One of the largest and most trusted online ad networks that are commonly used by website owners to make money is Google Adsense. If making money online is in your agenda, here is almost everything you need to know about Google Adsense.
Google Adsense vs. Google Adwords – is there a difference?
There is a huge difference between Google Adsense and Google Adwords. Their names are similar, but they have very different roles in the online world. One is for advertisers and the other is for publishers. Google Adsense is used by content publishers. This is what you would use to make money by displaying ads on your website or blog. Your website then becomes an online billboard or commercial for your readers.
Google Adwords is used by advertisers or business owners. The advertiser pays Google to display their ads on your website. You use Adwords to sell your product or drive traffic to your site.
Google Don’ts
- Don’t place too many ads per page or per ad type. Google has a set number of ads they will allow you to display at one time. These amounts are updated from time to time, so just make sure that you read the terms carefully.
- Google is diligent about invalid clicks and they monitor their website publishers for this. Invalid clicks will get you account banned from Adsense. An invalid or artificial click is one that was unintentional or purposeful. You are not allowed to click on your own ads, ask a friend or family member to click your ads or join an “ad swapping” group. You may not click your ads using automated programs or robots and you cna’t disguise your ads in any way.
- A publishers must be careful about where they place their ads. The biggest problem that I have seen people have with this is with the leaderboard ad. The leaderboard ad is typically placed at the top of a website, and can be a great Google Adsense earner. However, if you have a drop down menu, you MUST be sure that i does not overlap with the Adsense banner. You can easily get invalid clicks if a reader attempts to click an option on your menu and accidentally clicks your ad. If you have a drop down menu on your site, you might consider placing your Adsense ad above your menu to avoid this form of invalid clicks.
- Don’t place ads on inappropriate websites. You can place Google Adsense on almost any website or blog, with a few exceptions. Google does not allow adult-themed sites or any site that it deems inappropriate. This can include firearms or weapons of any type, drugs or alcohol and designer knock-off sites. They also require that you have relevant content on your site. This means that you aren’t allowed to have a site for the explicit purpose of displaying Google ads. Just be sure that you write quality content regularly. It’s the content that makes your site unique! Original content will bring traffic to your site, and traffic to your site will boost your Google Adsense income!
Ad Units
Google allows many different types and sizes of ad banners or ad units. This is great because you can fit a Google Adsense ad into any design or layout of your site. They have image ads, text ads, mobile and beta-testing interactive ads. The most common sizes of ad units are:
- Leaderboard (728 x 90) – usually seen across the top and bottom of a webpage, It is vertically short and horizontallly wide.
- Medium Rectangle (300 x 250) Typically found within a blog post or on a side bar of a website, it is almost square.
- Wide Skyscraper (160 x 600) – The only places I have seen this ad unit is on a sidebar or in a column. It is vertically long and horizontally thin.
- The Button (125 x 125) – Commonly called the thumbnail, it is found on sidebars or on a small column layouts and in blog posts.
Ad Placement
Ad placement is extremely important with Google Adsense. If you have a site that has a significant amount of traffic but oddly placed ads, you will not make much money. Likewise, you would potentially make more money with properly placed ads even on a smaller traffic site. It will take some effort and time to find the best ad placement for your site, but once you do, you should see the rewards for your effort. The good new is that Google has a built-in dashboard to assist you with this process. You can see which ad units are making money and which ones are not. By monitoring this on a weekly or monthly basis, you can tweak the placement of your ads to bring you additional income.
Do you have Google Adsense on your website? What woudl you take away from this post to better your earnings from Adsense from now on?
Vinma is a Mom of two little ones. She is an Insurance Underwriter by profession but being a writer at heart, she finds time to blog about her life as a busy working Mom and also about her own Mother who left her quite early on. At A Momless Mom, Vinma occasionally shares the blogging tips and techniques that she picked up along the way that helped her to get better at blogging everyday. She is now settled in Toronto with her family. Other than at A Momless Mom, you would find her in Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest.
I totally agree with everything! I have a total of 7 Blogs on Blogger, you can have up to 100 Blogs on Blogger and I plan on adding more. 4 are static one page blogs that are promoting a specific product (i.e Amazon Nook) and the other I update with new content regularly. A lot of people don’t know this but Google lets you have up to 5 ads, three photo ads and two text link ads, as well as a custom search engine. All my google ads are placed at the top of my blog and I also run ads from Technorati Media. If I were to count up all my ads I have well over 50 on all my blogs. My monthly payout is always i the four digit range. I’ve helped a lot of people and if you would like for me to write a guest post, I would be happy to.
Lily S. recently posted…Get Your Personalized VISA Prepaid Debit Cards through CARD.com