Google AdSense…Profit?!

One of the most popular ways for you to make money online is via Google AdSense, Google’s free contextual advertising program. When you enroll in the AdSense program, Google uses a relevance algorithm to display text, image or video ads on your blog that are related to your blog’s subject matter. In this way Google acts as a middleman between you and independent advertisers.

 

You can make money online with Google AdSense in two main ways: cost per click (CPC), in which you receive a portion of money the advertiser is willing to pay for someone to click on its ad, and cost per thousand impressions (CPM), where you earn money in return for the ads appearing on your site. With the cost-per-click model, an advertiser doesn’t pay (and you don’t earn money) when the ad is displayed – you earn only when someone actually clicks on the ad. Advertisers choose which model they would like based on the goal of the ad: if the ad is intended mainly for general branding purposes, a cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPM) model will work better. If the main goal of the ad is to generate clicks so that the user performs some kind of action, a cost-per-click model is more suitable. The type of ad that will ultimately show on your site depends on which ad has the potential to make the advertiser more money.

Google pays its content providers (you) on a monthly basis and imposes a “payment threshold” where you’re paid only once you reach a certain earnings level. This threshold varies according to the currency of your country; in the United States, it’s $100. Many bloggers generate significant revenue through AdSense; generally, the amount of money you make will depend on your blog’s subject matter and how much traffic it has. AdSense is free, so it’s worthwhile to try it out for a period of time since it won’t cost you anything. Bear in mind that although you can include AdSense on blog platforms like TypePad and Blogger (which is probably the most seamless platform on which to run AdSense since Blogger is also a Google product), WordPress does not allow advertising on its platform.

To set up an AdSense account, you first need to submit an application for approval through the AdSense website at Google. During this process, Google checks that your blog is in line with its publishing policies by looking at what type of content you publish, whether you are publishing content in a language that’s compatible with the AdSense program, and that, as the blog owner, you are over eighteen years old.

Once your account has been approved, you will be able to log in to the AdSense interface to set up your account. If you already have a Google account (which you will have if you have a blog on Blogger), you can use the same log-in details. During the setup process, you will be able to choose whether to have text, image or video ads display on your blog. You will also be able to customize the ads in terms of their size and format and where on the page they will appear so that they fit in with the look and feel of your blog.

Once this setup is finalized, Google will provide you with a snippet of code for your customized ad unit that you will need to paste into the source code of your blog. You should place this snippet in the part of your blog’s code that is common across your whole blog so that the ad unit will appear on every page of your blog. Google provides you with comprehensive instructions for doing this.

When the AdSense code has been added, ads will start showing on your blog and you can track their performance and your earning from within your account interface. The interface will show you how much money you’re earning as a result of the impressions and clicks the ads are generating on your blog. You can either view your ads’ performance as a high-level snapshot on your account dashboard or download reports that will give you more detailed information such as the total number of page and ad unit impressions, number of ad clicks, the ad’s click-through rate, effective cost per impression, and your earnings per ad. So, this is basically how you make money online with Google AdSense program.