How can I Make Money on my blog with Adsense?

I must get asked this question a dozen times a week and it’s probably a question that gets asked a thousand times a day around the blogosphere. Obviously readers have an interest making money with their blog using adsense.

Whether you are pro or anti “making money with your blog” you can’t blame someone for wanting to recoup some of the costs of blogging. Hosting fees and miscellaneous costs can inch up there as your blog grows in both size and readership. If you decide to try to recoup some of these fees then nobody would (or at least should) blame you.

It’s been my experience that most of the “anti make money” blogs are those who couldn’t figure it out anyway, so they decided to feign being morally against it. Hogwash if you ask me.

If Adsense can offer a way to recoup these costs then why not try to take advantage of it? Some bloggers are quite successful with adsense and those few bucks can turn into a substantial income from your blog. The only thing stopping you is……you.

Adsense Experiment

I have not been using Adsense on this blog in recent months as I don’t think it is necessarily the best choice for a Make Money blog but I will be the first one to tell you NOT to take someone’s word for something. I am a firm believer in experimenting for yourself, so I decided to perform an experiment right here for all to see. I intend to incorporate a small amount of well placed Google ads in prime territory for a few weeks and share the results with you. I have never used adsense on this blog in the past so we’re starting from scratch.

Google’s TOS in regards to adsense does not allow you to disclose your earnings with adsense but I will admit that I use it on my niche sites extensively and if you implement it properly it can be a very lucrative source of income. I am going to write a series of articles that will discuss everything I know about adsense and it is my hope that we can get an active level of input from readers sharing their experiences.

It should be fun and informative and at the end of the day I will share my earnings. Google only prohibits sharing specific EPC information so it will be fun to see what’s possible.

Expert Adsense Advice

I will be the first to admit that I am by no means an adsense expert although I do use it extensively on various sites. I am confident that what I have learned can benefit a lot of people who are interested in using adsense to make money with their blog. If you want to get some expert advice from someone who is far more successful at this than I, then check out this site or purchase Joel Comm’s adsense ebook.

Joel makes about $15k a month from Adsense and it has a money back guarantee. You could be well on the way to your own adsense empire, maybe even write your own book before too long. Nothing to lose but everything to gain.

As I write this article series I am going to make the assumption that you have some exposure and familiarity to Google Adsense in general. If you don’t then here are some links to help you get started.

• Sign Up For Adsense

• Introduction to Adsense

• Adsense Policies

We will progress from very basic to moderately advanced as the article series progresses. It is definitely intended to target those who have little to no experience with adsense but you just never know what you might pick up.

Adsense Suitability

The first question you need to resolve for yourself is a simple question….Is your blog a suitable avenue for Google adsense? A lot of beginning bloggers use adsense simply because they think that’s how you make money online.

Why wouldn’t they think that as you find references to adsense all over the net, you see it on websites everywhere so it’s only normal that a noob would think Adsense was the best choice. It is probably one of the most, if not the most common sources of monetization on websites today.

Does that make it the best choice?

Maybe, but maybe not. Let’s discuss further.

The first thing is to see if Google will even accept your site. Google will only accept sites that meet certain quality requirements although these are not usually that difficult to meet. I have included a list here for your review.

Sites displaying Google ads may not include:

• Violent content, racial intolerance, or advocacy against any individual, group, or organization
• Pornography, adult, or mature content
• Hacking/cracking content
• Illicit drugs and drug paraphernalia
• Excessive profanity
• Gambling or casino-related content
• Content regarding programs which compensate users for clicking on ads or offers, performing searches, surfing websites, or reading emails
• Excessive, repetitive, or irrelevant keywords in the content or code of web pages
• Deceptive or manipulative content or construction to improve your site’s search engine ranking, e.g., your site’s PageRank
• Sales or promotion of weapons or ammunition (e.g., firearms, fighting knives, stun guns)
• Sales or promotion of beer or hard alcohol
• Sales or promotion of tobacco or tobacco-related products
• Sales or promotion of prescription drugs
• Sales or promotion of products that are replicas or imitations of designer goods
• Sales or distribution of term papers or student essays
• Any other content that is illegal, promotes illegal activity, or infringes on the legal rights of others

As I said this isn’t usually that difficult a bar for most of us to meet.

Adsense a Good Choice?

The 2nd and perhaps more relevant question that you may want to resolve for yourself is do you want to use Adsense? Is it a good choice for you? You might meet Googles’ standards but does Google meet Yours??

This is a pretty complex question and may only be resolved after some experimentation. Adsense has it’s pros and cons, let’s discuss a few of each.

AdSense Advantages

• AdSense is simple and free to join.
• It’s not difficult to use.
• You don’t have to spend time finding and negotiating with advertisers.
• Google does a decent job of providing well written, highly relevant ads.
• The ads are contextual so they should match your pages content automatically.
• You don’t have to mess around with cloaking affiliate links.
• You’re free to concentrate on providing good content and Google does the work of finding the best ads for your pages from 100,000 AdWords advertisers.
• It’s suitable for both beginners and veterans. Each can experience success.
• AdSense provides simple, easy-to-understand stats.
• If you have affiliate links on your site, you ARE allowed to add AdSense ads. However, with your affiliate links, you must not mimic the look and feel of the Google ads.
• You can filter up to 200 URLs, so you can block ads for sites that don’t meet your standards. You can also block strong competitors.

Adsense Disadvantages

• Smart Pricing – If you are not a strong performer your ads will become worth nearly nothing per click. This can even affect your other sites on your account…so choose wisely.
• Ad Blindness – Adsense is a victim of it’s own success. It’s everywhere which means readers have become blind to it.
• Relevancy – The contextual engine does a pretty good job but sometimes the ads don’t match the content.
• Site Pollution – Overuse or poor use of adsense will lead to an ugly site. Ugly sites turn away visitors…you can figure out why this would be a bad thing.
• Topic – Certain blog topics lend themselves well to adsense. Their keywords will pay well for each and every click and will perform…but some topics don’t. Depending on which camp you fall into then adsense might not be a good choice for your site.

This last bullet is the most important one in my mind. If your blog topic is not built around high producing keywords then you will likely be better off to use the real estate that you would have devoted to adsense to some other form of income, either affiliate ads or maybe private ad sales.

We will discuss how you find high paying niches in more detail but I want to refer back to the early part of this article…their is NO subsitution for experimentation. Just because you read the opinion of someone else does not mean it is true. The absolute best way in my opinion is to experiment and see for yourself. Which is what we will do here.

Conclusion

If you’re interested in making money with your blog then stick around and check out the rest of this article. You may already be using adsense or you may be considering it. I will try to have relevant and useful information no matter which camp you fall into.

I know we have a lot of adsense experts out here so let’s hear your results with adsense….are you a fan or not?