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Google AdSense is the
Google program where you can host pay-per-click
ads on your Website. When someone clicks an ad,
you earn money. Simple as that.
Is it really as easy to
make money with Google AdSense as many would
lead you to believe? Now that I've become
heavily involved with managing Google AdSense
programs for my clients, I can see it's not all
play and no work.
Unfortunately, a lot of
people bought into the idea that there was a lot
of easy money to be made and they are now
finding out they aren't making nearly as much as
they thought they would. Additionally, Google
has a lot of prohibited practices when it comes
to AdSense, and too many Webmasters are finding
out they violated Google's policies after the
fact - often because they never bothered to read
the AdSense policies in the first place.
Webmasters must not only
comply with AdSense policies, but their Websites
must also comply with Google's webmaster
policies.
Prerequisites for Making
Money with AdSense
To make money with Google
AdSense you need plenty of traffic coming in to
your site or there won't be anyone to click the
ads. Website promotion techniques, especially
search engine optimization and article marketing
will bring more traffic to your site. You also
need to have content that will attract the ads
with the highest Pay Per Click (PPC) rate that
are relevant to that content. Then, you need to
lay out your web pages so the ads blend in with
your site. Studies have revealed that people who
visit sites that contain ads that use colors
that are not in harmony with the actual Web site
tend to develop "ad blindness".
Meaning no matter how much traffic comes into
your site, chances are no one will click the ads
because they'll be ignoring them. If no one
clicks, you make nothing.
Dealing with Competitors'
Advertisements
If you offer products or
services on your Website, the first thing you'll
notice when you begin hosting PPC ads is that
many of the ads are coming from your
competitors. Therefore, you'll want to put ads
on pages that aren't earning you any money, or
do like I did and not put ads on your site until
you're so busy anyway you'd rather make a few
dollars off of your competitors than to continue
turning business away with nothing to show for
it.
Google AdSense allows you
to specify up to 200 URLs for sites you want to
bar from placing ads on your pages. The problem
is that most times you won't know the
competitors are out there until their ads
appear.
Google Money Making Ad
Options
Google offers three ways to
make money from them:
•
Google AdSense for Content - A variety of
size and shape ads for placing in your content
are available. These can be text or image ads or
both - you specify what you'll allow. Ad units
are full ads. Link units are simply a strip of
text links that your visitors might want to
click. Google allows you to put up to 3 Ad Units
and 1 Link unit on each page of your Web site,
provided you follow its policies - both for
AdSense and for Webmasters.
•
Google AdSense for Search - This places a
search box on your Web site. When a user enters
a term and conducts a search, a search results
page opens, that hosts more pay-per-click ads.
You can customize the color scheme of the search
results page to harmonize with your web site.
•
Google Referrals - Here you make money by
referring visitors to use a Google product, like
AdSense, AdWords, the Google Toolbar and other
Google software. Just like Google AdSense for
Content and AdSense for Search, Google generates
the code that you paste into the desired
location on your web page. You can choose from a
wide variety of buttons and text links of
different colors. As an example of how Google
Referrals works, if someone goes to your site
and clicks the link and signs up for an AdSense
account, when that person earns a $100 from
Google AdSense and receives a payout from
Google, you'll also receive $100 for referring
them. This is a great idea to me, because you
can be the world's worst Google AdSense
advertiser, but if an ad dynamo happens to visit
your site and uses your referral link, you can
make money anyway!
Google AdSense Payments
Google will not issue an
AdSense payment until your earnings exceed $100.
Unfortunately, there are loads of Google AdSense
Forum entries about website operators who
accumulated $90 or more in click through
earnings only to get banned from Google and not
get paid anything at all before they ever
reached $100. This may be because Google doesn't
take a close look to see if you're complying
with their guidelines until it comes time to pay
you. So yes, there's a lot more to the story
than meets the eye.
Other Programs Besides
AdSense
Yahoo and MSN have similar
programs, although those programs aren't as
well-developed as Google AdSense and there
aren't as many available advertisers to display
ads on your site. The fundamentals for making
money are the same: You still need plenty of
traffic, you still need high-paying ads, and you
still need to design your site to harmonize with
the ads to get people to click.
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