Tuesday, October 12, 2010

What Is Google Adsense?

AdSense is a wonderful advertising concept that was conceived by Google some time back. Though new advertising concepts keep coming up all the time, this one is something that is altogether different.

AdSense (Google’s advertising program) presents an earning opportunity to the website owners by allowing Google to post advertisements on their websites. These advertisements are either text advertisements or image based advertisements. Of course, the website owners need to enroll to the AdSense program through Google’s website (https://www.google.com/AdSense). Google AdSense program requires you (the website owner) to include a piece of code (a programming script) on your website. You can add this piece of code anywhere in the html code of your website i.e. depending on where you want to position the advertisements (however, there are certain rules that you must follow while pasting this scripting code). This piece of code is what determines the structure of advertisements and their content (and this is what helps Google in floating the advertisements on your website). When people visit your website they are able to see these advertisements. Your earnings are based on how many Google Ads are displayed on your website and also based on how many times visitors to your website actually click on one of those Ads. The Google AdSense system calculates your revenue on per-click (CPC) and per-thousand-Ads-displayed (CPM) basis. The latter is also known as impressions.


For people who want to advertise their products and services through the Google AdSense system, it’s just a matter of signing up through Google Adwords program and letting Google know how much they want to spend towards advertising through Google AdSense. These businesses can specify the limit and Google AdSense system will accordingly serve their Ads so as to ensure that the specified limit is not crossed. Google AdSense increases the visibility of their business/ services and also increases traffic to their website; hence fulfilling their purpose of advertising.

Monday, October 11, 2010

Setting up your Google AdSense account – Part 1 (Enrolment form)

So, you have decided to go ahead and use Google AdSense for generating revenue from your website. Google AdSense doesn’t need you to sell any products or services. With Google AdSense, you are just selling advertising space on your website. And the best part is that Google doesn’t discriminate between websites; so, any website owner can enroll with Google AdSense program (as long as it adheres to the Google AdSense program policies). Moreover, setting up a Google AdSense account is so easy that you can literally start generating revenue within 15 minutes.

For enrolling to the Google AdSense program, go to https://www.google.com/AdSense and click on the ‘Click here to Apply’ button. You will be presented with an enrolment form where you need to fill-in some details like your website information (URL and website language), the Google AdSense products that you wish to use (i.e. AdSense for Content or AdSense for Search), your contact information, your email address and your preferences. You will also need to select an account type (business/individual) for your AdSense Account and agree to the various policies, terms and conditions of Google AdSense program. The account type will not affect your revenues in any way; it is there just to determine if the payment is to be made in the name of a company or an individual. The email address and the password that you provide during the enrolment process will be required by you for logging into your account later on. Note that you will be referred to as publisher by the Google AdSense program; so when you return back to the Google AdSense website, you will be asked to enter your login details as an ‘Existing Publisher’.

That’s it. You can now submit your application form for Google to evaluate and get back to you.

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Setting up your Google AdSense account – Part 2 (Essential customizations)

Once you are done with setting up your Google AdSense account and once Google has approved your application, you are ready to use Google AdSense for earning revenue from your website. Just login into your account using your email address and password, click ‘AdSense Setup’ in the top menu and select the product type (i.e. ‘AdSense for Content’ or ‘AdSense for Search’). You will be presented with various options for customization of your AdSense Ads. Here we will take a look at setting up ‘AdSense for Content’ only (however, the setup for ‘AdSense for Search’ is quite similar and equally easy).

The first thing that you need to choose is the Ad type (Ad unit or link unit). Based on the Ad type you choose, you will need to specify the type of ad (text, image, etc for Ad unit) or number of links per link unit too.  Google AdSense program allows you to use a maximum of three ad units and 1 link unit per web page (and you must use both, in order to maximize your AdSense revenue).

The next thing is to choose the Ad layout. There are various layouts available but large rectangle (336x280) and wide skyscraper (160x600) are preferred over others (since they help get more impressions for you and hence help you make more money).

Customizing the colors of various parts of your AdSense ad is the next thing you need to do. Even though customizing colors is optional (as far as the Google AdSense program is concerned), it’s strongly recommended for making your Ads attractive and more effective. Your choice of colors must be governed by the look and feel of your website so that the Ad doesn’t look out of place.

These are the essential customizations that you surely need to do before you can start using Google AdSense Ads on your website.

Saturday, October 9, 2010

Setting up your Google AdSense account – Part 3 (Additional customizations)

Besides the essential customizations like selecting the Ad type, Ad layout and colors, there are some other customizations that you can apply to your AdSense account. In fact, some of these can quite easily be treated as essential customizations (based on the context of your website) e.g. ‘filters’ is one such customization that is quite important. Let’s take a look at what these additional customizations are:

Filters: Google allows you to set-up custom ad filters for your website (note that this is in addition to the screening of ad content that Google does by default). By setting up filters you can block competitive Ads and other Ads that you don’t want to display on your website.  In fact, filters are a must if your website sells a product or a service (unless you want to promote your competitors through your website).

