Google AdSense Basics

There seems to be a plethora of people out there that simply don't get even the most basic concepts of Google AdSense. I am going to take this opportunity to explain it in caveman terms.

First, AdSense is a web based advertising system, which means, in order to use it, and thereby make money from it, you need to have a web site. AdSense does not allow the publisher to put ads on web sites that are not theirs, in emails, or other such ways, only on web sites owned by the publisher.

Secondly, your web site needs to be established, and have a decent amount of content and traffic, as well as being updated frequently adding more content all the time. While it appears that Google will in fact, approve most anything that isn't illegal or pornographic, you will not make money of you don't have traffic. That is a plain and simple fact of any advertising system. A magazine or newspaper with a small distribution doesn't make much selling ads, neither does a web site.

After you apply, get approved and are ready to roll you need to log in to your AdSense account to start creating ads. When you log in your first page is a report on the current days activity, which will on your first login be empty, or all zero's. You need to click on the "AdSense Setup" tab to start getting ads.

In there you will find many different types of ads. AdSense for Content being the most popular, which creates the typical ads one sees on web sites. You can choose any type, the process is the same, you select the type of ad you want, fill in some form fields with the right info about the ad, such as size, colors, etc. When you submit the form, it will display some JavaScript code to you. You highlight and copy [Ctrl + C] that code to your clipboard, then paste [Ctrl + v] the code in your web site wherever you want the ad to appear. Since AdSense switched to a new code type it takes up to 10 minutes or so for the ads to actually appear.

I recommend, before running any ads, go to the "Channels" section and flip to the "URL Channels", then ad the URL for each web site you plan on running ads on. This will automatically report each web site separately. You can also use custom channels to further slice up reports within web sites, but URL channels is a good start if you are going to run multiple web sites.

The content of the ads is controlled by Google's context analysis system. The AdSense bot will visit your web site, scam your pages and determine what it's about and show ads accordingly. You can use "Section Targeting" to show the bot what sections of the page you want to be targeted as well to further pinpoint your content. it sometimes takes a couple days for the bot to get to your site, so, for the first few days the ads may not be relevant, or, may be public service ads (PSA) which are charity ads that pay nothing.

This should be decent intro to getting AdSense up and running on your site. Visit Common-Adsense for the eBook with more detailed information.

Get great AdSense tips and tricks to get the most from the AdSense ads from my eBook Common AdSense, as well as other great bonuses.