Making Money from Your Web Site with Google AdSense

Is
it as Easy as it Seems to Make Money with Google AdSense?

Google
AdSense is the Google program where you can host pay-per-click ads on
your web
site. 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 web sites must
also
comply with Google's webmaster policies.

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
web
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.

If
you offer products or services on you web site, 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
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
will not issue an AdSense payment until your earnings exceed $100.
Unfortunately, there are loads of Google AdSense Forum entries about
web site
operators who accumlated $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.

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.

Related
Google AdSense Reading

Using
Google AdWords

Internet
Marketing Basics

Microsoft
AdCenter Tools

Google
AdSense Related Links

Google
AdSense Blog

Google
AdSense Forum

Google
Webmaster Policies

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on Internet Marketing

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Engine Marketing

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