Alternate Ads: This is something that can help you in preventing underutilization of the ad space on your website. Alternate Ads are the Ads that you would want to show up on your website in case sufficient content-relevant Ads are not available. If you don’t specify alternate Ads and if there are insufficient content-related Ads available, Google AdSense program will serve charitable Ads to your website (Ads which don’t earn revenue for you).

Reporting and performance tracking: You can even customize the reporting and performance tracking options for your AdSense account. One important tool in this regard is the use of channels to study the performance of AdSense Ads from various perspectives. However, you might decide to take this up later down the line (maybe 1 month after setting up your AdSense account.

Friday, October 8, 2010

Setting up your Google AdSense account – Part 4 (AdSense code)

Once you are done with all the customizations, your AdSense code is generated in the AdSense Code box. You just need to copy this code (which is in the form of a programming script) from the AdSense Code box and paste it in your website as per the guidelines from Google. Since Google allows only three ad units per page, you can add the code at more than one place in your html code.

The next step is to save your web page to the designated web server (as per the instructions from your web hosting service provider). Please note that Google AdSense program does not require you to send over your website’s html code to them; neither does it ask to load it onto their servers or do anything else with it. The addition of AdSense code to your website’s code is the only thing that you need to do. Separate procedures are available with Google for people who want to use AdSense Ads with their blogs (you can check these on Google’s website for AdSense program).

Now that everything is done and dusted, you need to wait for a few hours (might be lesser than that) before Google’s web crawlers find your web page or blog that has AdSense code on it and you start seeing AdSense Ads on your web page or blog. You might see some PSA (charitable Ads) initially (almost immediately) but these will soon get replaced with the AdSense Ads that will earn revenue for you. If the content on your website violates the AdSense program’s policies, you might keep seeing PSAs even after few hours. In all such cases (or if you find objectionable Ads that don’t go even after you have applied appropriate filters), you will need to contact Google who will sort out the problems for you.

Thursday, October 7, 2010

What makes Google AdSense system so special?

What makes Google AdSense system so special?

The basic arrangement in which Google AdSense system works is such that Google has the basic control over the Ads that are displayed on the websites subscribed to Google AdSense system. Of course, the website owner can customize how an Ad looks and also block/filter certain types of Ads on their website. The Ads that Google serves are ‘Senseful’ Ads (these Ads are actually relevant to the topics that the website discusses/ caters-to). This is something that is not found in other advertising programs/systems. This creates a win-win situation for everyone.

The people who are visiting the website (that contains Google AdSense Ads) are doing so because they are interested in the product/service/topic that is discussed on that website. It would be of little use to them if you were to serve Ads that are not related to the topic in any way. On the other hand, Ads related to the topic of the website would really prove useful to the visitor. They might actually be interested in a product or service that is being advertised through Google AdSense Ads. So, website visitors get a richer experience due to AdSense program.

Website owners get revenue for displaying the Google AdSense Ads and for the clicks they receive on the Ads. So, they are happy too. As far as businesses/advertisers are concerned, they get a system (AdSense system) for targeted advertising that is both easy and economical to operate.

Moreover, Google AdSense Ads are presented in a much better way than the banner Ads or other types of Ads. Most of the Ads are simple text Ads that are clear and concise. The website owners find it easy and the advertisers find it easy too. Google AdSense is really one of the best advertising programs available today.

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Site's For Google Adsense

Any website can become a bill-board through Google AdSense program

We all know that Google’s AdSense program is one of the most reputed internet advertising programs around. AdSense is one advertising program that brings a number of people (websites) into its fold as advertising media and hence helps them earn revenue (advertising revenue). These people are webmasters who own websites and it’s their websites that function as bill-boards and serve advertisements.

With Google AdSense program, any website can easily become a bill-board:

1. No experience necessary: Google AdSense program offers earning opportunity to every webmaster. The only criterion is that you should have a website (and your website should be compliant to the AdSense program policies). You don’t need to know anything about advertising or advertising media etc. Just enroll with the Google AdSense program and Google will take care of designing the Ads and serving the relevant Ads on your website. So, no special designing skills or coding skills are required for getting enrolled and using Google AdSense program.

2. No need to look for advertisers: When the commercial value of websites for advertising was recognized, webmasters started looking for increasing traffic to their websites in order to make their website worthy enough to attract advertisers. Even then, getting advertisers was not easy. So, they could not really derive any monetary benefits from the traffic to their website until an advertiser actually bought advertising space on their website. However, with Google AdSense program, webmasters start earning revenue from the day they join the Google AdSense program. As the traffic to their website increases, so does their revenue.

3. No need for tracking revenue: Google AdSense program will also take the responsibility of tracking the revenue that you earn from serving the Ads on your website. You can just login to your Google AdSense account and check your earnings. Moreover, you have various reports and statistics available to you that you can use for enhancing the performance of your website on the Google AdSense program.

So, Google AdSense program has really made it easy to convert a website into revenue earning medium.