 1000 = $10,000 which is a whopping amount, and that goes to Google 🙂
Very clever business model by Google 🙂