Adsense. On the net, it’s ubiquitous. I have Adsense on many of my sites. Some webmasters and bloggers scorn it, others swear by it. Some have gotten rich from it, others make just pennies a day. What should you do about Adsense?
There are so many bloggers out there who think they can slap together a blog, throw Adsense on it, kick back and watch the money roll in. This is a huge myth. Adsense works and it is the simplest, quickest way to monetize a site. You can make money online with Adsense, but just having Adsense does NOT guarantee earnings.
When I first started out, I made just over $29 my first month with Adsense. It took 4 months for me to reach the $100 payout threshold (Google sends you a check only when your earnings exceed $100). After that it took 2 months to reach the threshold. I finally made $100 per month after one whole year of running the site. I now regularly earn over $300 per month for that site alone. That’s not going to buy me a new Porsche, but it sure does come in handy! I also earn Adsense income from other sites.
In order to make money online with Adsense you have to
have ads that are relevant to your content. If you just have some ridiculous site that offers no value to a reader, they’ll simply click away from your site without clicking an Adsense ad. Content is king on a blog or any other website. People go to the web to get answers-not to make you rich with Adsense. With my Hot Dog Truck site, people are primarily landing there to get information on how to start a hot dog business or to find hot dog trucks and carts for sale. I know this because my Google analytics tells me which search terms and pages are the most popular on that site (more on Google Analytics later).
The reason people found those pages out of the millions (billions?) on the web is they provided value and answers for the questions those folks had. Without the good content, nobody would land there and if they did, they wouldn’t stay there!
So if you want to make money with Adsense, the first thing you should be concerned with is providing value to your reader. INFORM OR ENTERTAIN your reader in a way that will make them want to know more about whatever it is you are writing about. That will make them stay on the page and look around your site. Adsense will automatically post ads that are relevant to your content, so readers will be more likely to click those ads.
As I said in my Why This Blog? post, I am not reinventing the wheel here. A large part of what I want to do is streamline the information gathering process for people who want to make money online. Much of what I am saying is either common sense or information I have gotten elsewhere and applied.
A very inspiring post I read which I took to heart when I started making money online was this gem from Steve Pavlina . com. He lays out the importance of content in a very poignant way.
For a frank discussion on the pros and cons of Adsense on a blog, go to Pro Blogger.
These guys have been at it longer than myself and provide the insight of seasoned web veterans. Read these posts and come back for more fun tomorrow!