Part one of the Make Money from Your Blog series will be covering the ins and outs of Google AdSense with a detailed look at both the benefits and drawbacks of the advertising service.

What is AdSense?

Google AdSense is a contextual advertising service. It offers advertisers the opportunity to receive inexpensive traffic, (which is done through Google’s AdWords service), and publishers the chance to make money by displaying on-site advertisements created by the advertisers.

Ad units are available in a variety of sizes to accommodate for differing website structures, and publishers have the option of display only text links, only graphic links, or both depending on what ads the AdSense service has to offer at the time of the request.

What are the benefits of using AdSense?

AdSense is the most popular contextual advertising program on the Internet. Because of this, you can almost always expect ads to be available for display on your site so as to not miss a beat in making money.

A great feature of AdSense is that it allows for multiple ads to be display on-site, each of which can have a specific size and color scheme. This will allow for multiple opportunities to generate earnings throughout a site or individual page. Clicks can even be tracked to ad channels (a grouping method for classifying ads) in order to determine how effective specific ads are.

Another reason so many people utilize AdSense is because of how easy it is to install. The setup process and code generation requires minimal input, part of which includes specifying custom colorization such that it will blend well with the design of your site.

Are there any drawbacks from using AdSense?

One drawback to AdSense is that a minimum earnings of $50 is required before a payment will be made. For smaller websites receiving relatively little traffic, this can very well mean that it will take several months before getting a payment.

Considering that Google has had much time to optimize the manner in which ads are served in combination with the increasing competition through other contextual advertising services such as Yahoo! Publisher Network, AdSense may not have the best earning potential compared to what it once offered. As such, it may be ideal to rotate ads on your website between Google and one or more other advertising programs to see what best suits your needs.

So how do I get started?

As a publisher, AdSense is simple to apply for and install. While the AdSense program does not accept all sites (e.g. made for AdSense sites), it will accept most websites. Additionally, once you have been accepted into the AdSense program, you are able to place ads on all your websites without having to reapply for additional accounts. With this in mind, one way to almost ensure acceptance into the program is to create a Blogger account — which is now owned by Google — and sign up for AdSense through there.

Once you are accepted into the AdSense program, creating ads is a simple with the help of the AdSense for Content wizard. The first step is to select whether you would like to create an ad unit (a block of text links with descriptions or an image block) or a link unit (a block of just links).

The next step is to decide upon an ad format, which is essentially the dimensions for the ad unit, and the color scheme for this particular ad setup. Color schemes can be saved for conveniently creating additional ad units of varying formats within the same website at a later time.

How do I track my earnings?

Once everything is configured and installed onto your website, the obvious next step is to find out how much you’re earning. The AdSense website provides a handy overview screen when you first log in. By default, it displays today’s earnings along with a breakdown of where the most impressions and clicks are coming from for the ad blocks earning the most during that time frame.

For a more detailed look at where earnings are coming from, which ad channels have the highest click-through rates, etc., there is also an advanced reporting tool. This allows for breakdown by variations of website, channel, and date. Specific date ranges can be specified to a greater degree than can be done with the overview screen.

That’s pretty much everything you need to know to get started with AdSense. Once you get a feel for how to use the wizards and reporting tools, I highly recommend looking into optimizing your ad layouts and positioning in order to maximize your earnings.

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