Wordpreneur.com

What is Google AdSense? It’s probably just the easiest and fastest way to start monetizing your website’s traffic. (And, if you’re a contributor to any of my websites, having an AdSense account lets you share in my sites’ AdSense impressions/revenue as well.) The best part: It’s free to join.

I take that back — there are a lot of “free to join” programs out there, so whoop de doo. What does make it stand out, though, is that it’s run by giant Google, which has a number of what I call “business smart” implications:

• Very low possibility of you getting stiffed. They pay, in other words. Rich, high visibility, practically no risk of them up and disappearing anytime soon… all warm and fuzzy indicators that if you earn any AdSense money, it’ll work its way to your bank account.

• AdSense isn’t new. Google’s been running it for a few years now. No doubt a good bet that you’ve seen AdSense ads — again and again and again. They’re all over the place. Because the system works.

• The advertising pool isn’t meager, nor is it going to dry up anytime soon. AdSense is able to pay us “publishers” because it work for advertisers. Which means that advertisers use it. Heavily.

Sound cool? Of course it does. It gets even cooler when you get the gist of how it works technically:

• Copy and paste the AdSense code into your site’s source code (you basically control where the ads appear on your site).

• The ads go live on your site. Google detects you running their ads. They automatically scour your site’s content (or already have… Google’s a search engine, remember?), and determine your site’s topic(s) based on keywords.

• Advertisers have already told Google what sites they want their ads to run on (actually, most just tell Google what keywords they want, but same difference). So…

• …every time a visitor to your site looks at one of your webpages that’s running an AdSense ad (or block of ads), Google automatically and dynamically feeds ads to you tailored to your site’s content.

Your visitor sees an interesting ad and clicks on it. S/he’s taken to an advertiser-specified destination, wherever that may be; Google records the click and credits your account the value that the advertiser has told Google it will pay for each of those clicks.

Ta da! You just made some money. Sure, it’s just a few cents most probably, but it’s a few cents you didn’t have a click ago. And the few cents (and clicks) do add up. Many modest sites make a few hundred dollars in clicks each and every month; imagine how much heavily-trafficked sites make..

Maybe you’ve also realized that despite all the techie coolness just described, all you’ve worried about and hassled with at this point is your site and its content. No advertisers to find, service, and collect from. No selling of anything (the advertisers try to do that, obviously, but heck if that’s your problem). Heavens, you’re not even pushing folks to click on the ads (Google, in fact, doesn’t allow you to do that). It just happens while you go about doing and working the stuff you enjoy doing and working.

So, what do you need to do to get this thing going? Here’s a quick and dirty step-by-step:

1. The first thing you need is — surprise! — a website. Don’t have one? Maybe I’ll write a quick and dirty step-by-step for that down the road when I’ve got nothing better to do. In the meantime, here are some dirt cheap resources to check out if you want to get a site started and going:

• Blogger — Free. Relatively easy to use. And the fact that Google owns it too doesn’t exactly hurt.
   
• Site5 — Low-cost hosting; lowest cost as of this writing is $5/month; lots of other “budget” hosts out there, this is just the one I’ve been using for various projects.
   
• GoDaddy — Where to get your dot com domain name. A must with a Site5 hosted account, useful for Blogger (but not necessary). But frankly, at only around $9/year per name, go get one. TIP: If it isn’t a dot com name, forget it, no matter how enticing the price offered by GoDaddy for a non-dot com name.

2. OK, let’s assume you got your site up and running. We’re also assuming you actually minimally know how to create/edit pages, etc. (sorry, but yeah, you need to know this stuff or have a friend who’ll do it, or lacking either, enough bucks to pay someone else to do it… no different from having a car you want to travel cross country with — drive it yourself, get a pal to do it, or hire a driver).

Now it’s time to get an AdSense account. Click on the link below to apply for one.

It’s been a long while since I actually applied for mine, but the application form looks pretty straightforward and should be easy to figure out.

3. You’ve been accepted. Now for the fun part: getting AdSense ads onto your site. The steps I describe below make up the simplest, most direct straight line way to get from point A to B. There are options, which you most certainly should explore, but they all revolve around and support this basic step-by-step process that follows.

Note to Blogger users: Skip all the steps below (yippee!) and go straight to Blogger and read their instructions (boooo!). Last I checked, they’ve actually set up a way to automatically integrate your AdSense ad feed with the free blog you’ve set up on Blogger. You’ve chosen a free, non-standard service; consider reading their instructions your cost.

The rest of you, Login to your AdSense account and click on the AdSense Setup tab.

4. Click on AdSense for content.

5. Make sure the Ad unit option is selected, and set to Text ads only (default). Click on Continue ».

6. Select a format. AdSense advertisement blocks come in all shapes and sizes. The numbers indicate the width and height in pixels of the ad. Probably the most common is the horizontal 468×60 banner, which means a space 468 pixels wide by 60 pixels high.

Choose a size (which should fit the space on your site you want to put the ad in), then click on Continue ».

7. Ignore all the channels stuff for now (one of those options you should explore on your own later), and just click on Continue ».

8. Voila! Your AdSense code’s ready. Click within the textbox on the screen with the code; the code will be automatically highlighted and selected. Copy it (easiest way to do it on Windows: just right-click on the highlighted text and click on Copy to copy all of it to your Windows Clipboard for pasting elsewhere).

9. Now go to your website’s source code and paste the code you just copied exactly where you want the AdSense ads to appear. You’re done!

Don’t you just love the way I glossed over this whole step? Sorry, but no way around it: learn it, friend it, or hire it.

A note to my authors/contributors: Save for getting an AdSense account, you don’t need to go through any of the steps above if you don’t want to (completely up to you… it’s your website). I provide instructions on how to get the information I need about your AdSense account that will let you begin sharing the AdSense impressions on the site you’re contributing to.

And yes, I’m a friend to my contributors.

About “Wordpreneur” Eldon Sarte »

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