What is it?

Adsense is something I have spoken of a couple of times. And while I know about it, I don’t really know that much about it.

Wikipedia describes Adsense as:
... an ad serving application run by Google Inc. Website owners can enroll in this program to enable text, image, and video advertisements on their websites. These advertisements are administered by Google and generate revenue on either a per-click or per-impression basis. Google beta tested a cost-per-action service, but discontinued it in October 2008 in favor of a DoubleClick offering (also owned by Google). In Q1 2010, Google earned US$2.04 billion ($8.16 billion annualized), or 30% of total revenue, through Adsense.

Well that made it clear as mud for me.

Adsense are those small adverts placed on millions of websites that help you earn money! Yea! Now we’re talking! If you own your own website, you go to this page to create an account with Google Adsense.

What Google has created, brilliantly, is targeted advertising. It looks for keywords from the content on your site, and place adverts that are relevant to YOUR SITE, so people reading your content will look at these ads and will want to click on them. Which is great because you get paid every time someone clicks on those adverts.

Now, Richard has already added Adsense to MMO COZA (this site), so you can see the ads floating around on the page.

I can tell you from Richard’s past experience that money making does happen from Adsense. We’re even starting to see money coming from people clicking on the adverts on this very site! And I haven’t been doing this for very long. (If I can do it, you can too!)

Understanding Adsense tells us that using Adsense is one of the most effective ways of monetizing your site.

But wait, there are, as always, things to consider when it comes to Adsense (as is the case with almost everything that gets done on line.

Buford Mobley writes in his eZine article the most important start to your money making venture is making sure that your website is developed. It makes no sense to have an Adsense account, and have no traffic coming through (For non-techies like me, traffic is the amount of people who visit the site). Spend the time making sure your site gets visitors, and then you know you have your niche, and that there are people out there who could click on your ads and make you the MOOLA!

A common thread on all pages (Astounding I know) is that you cannot click on your own site’s adverts to up your income. This is seen as fraud, and Google IS WATCHING YOU! They will see that your IP address (kinda like your computers fingerprint) is the one clicking, they will ban you from the system, and take away any unpaid funds. Make sure no-one at your home is clicking on your site, and don’t try and be clever... Google has heaps of computer geniuses who spend their days dreaming up ways to make sure that it is impossible to cheat the click system. It’s not worth trying to click on ads from another computer. Rather work at getting more people to your site, so that there are more people to click on the ads, and earn your money legitimately.

How do we get people to our site, you ask? Refer to Richard’s article on article directories. It’s a great way to up your traffic, and more traffic means more clicking!
And the higher the number of people who visit your site is, the better ads you’ll get. It’s a great circle this one :-)

For those of you with a website already, and are either thinking of creating an Adsense account, or already have one, the next point of focus is to watch what keywords you are using. Anthony from Knowledge Sutra points out that if you are writing for Adsense, it makes sense to use high paying keywords. Obscure, strange content on your site will mean the adverts that are assigned to you will not be worth much per click. Whereas financially orientated websites (like MMO COZA) are more likely to have adverts that will earn more per click.

According to Snipsly, keywords vary from place to place. His example is that keywords such as ‘singles las vegas’ are very popular in Vegas, as it is a high destination for singles. So think of your location, what it is popular for, what target audience you want to reach, and what you want to write about before you get too obsessed about keywords.

Hubpages writes an opposing view. What he says is that all these people saying they have the best keywords for the year are just trying to up their ranking, and shouldn’t be believed. He further says instead of trusting these people throwing keywords out just to up their traffic. He points to Google Keyword Tool as a great free tool to see what kind of adverts your keywords will bring. He tells us to rather focus on SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) which will not be affected as much by keywords.

Basically, if you write about something that people are interested in, you will have high traffic, a good Alexa rating, and more people who are likely to click on your adverts and bring some income to your site.

Shares: