2. Getting Started With Google AdSense

2.1 The Basics: Building Your Site

After the last edition of this book came out lots of people started asking me how they can make money with AdSense. I’m always happy to help people make the most of Google, but many of these people didn’t even have a website!

Here’s the facts: to make money with AdSense, you’ve got to have a
website. There’s no getting around that. The good news is that it’s never been easier to create a website from scratch and use it to generate real revenue.

I’m going to give a brief introduction here to creating a website from the
ground up. You can find plenty more information online and I’ll tell you where to look. If you already have a site up and running, you can just skip this bit, head down to 2.10 and begin reading about how to improve your AdSense revenues.

2.2 Naming Your Site

The first thing your site will need is a name. That’s easier said than done these days. All the best words in the dictionary have either already been bought and built by developers or they’ve been bought and offered by speculators.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t create a good name and buy it for a song. Putting two words together with a hyphen can work (like http://www.AdSense-tools.com) and there are plenty of good names available if you’re prepared to move outside the world of .coms into .net and .biz etc.
Your first stop should be to register a domain name and order a hosting plan. One of my favorite sites to do this is Globat. They frequently offer excellent specials, such as free or reduced hosting for a year. Click here to see their latest offer.

Another stop is Network Solutions. This is a nuts and bolts service that lets you hunt and buy names, order hosting plans and even submit your site to the search engines. When you’re looking for a name, you can just toss in ten options and the site will tell you which (if any) are available. All in, buying a name from one of these service won’t cost you more than about $20 a year.

If you can’t find a name you like and that hasn’t already been grabbed
though, you can take a look at sites like moderndomains.com and
bestnames.net. These are companies that buy domain names and sell them for a profit. There’s a good chance you’ll find some good names here but they can cost you anything from $50 to $50,000. Before you part with a penny, think about the advantage that a good name can bring and ask yourself if you can’t get the extra traffic a cheaper way. Often, you can. And remember, twelve years ago no one knew what a Yahoo, ebay or Google was!


2.1 Choosing A Hosting Service

Your site is going to be stored on a hosting company’s server. (You didn’t want thousands of people dialing into your computer every hour, did you?) Again, there are lots of different options available depending on how much you want to pay and what you need.

In general, you’ll want to make sure that you have about 50 megabytes of space (that’s enough for 100 pages!), full statistics reporting and most importantly, 24 hour service. If your site goes down, you’ll be losing money every hour it’s offline. If there’s a problem with the server, you want to make sure it’s fixed right away.

You often get what you pay for with Web hosting from “free” services that will cost you more than you save to $200 a month for dedicated servers. Twenty bucks a month is a reasonable price to pay and Globat and Network Solutions both offer good programs.


2.2 Designing The Site
It used to be said that absolutely anyone could create a website. That was true: absolutely anyone who knew HTML. Today, you don’t even need to know that. Programs like Microsoft’s FrontPage or NVU (which is free; you
can download it at http://www.nvu.com) let you create sites without you needing to know your tags from your tables. If you can use Word, you can create a website.

You can either have fun playing with the programs and designing the site yourself or you can hire a professional designer to do it for you.

Freelance site like http://www.elance.com can http://www.guru.com are good places to advertise. You can invite designers to give you quotes and pick the best based on price and talent. Be sure to check feedback and portfolios though; a low bid is often low for a good reason.

2.3 Creating Content

In chapter 8, I talk in detail about building content and optimizing what you write to attract traffic and maximize your AdSense revenues. There are all sorts of ways to do that but for the moment just bear in mind that the ads that appear on your site will depend on the content on your pages. That’s how AdSense works: users click on the ads because they’re relevant.

And that’s why it’s not worth putting up a site just to cash in on particular keywords. Google doesn’t like it and neither do users. If your site doesn’t genuinely interest your visitors, you’ll find it hard to get traffic, links and clicks on your ads.

But there are still a lot of different ways to create content very easily that improves your income. I’ll tell you all about them in chapter 8.

It’s also worth remembering that Google doesn’t place ads on particular types of sites, so if you’re thinking of building a casino site stuffed with AdSense ads, you can forget about it; it’s not going to happen.

Before you build a site that contains any content that’s remotely controversial, check out the Terms of Service (TOS) to make sure that it’s allowed. It will tell everything you need to know.

2.4 Search Engine Optimization

Of course, once you’re up, people have to know you’re there. One of the most important ways to do that is get yourself a high-ranking in a search engine.

There are lots of different search engines, but only three are really
important: Google, Yahoo! and MSN. In chapter 17, I’ll talk in more detail about improving your search engine rankings.

If you want to take a shortcut, there are plenty of companies which will make the submissions for you and they’ll even optimize your site to get you as high on the rankings as possible. Submit Express has a free service that you might find useful.

2.5 Links

Your search engine ranking will depend on a number of factors. One of those factors is the number of sites that link to yours. As far as Google is concerned if lots of sites about model railways link to your model railway site, that must be a pretty good sign that people who like model railways think your site is good. So they’ll want to offer it to people who search for model railways, bringing you lots of free traffic.

Once you’ve got your site up and running you’ll want to persuade other sites to give you links. You could offer to exchange links and you can even set up a page that contains recommended links so that you’ll have somewhere to put them.

There’s a range of other strategies and services that you can use. You can find out about those in chapter 17 too.

2.6 AdSense — Making The Money!

Once you’ve done all this, you’ll be ready to start using — and profiting from — AdSense. The application process is very simple and straightforward.

First, you’ll have to tell Google whether you’re a company or a one-man show. That’s important because it tells them where to send the money. (In general, it’s better to get your money by direct deposit; Google


charges for express mail checks.) You’ll also have to choose whether you want content-based ads, search ads or both. (Content-based ads are better but I’ll tell you how to benefit from each.)

Once you’re approved, you’ll just have to copy and paste a small piece of code into your website and you’re done!

2.7 Google Policies

AdSense works. I know it works because I’ve got the stats, the checks and the bank balance to prove it. And all of the methods that I used to increase my AdSense revenues are completely legitimate and in line with Google’s policies.
That’s important. It is possible to cheat AdSense. But you’d have to be crazy to do it. You can make so much money working within Google’s rules that to risk getting thrown out by putting ads on pages without content or by persuading users to click on the ads is just plain crazy.

You can find an excellent run-down of Google’s do’s and don’ts (mostly
don’ts) at https://www.google.com/AdSense/policies. The things to look out for in particular are:

Code Modification
You have to paste the AdSense code onto your site as is. And you don’t need to do anything else! Your AdSense account will let you play with colors and placements (and getting those right is what will really rocket your income) so why bother playing with Google’s HTML? It’s not necessary and it could get you a lifetime ban.

Incentives
When the ads appear on your page, you have to leave them completely
alone. You might be tempted to tell your users to “click here” or support your sponsors but if Google catch you, they could well cut you off. They want people to click because they’re genuinely interested in the ad. Get your strategy right and they’ll do just that.

Content
Google is pretty picky about where the ads are displayed. They don’t want advertisers complaining to them that their services were being promoted ona site that supports gambling or is filled with profanity or contains more

ads than content. If your content doesn’t come up to scratch, you’ll need a site that does.

Prohibited Clicks
And nastiest of all are the people who either click on their own ads or create programs to do it for them.

The bottom line is that you don’t need any of this stuff. Maximizing your revenue within the rules is easy!


2.10 As Easy as 1-2-3!
The bottom line is that there are three ways to increase your AdSense revenue.
1. By Tweaking the Ads
to make them more appealing to your visitors;

2. By Optimizing your Website
for better AdSense targeting (or what the Google folks call 'content relevance');
And the only sure-fire way to get 1 and 2 right is by

3. Tracking Visitor Response.
If you don't know what works (and what doesn't work) in trying to increase your AdSense revenue… you're shooting arrows in the dark!

The right tracking tools can reveal a great deal about your visitors and
answer fundamental questions such as what they're looking for and
what makes them 'click'. Once you've figured that out, bingo! You're on your way to big AdSense bucks!

But it isn't as straight-forward as it seems. If it were, there wouldn't be so many grumpy people on AdSense forums, complaining about their low AdSense earnings.
It's not that they aren't doing anything about it. They simply aren't doing the right things.

Let me assure you that in the time that I have been using AdSense, my earnings have only gone up — and so will yours, if you apply all my techniques seriously.