Since its launch in 2003, Google's AdSense program has become one of the biggest success stories of the post-dot-com-bubble internet. Hundreds of thousands of advertisers and publishers use the system, and there are hundreds of imitators and look-alikes, from fly-by-night ripoff operations to legitimate companies like Yahoo! who operate similar programs. In spite of this competition, however, Google AdSense remains the premiere provider of cost-per-click advertising methods that allow operators of even small website (such as yours truly) to make a little money from their work.
There are hundreds of thousands of blogs and tutorials and programs that will tell you various things about AdSense. I hope to cover a great deal of ground in my blog, but I also don't want to duplicate - or essentialy duplicate - content that's already out there. Instead I'd like to offer my own unique perspectives on AdSense as a publisher, and hopefully provide some solid information that will help others get the same sorts of benefits I do from the program. I'll spare you the 'what is AdSense' and 'how do I paste the code' types of information because frankly if you can't answer those questions on your own, you have no business trying to make money on the web anyway - go find something you're actually good at and make money that way.
To kick things off, I'd like to start by offering some basic information that I still see people on the Google AdSense Help Forums tripping over every day. I'll probably address a lot of these issues in more cohesive articles later; this is just a quick run-through of some basic things.
Google AdSense Is Free.
Free. Period. There are some highly skillled SEO and AdSense Optimization advisors out there, and I don't want to kill their business by making too many blanket statements. That said, there are a few things you can count on:
- Anyone who charges you to create an AdSense account is either ripping you off, or counting on your inability to fill out simple forms.
- Anyone who claims to create 'AdSense Sites' for a fee is ripping you off.
- Anyone who claims to be able to provide you with fresh, unique content every day is either ripping you off, charging a fortune, or has very few customers.
- Anyone offering to click your ads for a fee is ripping you off.
- Anyone offering you a 'click exchange' - you click on my links and I'll click on yours - is not only ripping you off, but is putting your AdSense account at risk...and you only get one chance. If Google kills your account, you can not get another one. There is an appeals process, but a very small percentage of appellants ever successfully have their account reinstated, and NEVER in a situation where, even through 'ignorance of the rules,' they have engaged in deliberate fraud of the system.
Google AdSense Has Rules. LEARN THEM.
Everyone who signs up for Google AdSense agrees to a list of terms and conditions. Most people tend to just fly right by these things, thinking they don't matter. They matter. Google is very diligent about protecting the investment of their advertisers, and they are absolutely adamant about rooting out fraud. Don't think for a minute that because you saw AdSense advertisements on, for instance, a web page featuring links to illegal software downloads, that Google is 'allowing' this to happen. They just haven't been caught yet. They will get caught, and they will get caught before they get paid, and so will you. Google returns the click fees to the advertisers, and the advertisers just got free ads for a while off the idiot who didn't read the rule book, and the idiot who didn't read the rule book gets to find another way to try to make money.
Approval Does Not Mean Endorsement
Don't think that just because your account was approved, that you have an open license; initial examinations of sites are often cursory - does the site exist, has it existed for a while, and does it have any content at all. The initial examination is not the only examination. The AdSense team will return to the site at various points before the first $100 mark is reached (i.e. before the publisher is paid the first time), and they will continue checking after that as well. The AdSense Help Forums have at least a few people a week come though who post something like
"I had $95 and Google shut down my account! They're ripping us off!"
No, they're not ripping you off - they're preventing you from ripping off their advertisers, and quietly giving you every possible opportunity to straighten up and fly right. If you fail to make the most of that opportunity, the only blame to be laid, lies at your feet.
The Big Secret To AdSense Is There Is No Big Secret To AdSense
There are umpteen million websites offering to sell you "THE SECRET OF MAKING MONEY WITH ADSENSE." Pay attention now, because I'm going to give you the secret for free:
Are you ready?
Got a pen?
Are you sure you're ready?
Okay, here it is:
Create quality, original content .
That's it. That's all there is to it. Quality, original content. Find something that interests you, and write about it, or make movies about it, or make graphics about it, or write an original web cartoon.
Don't just download other people's work and post it. Don't aggregate a bunch of feeds from other sites or buy articles from term paper mills and post them. That's not original.
If u r won dat rites like dis, then you probably want to find some other way to earn a living than in a medium that relies on the ability to write effectively. If u r won dat rites like dis, but you have say, great artistic or musical skill, then at the very least you want to find a partner to handle the actual writing of words on your website. Writing bloated crap stuffed with keywords doesn't work either (there's an article on my other site that I'll move here covering this problem). That's not quality.
RTFM
Google provides a very comprehensive set of policies and guidelines for webmasters to follow in creating their sites. These policies and guidelines not only help your site get better search results, but help to protect the AdSense network of advertisers and publishes from being degraded by poor-quality sites, scam artists, and get-rich-quick schemers who think all they have to do is load up a web page with stolen (or purchased, but redundant) content or a billion links, throw up some ad blocks, and retire. Every single person I've heard of having their account canceled was in standing, long-term violation of one or more of these policies and guidelines. Every. Single. One.
Read The FAQ, Man. Read the Terms of Service, read the Webmaster Guidelines, read the AdSense Help Forums, and then keep reading, and read some more. 99.99% of the problems you see people complaining about in regards to AdSense are of their own creation because they didn't take the time to read and understand the policies and guidelines that govern their business relationship with Google.
It's Just Business
AdSense is not MySpace or Facebook or World of Warcraft, and you are not joining AdSense to make friends, impress people with your ability to type multiple paragraphs in 13375þ33K, or get a bunch of laughs from your friends by acting a fool. AdSense is a business relationship with a Fortune 100 company that, in just ten years, has pretty well taken over huge chunks of the world and will own them for the forseeable future. You are entering into a professional business relationship - act like a professional conducting business, not a level 70 warlock throwing shadowbolts at some Tauren in Warsong Gulch or some 'gangsta' in a rap video. There's a time and a place for those things - this isn't it.
And there you have it. There are a lot of subtle nuances, optimization techniques, methodologies, and just general ranting and raving that can be done in regards to the AdSense program, and I fully intend to dive deeper into all of that in future posts...but if you want a quick guide to How AdSense Works, the above is all the information you should need other than the directions Google provides you when you sign up.
Good luck, and I'll have more for you here soon!
