Adsense Makes You Money

Ever wonder where all those little advertisements pasted all over blogs and websites come from? They are usually Adsense contextual advertisements. There are several other companies that provide the same sort of advertising product, but Adsense, a Google Company is the undisputed champ of contextual advertising.

Adsense is simple to install on your website or blog. All that is required is to make sure your website meets the Adsense requirements and you agree to the terms of use, create an ad format that matches your site, paste a little code into your template and you are all set.

(Note: when you sign up for your Adsense Account, be sure you read and understand and follow the agreement as Adsense have several rules that you must follow or risk losing your ad revenue.)

After you have signed up, created an Adsense account, designed your ad formats and added the HTML code to your blog or website Adsense does the rest. Their system reads your blog and matches the content of the advertisements to the content of your site. Of course, it is a little more complicated than I am making it sound, because you have to make sure that you are using the right keywords and enough of them to give Adsense a good idea of what your blog is about.

For example, if you are writing about dogs, it is unlikely that advertisements relating to cars or online gambling are going to do very well on your site. That's why it's important to be clear what your site is all about and use good keywords. There are keyword programs you can buy, but I believe you can probably do without them, as long as you use keywords frequently and vary them to cover all the words that mean the same thing. Using our example about dogs, you should use other words for dogs like canine, beagle, mutt, purebred dog, mongrel...you get the picture.

Adsense Optimization
The Adsense site has some great information about ad design and placement, what does well and what colors and designs of ads are best. It also has a nifty little heat map that shows the best ad placements for a webpage. This is called Adsense Optimization, or site optimization, where you place your ads and content in the best possible location to receive the most attention from your readers. The best place is usually right above your content, above the fold, in the upper part of the page. Above the fold just means that when your webpage opens, the ads are right there staring the reader in the eye.

Advertisement Design
There are two schools of thought about advertisement design, those that say ads should blend in with your content and those who believe they should stand out. I have tried it both ways and believe that for the most part, the advertisements that stand out, that is, using a high contrast color, like those on this site, do better.

You should experiment with different ad blocks, colors and formats and see what works best for you. Personally I don't believe in the concept of making the ads look like the content of your site, perhaps fooling a reader into thinking it is part of your webpage. Remember, if they click on an ad, they are gone from your site, missing out on all the wonderful stuff you have to say. Ultimately, the best thing is to have them read your content, then look around for more stuff related to what they just read, because you made it sound pretty darn interesting.

Great Content
Sounds pretty easy so far doesn't it? Post the Adsense code, sit back and watch the money roll in. Well in order for that to happen you have to move to the next step, that is where you and your writing and internet skills come in, because once you have your ads posted you need someone to see them.

Your job is to concentrate on traffic. Getting traffic to your website is of course the hardest thing to do. By the way, don't go getting involved with traffic exchanges or buying hits because for the most part these are against Adsense policy and will result in termination of your account which means no money for you. Traffic of course, is what happens when you have great content, so...you know where I am going with this...if you want great big Adsense cheques, you need great big traffic and to get great big traffic you need great big content. Lots of content, frequent posting and lots of good, useful and original information is important. Now, before you say anything,
I realize that original information may not always be easy, but don't copy someone else. You can read what others are writing about and put your own spin on it, that's fine, but try to make it as original and fresh as possible and don't forget those keywords....

Adsense is a great program to make a little revenue from your blog or website, and in some cases it can return a substantial amount of money to the site owner. You want to be the owner of one of those sites.

So, in summary, here is what you do. Create a great blog or website. Fill it up with lots of meaningful and useful content that builds your readership and traffic. Sign up for an Adsense account, design your Adsense ads and place the code in your template. Continue to create great content and traffic and if your writing and topic is a good one, you will be making Adsense money in no time.

There are a couple of other Adsense items that will help you earn money from your blog, Adsense for Search and Recommended Products as well as Link Units, we'll talk about them in an upcoming post.

You can sign up for a Google Adsense Account HERE
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