What Is Google AdSense?

In a nutshell, AdSense (adsense.google.com) is a program devised by Google which allows you to sell advertising space on your website. The ads shown within this space are from members of Google AdWords, who pay Google to display their ads. They then make money when your visitors click the ad on your site, and then buy one of their products or services.

Google doesn’t just throw any ads on your site; instead they ensure high relevancy advertisements based on the content of your site. For example, if you’re selling guitars, you would be displaying ads for musical instruments and products. Google spends a lot of time and money developing sophisticated algorithms to make sure of this.

It’s totally free to join AdSense, but the best thing is you make money from it. You earn money every time somebody clicks your ad. More often that not it’s only a few cents, but if you have a site with lots of traffic, you’ll get a lot more clicks, and it will add up to a nice income. There are people that make millions of dollars optimizing AdSense.

So how do you actually put these advertisements on your website? If you’re accepted into the AdSense program, Google will provide you with some HTML code, and when you have selected a space for them, you’re ready to start earning. It usually takes a while for AdSense to survey your site and determine accurate ads. This can take a few weeks.

AdSense is also very adaptable and user friendly. You can customize how the ads look, either by designing your own color and design scheme, or by selecting one of the pre-built templates. Obviously if your site has a blue theme, you wouldn’t want bright red ads, which is why you can change it. Don’t be fooled into thinking you will get more ad clicks if they stand out so much.

TIPS
• No matter how much you’re tempted, never EVER click your own AdSense ads. Google will know, and when they find out you will probably be blacklisted.

• If your site is more text based than image based, it will be easier for Google to assess the page and serve relevant ads.

• The more SEO friendly your site is the better the quality of relevant ads.

• You can read through advanced reports of clicks by logging into your AdSense account.

• Inline ads will often get more clicks than ads elsewhere.

• Never put ads on empty pages. If you do, AdSense will probably display public service ads which you won’t make money from.

• Don’t overdo it. If you have a paragraph of text, and then hundreds of ads, you won’t keep visitors long enough to want to click any of your ads.