Setting Up Your Google AdSense Account

When you go to google.com/adsense, you’ll have to apply for an account and get it approved before you can start earning money with other people’s ads. First, they’ll ask for your website’s URL and language. Then they ask you to fill in your contact information so that they know where to send the money.

Here’s what you can’t do: You can’t entice or instruct people to click on your ads. You can’t click on the ads yourself.And you can’t place ads on an adult content site. People have lost thousands of dollars by violating Google’s rules and having their account shut down without notice so read the AdSense program policies carefully.

After you submit your request for approval, you should hear back from Google as to whether or not your site qualifies to run AdSense ads and Google search boxes. If you’re not approved, find out why and remedy the situation.

Placing the Ads on Your Site

Once your account is approved, log in and click on AdSense set-up. You can then create ad blocks that you’ll place within the HTML of your website – this is where the ads that are served from the Google servers will physically be placed on your website. You don’t have to be tech-savvy to do this.

You can open your web page in FrontPage (or any free HTML editor) and using the “Normal” view, choose where you want your ads to be placed and click on that spot. Then click on the HTML tab and wherever the mouse is currently at, ,paste it into the HTML code and click Save.

When you do a preview, you may not see the ads running right way.Usually there’s a 10 to 20 minutes lag between the time you submit it and the time it takes Googlebots to crawl your site and figure out what kinds of ads to show based on your subject matter.

They automatically know if your site is about baseball, to show baseball ads. If it’s about Internet marketing, then those kinds of ads will show up. Have you ever opened an email in Gmail (Google mail) and noticed the ads match something about your email?

For instance, if your email is from your “mom” then mother’s day ads might show up. If you sent an email to someone about your family tree or genealogy, then ads for those topics would be at the top of your Gmail account – it’s all a part of how Google defines relevancy and caters to the needs of your traffic.

If you choose AdSense for content,you’ll determine what size ad you want,the color scheme, and whether you want a block ad space or text links. After formatting them to look how you want,you can place the ads on channels.

Channels allow you to track and test your ads. You can see which colors perform best, whether placement at the top left corner of your site or on the right sidebar delivers more click-throughs, and which formats (links or ad blocks) visitors are attracted to more than others. When you select all of the specifics, you then see a box of HTML code, which you simply cut and paste into your website wherever you want it to be.

You also have the opportunity to use AdSense for search. If you choose to put a search box on your site, you can customize it so that it only lets them search Google, or search up to three other sites. You can also choose what kinds of results show up according to your site’s theme and track the performance of various search boxes by using channels again.

When you’re setting up your Adsense account, you can use a competitive ad filter that blocks your competitors from showing up within your ad blocks or search engine boxes. You don’t have to block the whole domain, but you can block one page if you wish.

As you continue building your website or blog, you’ll want to periodically run reports to see how your ads are performing. Then, to help you earn the most money from your content, test and tweak them on additional pages to determine which methods your visitors prefer.

Related posts:

1. Niche Market Research with Google Experiments
2. Make Money With Google Adsense (Part 2)