What is AdSense and How Does It Work?

Starting and hosting a website or blog is very affordable these days. However, making it earn you a substantial amount of revenue is the most difficult part of it.

If you already have a site running and you’re thinking of monetizing it in some way, you probably have an idea of what AdSense is.

But… do you know exactly, what is involved in the process of putting these ads on your pages so they can consistently earn you revenue? That’s what we’ll be talking about here.

What is AdSense?

AdSense is an online advertising program run by Google. If you want to display video, image or text advertisement on your site and earn revenue when visitors click them, then AdSense is a great ad program to sign up for.

Display advertising is one of the online advertising methods available.

However, it should be noted that there isn’t a big difference between AdSense websites and blogs, except for the fact that blogs need more content than websites do. Blogs may also serve as a way for websites to get backlinks and other SEO-boost advantages.

Nevertheless, all of them will do fine as long as they stick to the AdSense Terms Of Service (TOS). Also, the process of ad placement for both websites and blogs is the same.

It is important to note that AdSense involves YouTube advertising too. However, this is quite different from earning with websites or blogs. In AdSense YouTube advertising, the publisher will need to upload original videos on their YouTube channel so they can monetize them with AdSense ads.

This way, a YouTube publisher earns money every time a visitor watches their videos and clicks on their ads.

And with such an arrangement, you also expect AdSense to work with advertisers too; i.e. those who pay money to advertise on YouTube through the ad network. When they pay for ads to show up on YouTube, AdSense shares the profits with its YouTube publishers.

What Are the Benefits of Using AdSense?

Below you find the benefits of using AdSense over other online advertisement platforms?

• First, you should remember the fact that AdSense is owned by Google, and with such, it is a serious business for both the advertiser and publisher. You get what you work for; everything is honest and fair.

• AdSense pays better compared to other contextual ad networks like Chitika, Revenue hits, Tribal Fusion and many more. On average, AdSense will pay $0.3 per ad, plus there are other ads which pull in a whooping $2-$3 per click (if you carefully select your keywords). This is fair, considering that other ad networks only make you $0.02 per click on average.

Here you find additional Tips on How to monetize a blog or site using AdSense.

• AdSense is an ad network that serves quality ads. They don’t have spam ads like pop-under or flickering ads that spoil user experience, thus scaring website visitors away.

• Targeting of ads happen naturally, and this increases click through rate for publishers, thus earning them more money.

• With good page-views coming from organic searches, publishers can make a living out of this ad network.

• AdSense ads tend to be relevant to page content, and this has been shown to increase click through rate for most publishers.

How Does AdSense Work?

In order to have AdSense ads showing on your website or blog, you have to sign up for an account and get accepted. Once you’ve been given access to your account, you can generate Javascript code that you will place into the HTML source of your website (if you’re using an HTML site).

WordPress sites also work the same way; you just copy and paste the code into the desired section.

While generating AdSense codes, you’ll be given the option of choosing which ad formats and links to generate codes for. Once the code is active, you don’t have to do anything else to have the ads show on your site.

Again, AdSense has an intelligent algorithm that decides which ads to show on your site. Contextual ads are shown based on the text and keywords appearing in your content. These can either be in form of text or image ads, depending on the ad formats you choose.

Interest-based advertising enables relevant ads to be served to people who are likely to click them. For instance, if the visitor arrived on your site through a search term they used on Google, AdSense would automatically notice the search terms they used, and would therefore serve the best ad in that keyword category.

In fact, clicks that result from organic searches pay higher than clicks initiated by people visiting your pages from social media, or those typing your website name directly on the address bar.

Of course AdSense ads are also served based on the language spoken in a region, thanks to the language targeting feature which makes all this possible.

Make Money with AdSense: How to Get Paid?

AdSense pays based on the clicks you receive. So at the end of the day, you should receive revenue worth all the clicks cumulatively. Paychecks are sent at the beginning of every month.

How to Get Started?

Follow the next steps to get started with AdSense:

STEP 1: Go to google.com/adsense

STEP 2: Fill in your full name, postal address and other personal details, including your website address.

STEP 3: Wait for the AdSense team to review your site.

STEP 4: They will most likely reject your first and probably also your second application — and their reason for doing so is often not clear.

If you’ve been rejected, check if your site doesn’t comply with any of their TOS. Alternatively, you could opt to use a nice, professional theme for your site, and be sure that you have added your privacy policy page, contact page and other details.

You stand a better chance of getting accepted with WordPress sites than any other site.

STEP 5: If you get accepted, agree to their terms of service and begin generating the Javascript codes to put in your site. The ads will show in a moment.

Conclusion

This is pretty much how AdSense works, and all you need to know about content monetization using AdSense.

However, take note that you will need to wait until your web traffic has grown substantially to earn good revenue.

Related articles:

• Create your own money making websites;
• 3 Ways to increase your AdSense Earnings;
• 7 AdSense Alternatives for Online Advertising;
• Here you find more ways to monetize your niche.