Make money online, part 2: Introduction to Google AdSense

Alright. So now I’m going to take those 6 steps on the previous page and explain them in more granular detail. But before I do that, let me once again stress that you need to give yourself time to learn! For many of you, I recommend giving yourself at least 3-6 months to gain a solid understanding of everything I cover and link to in this article. And if you have any questions or if you’re confused about something by the time you reach the end of the article, I encourage you to please ask questions. I will answer them as best I can! And now on to the 6 steps:

• 1 - Start a Web site or a blog: If you’ve never started your own Web site or blog, then your journey to implementing ads to make money probably feels like an impossibility to you right now. Fear not, though. If you’re unsure how to purchase a domain name, a hosting plan, and put up your own Web site, there are plenty of places out there on the Web where you can simply sign up for a free blog! I recommend WordPress or Blogger. Both sites have great guides for walking you through sign-up and quickly choosing a look to get you off-and-running quickly. Again, it’s completely free to sign up for a WordPress or Blogger blog, so right off the bat with this process, you’re out absolutely nothing monetarily.
• 2 - Sign up for a Google AdSense account: Signing up for AdSense isn’t difficult, but it does involve a process. Once you provide Google with the information they need, they will mail you a card (not email, but snail mail) which contains a code you will need to enter to activate your account. This is so they can verify your address. Now, I’m a big fan of utilizing well-crafted resources, so just about all of your questions about signing up for — and utilzing — AdSense are answered on Google’s AdSense Newbie Central or on their AdSense Support site. Look in the left-hand sidebar of either of those sites to find links that will take you to AdSense videos, webinars, and more! I expect you to spend some time around there and really get your learn on.
• 3 - Prepare an ad unit to be posted on your site (color, size, and content you would like to filter): Once again, referring to Google’s very own help section will allow you to make fast work of this. Here is a link to Google’s help section regarding the preparation and utilization of ad units. When doing this step, take into consideration the types of content that are most related to the content of your site. You can filter out specific categories of content not related to your site, thus eliminating pointless ads from being shown to your users!
  Unfortunately, for the time being, filtering out content affects all of your ad units. So if you have two completely different Web sites, since you can only have one AdSense account, you will need to have all applicable categories of content made available. Luckily, though, if your site’s content is targeted enough, Google will be smart enough to apply applicable ads to your individual sites! Remember, no clicks for you means no clicks for them. They make money when you make money, so it’s in their best interests to display the most relevant ads to your site. Lastly, you can create as many ad units as you’d like, but only 3 will display on any one page, so take that into consideration as well.
• 4 - Place your ad unit on your Web site: Once you follow the steps above, you will have an ad unit ready to be placed on your Web site. Where you place it is up to you, but there are people out there who swear by particular placements. It seems individuals have their own unique success with placements, though most I have run across claim that the right side of the page works best for them. If you would like, you could just stick with what Google recommends for your type of site by using their ad location best practices optimizer. While there are ways to monitor individual ad performance and placement, I will cover that and more advanced facets in a later post.
• 5 - Populate your Web site or blog with content: The easiest and most fun of the steps, this is where you fill your site with whatever content you want! If you run a photo blog, post photos. If you run a journalism site, post articles. If you run a game site, post links to games. Whatever you do, definitely get text on your page that’s related to the topic of your site. If you run a photo blog and only post photos, Google isn’t going to have a freakin’ clue as to what types of ads to run for you. Their spider understands text, not images. So, if you have a picture of a blue flower, make sure you get the words “blue flower” on the page! If need be, take a look at the steps in my SEO for images blog post to get a good idea for ways to get text in with your images!
• 6 - Promote your Web site or blog and make money from ad clicks/ad views: Promotion is incredibly important, because you can’t obtain ad clicks or page views if you don’t have visitors! Create a Facebook page, a Twitter account, and maybe even a LinkedIn account. These are very popular social networks that will allow like-minded people to find you much quicker than if you simply create a site, post to the site, and leave it at that. And if you look at my signature at the bottom of this post, you will see where I have linked out to all three of those sites!
  Another idea is to go out and find some forums or other blogs that post content related to yours. Visit Google, type in a search related to your content and add the word “blog” or “forum” to it. You can establish mutual friendships with individuals who run similar sites and engage in facets like guest-posting. If someone has a much more popular blog than you, why not see if you can do a guest post on their blog with a link back to your page? If people enjoy what you post there, they will certainly check you out! But you want to have content on your site for people to see if they go there, so make sure you spend some time populating your site before you spend time promoting it heavily.

I will dive much deeper into some of the methods above in a later post. Believe me when I say there is A LOT to discuss yet in terms of monitoring ad performance, ways to promote your site, and more. People have whole blogs dedicated to just those topics alone, so if I didn’t cover something in particular that comes to mind for you, feel free to ask and I’ll either give you an answer myself or link you to somewhere that has information I think you will find useful.

AdSense No-Nos

No introduction to Google AdSense is complete without a naughty list. An extensive list of Google’s AdSense program policies can be found here, but I’m going to list Google’s brief overviewof them here for faster reference:

1. Don’t click on your own ads.
2. Don’t ask others to click on your ads.
3. Don’t include any prohibited site content, including adult content, violence or excessive profanity, drugs (including alcohol and tobacco), or copyrighted material.
4. Don’t modify the AdSense code.
5. Do follow our Webmaster Quality Guidelines.
6. Do provide a good user experience.
7. Don’t place more than 3 ad units, 3 link units, and 2 search boxes on any page.
8. Don’t place images near ads in a way that may mislead users into thinking that the images are associated with the ads.

And with that, I will go ahead and wrap up this introduction to Google AdSense. As you can see, it’s free to sign up and the only cost is your time and effort. There is certainly a learning curve, but if you’re already running a Web site that sees any number of visitors, you need to get on the ball and start running AdSense if you’re seeking out avenues for earning residual income! If you’re lucky enough, you may end up like one of the few who earn tens-of-thousands of dollars a monthon AdSense. The most I’ve ever made in a month is ~$400, and you had better believe that while it didn’t make me rich, it made me unbelievably happy. An extra $400 a month can do a lot of good for someone — especially in this economy (speaking as someone who lives in the U.S.)!

In future posts, I will be covering specific manners in which you can utilize AdSense and give you ideas for creating sites if you’re not sure what to do with the information in this post. Plus, I will be covering online money-making ideas that don’t involve ads whatsoever, so if all of this is just too much for you, perhaps a future part in the series will appeal to you.

Thank you for reading, I hope you found this post informative, and please do not hesitate to ask me any questions you may have. I know for a fact I didn’t cover certain things as thoroughly as some of you may need, so feel free to ask me questions and I’ll be glad to help however I can!