How to add adsense to your blog

How to Add Google Advertisements
(Google AdSense) to Your Blog or
Website

On occasion, a visitor will write to me at
Hackersparlour.blogspot.comasking how they can get
Google advertisements to their website. While
this may seem very obvious to those who have
read my article on How to Make Money From
Your Website or visited the list of free
advertisers for web publishers on
thefreecountry.com's Affiliate Programs: Free
Sponsors and Advertisers page, I decided that
an article explaining briefly the steps involved
will probably be useful for a number of
people.
What is Google AdSense?
Adsense is Google's advertising network that
places those sponsored ads you see on many
websites. Google automatically checks the web
page it places the ads on and displays
advertisements that are relevant to the page.
This produces highly targeted adverts for the
page, allowing, hopefully, higher returns for
the advertiser, the advertising network
(Google) and the publisher (you).
Before You Start
You must have an existing website before you
apply to the Google AdSense program. If you
don't already have one, read the The
Beginner's A-Z Guide to Making Your Own
Website to get started with your site first. The
Google AdSense team reviews your site before
accepting new applications, so you must first
put up a working website and not just some
"under construction" page. For example, if you
are starting a personal blog , post a few articles
about yourself or your experiences first.
Steps to Getting Google AdSense Ads on
Your Site
1. Apply to Google
When your site is fully functional, apply to
Google AdSense. You can find AdSense listed
among other advertisers in
thefreecountry.com's Affiliate Programs: Free
Sponsors and Advertisers page.
Google will then send you an email to verify
your email address. Follow the instructions in
that message (which is basically to click a link).
Once you do that, your application will be sent
to the Google AdSense team, one of whom will
pop by your website to review it. Don't hold
your breadth though, it may take a couple of
days before they get around to your site.
During this time, if your site is a blog,
continue to post to it as per normal.
2. Configure Your Ads
Once your account is approved, you can log
into your account to get the necessary HTML
code to paste into your blog or web page. The
code can be found in the "AdSense Setup" tab.
There are a number of options, but the code
for the context-sensitive advertisements can be
located under the "AdSense for Content" link.
You'll be able to customize the appearance of
the advertisements, choose between text
advertisements, image ads or a mixture of
both. Once you have finished configuring, you
will be given some HTML code which you can
cut and paste into your site.
There are other types of adverts beside the
context-sensitve ads. "AdSense for Search"
provides you with a Google search box that
you can place on your site. When your visitors
search through that box, and click an
advertisement, it will be as though they had
clicked an ad on your site. "Referrals" provide
you with ads for specific products.
3. Pasting the Google AdSense Code onto Your
Blog or Web Page
Make sure that when you insert the code into
your site, you insert it as HTML. Instructions
for doing this in different WYSIWYG web
editors can be found here:
How to Insert Raw HTML Code in Dreamweaver
How to Insert Raw HTML Code in Nvu
How to Insert Raw HTML Code in KompoZer
If you run a blog, you may want to paste the
code into your blog's template instead of
individually stuffing it into every post you
make. For blogs hosted on Blogger, one of the
free blogging services listed on the Free Blog
Hosts page, you can use my tutorial on How to
Insert Google AdSense Advertisements in a
Blogger Blog to help you insert your advert.
4. Entering Your PIN into the Google Site
When your earnings reach a certain amount (it
was US $10 the last time I checked) for the
first time, Google will send you a card by snail
mail (ordinary paper mail) with a series of
characters printed on it. You will need to log
into your AdSense account and enter this series
of characters, the PIN, before they will send
you any payments. It takes a while before this
card is sent (a few weeks after you reach the
threshold amount they define, depending on
where you live), so just wait for it. You will
only have to do this once in the life of the
account.
Cautionary Notes: Things to Look Out For
1. Never Click Your Own Google Ads
One of the things you must always remember
is never click your own Google ads, even if
it is to find out whether the site linked to is
acceptable for your website's audience. Since
(at this time) Google pays AdSense for Content
ads according to the number of clicks, clicking
your own ads is regarded as fraud, and will, at
the very least, get you kicked out of the
AdSense program.
Although Google doesn't say this, if you are
showing off your blog or website to your
family members, make sure they do not click
any of your advertisements either. This is the
case even if they are genuinely interested in
the products advertised. They can always look
for it by name in a search engine later if they
wish, but for anyone living in your own
household, any Google advert on your site is
strictly off limits. The reason for this is that
clicks from your household will look exactly
like clicks from you.
2. Don't Expect a Fortune Unless You Have
Traffic
Those who have read my article on How to
Increase Your Website Revenue from Affiliate
Programs will probably know that if you are
just starting out with your site, you probably
won't be able to make a fortune from your ads
unless you have enough people visiting your
website. This only comes after you have done
some serious website promotion or advertising.
Be realistic: remember that even if someone
clicks your ads, you may just get a cent or two
from that click, assuming that Google doesn't
discount that click for some reason. In
addition, only a very miniscule percentage of
your visitors will actually click ads. Put those
factors together and you can roughly guess
how much you are going to make if you only
have a few visitors per day.
3. Don't Put Ads if You're Selling Something
If you can, try not to put Google AdSense ads
or, in fact, any advertisements at all, if you are
trying to sell a product or service on your
website. There are a couple of reasons for this:
1. You may be inadvertantly advertising for your
competitors. You cannot predict what sort of
ads are going to pop up in the AdSense code
for your site. What you see when you load
your site may not necessarily be what your
visitors see. If a competitor places an ad that
Google finds relevant for your page (and it
surely will, if Google's context-sensitive engine
works correctly), then their ad will appear on
your page. You may thus lose sales to that
competitor as a result of the ads.
2. Ads distract your visitors from the real focus
of your site. You want your users to read your
sales copy, and not be clicking on links to go
to some other site even if those links do not
lead to your competitors.
Getting Started
If you already have a blog or a website, you
can immediately apply to AdSense. If not, start
your website now. These things take time to
get into full swing, and you should not wait till
you're desperately in need of money before
starting.