Make money online with Google AdSense – getting started

If you are one of the millions who enjoy surfing the Web these days, you’ve definitely seen them. In fact, it’s getting harder and harder to find a site now that doesn’t have them displayed somewhere. I’m talking about those little ads you see with a title, short description, and link, and that usually display Ads by Google at the top or bottom of the ad box. They are the ads that are generated by Google Adsense.

Pretty well anyone with a website or blog can take advantage of Google AdSense, and it is fairly easy to set up. You don’t even necessarily need to know HTML (if you use some kind of widget or design view editor), but it helps if you can understand it a bit. Just follow these steps, and you’ll soon be running your own AdSense ads.

Step 1: Sign up

Sign up for a Google AdSense account by going to Google AdSense and clicking on the Sign up now button. The sign up process is really simple, requiring you to fill out a form including information about how Google can pay you. You can even use your existing Gmail account as the login for your AdSense account.
Unfortunately, you will have to wait a while before you can proceed to the next step. After submitting the form, Google will send you an email informing you that it may take up to 48 hours for your AdSense application to be approved. Lucky for me, I only had to wait for a few hours before my account was approved.

Step 2: Create your ad unit and get the code

Once approved, log in to your account and click on AdSense setup. You will be greeted with a screen that looks like this:

As you can see, there are 5 different AdSense types that you can choose from:

1. AdSense for Content. Display ads that are targeted to your site’s content or audience.
2. AdSense for Search. Offer your users site search or web search while earning revenue from ads relevant to their search terms.
3. AdSense for Feeds.. Place relevant ads in feeds Google manages for you.
4. AdSense for Domains.. Display ads on your parked domains.
5. AdSense for Mobile Devices.. Unlock the revenue potential of your mobile site with targeted Google ads.

The first ad type, AdSense for Content, is by far the most common type of AdSense ad that you will see on other people’s sites, and it is the one I will be covering in this article.

Okay, now click on AdSense for Content, and you will be brought to the first page of the setup process. If this is your first time using AdSense, I recommend just going with the default settings. So make sure the Ad unit radio button is selected, and that you have Text and image ads selected in the drop down box. Click the continue button.

The next page is for tweaking the appearance of your ads. In the format box, you can choose the size of ad box you would like to use. You should choose the size that will fit best within the area of your site that you want the ad to appear. This box will hold the ads that will be displayed by Google based on the content on the page. You can also choose among different colors for the background and text that will appear within the box. The rest of the options are pretty self explanatory. You should just play around with the settings until you get something that matches your own site’s colors. Click the continue button again.

The next page is for choosing Ad channels, and is for more advanced Google AdSense users. I won’t be covering it in this article, and it’s perfectly fine to just leave the boxes empty. So just click the continue button again. We’re almost done.

Now choose a name for your Google AdSense unit or go with the default, and click on the Submit and Get Code button. You will now see a page that looks like this:

This is the most important part of the setup process. This is the code you will need to copy and then paste into the section of your Web page where you want the Google ads to appear.

Step 3: Paste your special ad unit code into your webpage

On my site, I have an AdSense for Content box in my right column, but you can put yours anywhere you want, and you can even put more than one on a page. Just paste in the code you copied from the final step of the setup process into the area where you want your ads to appear. Make sure that your ad box size isn’t too wide for the area where you want your ads to run (you should have chosen the correct width during the ad setup process), or you might break your webpage layout.

On the AdSense help page, it says that, “currently, AdSense publishers may place up to three AdSense for content units on one webpage.” So you should limit your webpage to three simultaneous unit placements. Even with multiple boxes, Google will make sure that unique ads are shown, so you shouldn’t see the same ad in more than one box.

So now you know how to add Google AdSense to your page, and you can start making tons of money, right? Wrong. The truth is, most people who use Google AdSense are not making a significant amount of money with it. That is because that in order to make money, people who visit your webpage actually have to click on your ads, and the only way that is going to happen is if you actually have people visiting your page. That is the challenging part, and it will be discussed in a future article.