Adsense
You’ve probably already heard of Adsense, or seen this button around:
If you haven’t signed up you really should do! I’m not say it will make you millions overnight, because it probably won’t - more likely a slow and delicate trickle-feed of USD!
What is Adsense?
Adsense is run by Google (they run a lot of things these days!), and essentially what you do is tell Google the style of the ad you’d like to display, colours, borders, size etc, they then provide you with a short piece of JavaScript that you incorporate into your website or blog. When people click on the advert you get paid!
Sounds simple doesn’t it, and really it is - that’s probably why it doesn’t generate earth shattering amounts for most people, ShoeMoney is a different kettle of fish earning $132,994.97 in his biggest cheque ever!
Why is it so Clever?
OK, let’s say you have a site about widgets (everything on the net is widgets, blue or red - get used to it!), Widget supplier, Widgeroo offers to put an advert on your site and they’ll pay you $0.50 every time somebody clicks on it, but they want to be the only advert on your site. The trouble is you find out later that everyone coming to your site already has a Widget and don’t need to buy another one from Widgeroo - what’s even worse is that the advert for Widgeroo is awful so nobody is clicking it, and you agreed to a six month term!
Step in Google Adsense and Contextual advertising!
If you were to put an advert for Google Adsense on the template for your site, or in the sidebar of your blog, you’d find that whatever you write about on your pages (within reason!) relevant adverts will appear on your pages. The more relevant the adverts and in context with what you’re righting about - the more likely they are to click on them and earn you some cash!
How? What? Why?
Now you’re just going to want to get technical aren’t you? I know, you want to know how it all works before you take part. It’s all done by the opposing side of the system, Adwords. Yep, we’ll cover that one at some point in the future!
For now, here’s what you need to know:
- Advertisers create adverts in Adwords and bid on keywords, the higher their bid (and ranking within that keyword), the more likely their advert will be displayed.
- A percentage (Google have to make their money somewhere!) of what the advertiser bidded is paid to you if the advert is shown on your site AND a user clicks it.
See, it’s still simple!
Signup now:
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[...] or useless sites - but it allowed me to make 6 or 7 posts and this site generally makes some Adsense clicks when it has new content, I’ll let you know how it goes with this set of [...]
[...] back when we started this full-time blogging journey we discussed Adsense, and how ShoeMoney had gotten a cheque for $132,994.97. That was pretty [...]
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