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How to earn money through Google Adsense – A beginner’s guide

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In this article we will tell you how website owners and YouTubers are earning money through Google Adsense. By going through the article, you will also learn how you can start making money by joining google Adsense program. In the first part we will let you know what is Google Adsense Program and then we will tell you the steps you can take to earn money online by using Google Adsense Program.

What is Google Adsense?

Google adsense is an advertising program run by Google which works on a revenue sharing model for all sizes of websites that want to monetize their content. Which means this program is specifically designed for content creators, YouTube channel and website owners. It’s free to join.

Google gets its money for showing advertisements for those businesses who joined the AdWords program. Businesses around the world joined this program to use google’s platform for showing their advertisement. These businesses show Ads to get new clients or to promote their products.

Google adwords for businesses is best known for the Pay Per Clicks (PPC) program.

Which means, we have following three parties in the entire process;

  • Publisher – These are website and/or YouTube channel owners or application developers or any other person who has content to show ads. To be a partner with google, publishers must join and get approval for Google Adsense Program.
  • Google – Google works as a middle man between businesses or advertisers and website owners, known as publishers, who are interested in showing ads.
  • Advertiser – These are businesses or individuals who pay google for showing their advertisement’s in google’s search engine and/or in their partner’s website. To show advertisements, these businesses or individuals are required to join Google’s Adword Program. Partners for google are those publishers who joined the Adsense program.

Bloggers and website owners around the world take this opportunity to earn money by using their content for advertisers. Advertisers around the world bid to show their ads based on keywords and type of blog. Google based on the content of the website and type of visitors, shows the highest paying ads on publisher’s website. It’s a win-win business for all the parties.

Now the question is how you as a publisher will be allowed to show advertisements on your website. For that you need to join Google Adsense Program. The step by step process has been discussed below in this article.

After joining, you will be given certain specific ad codes by Google to place it in your website to show ads. You can get ad codes from your Adsense account based on the adunits you select.

Based on your blog’s content and type of followers visiting your site, google adsense shows advertisements from its own inventory. This inventory is filled with ads that Advertisers want to show on the publisher’s site on the basis of type of content and traffic.

Website owners will get paid when visitors click on the ads placed on their blog, known as Cost-Per-Click or CPC. 

Now, let us understand certain terms such as CPC, PPC, CTR and CPM used in advertisements.

What is Cost-Per-Click or CPC

In CPC, which stands for Cost Per Click, you as a blog owner gets paid every time when someone in your site clicks on one of the ads of the advertiser. This model is also known as Pay Per Click (PPC).

Cost per click is an advertising form in which businesses aim to get prospect customers from different blogs or YouTube channels to their predetermined destination.

Destination can be to purchase or promote a product or services or to fill forms etc. In return of such traffic, businesses pay a specific fee for each legitimate click on their ads.

When you use Google Adsense Program, the advertiser pays money to google based on the number of clicks they got and then Google after taking its own commision pays you for the number of clicks you have provided from your website to the advertiser.

Under this model, you get paid every time a visitor in your site clicks on ads of various advertisers based on your content. As it’s based on per click, you should not get tempted to click on your own ads, otherwise google will deactivate your account permanently.

You can monitor your performance by looking at the click-through rate (CTR) in your Adsense Account. It will show you the percentage of visitors actually clicked on ads placed on your site. For instance, if 100 visitors come to your site, and 2 of them have clicked, then CTR of your site is 2%.

You will also find two more terms in your report; the term Views will tell you the total number of impressions your site receives for a particular period and Visitors will show you the number of people or readers who came to your blog for a period.

If you want to get more money from this model, then you need to get more traffic to your site.

CPC is used by those businesses whose advertising model is to get traffic to a particular destination. 

If advertisers want just to increase brand awareness, then they generally go for CPM.

What is CPM – Cost Per Thousand Impression

Another alternative way to CPC is CPM, which stands for cost per thousand impression (page views). The M in CPM stands for the word “mille”, which means thousands. Instead of using per click criteria, here under this model cost is calculated per 1000 impressions.

Revenue is based on how much traffic you received per 1000 page views regardless of whether viewers click on those ads or not. 

For example, if your RPM is $1, then you will make $1 for 1000 page views. If traffic to your site goes up, then revenue increases in that proportion.

Now you know the terms used in advertisements to know the amount of money you receive and your performance. Let us understand the steps you should follow to make money by showing google adsense in your website or YouTube Channel.

Adsense earnings are dependent on many factors such as how much traffic your blog gets, what type of niche site you have, your content in it and the location from where readers visit your site.

Remember, Adsense automatically sends ads to your site based on certain parameters such as content keywords, type of visitors and link structure. In certain cases, advertisers may ask for placement targeting in which ads will be placed on certain specific subsections of your website. Placement ads are generally used when you match an advertiser’s specific criteria.

What steps you should follow to earn money through Google Adsense

Now you know how google adsense program works for publishers and why advertisers are bidding to show ads. It’s time to know the steps you should follow as a publisher to start the journey of making money online through google adsense.

Create a website with useful content

To get started you need to create a website with good content. If you have an existing site, then make sure that it has great content for your readers. Three things are required to earn money out of google adsense program; 

  • Useful content,
  • a good number of traffic to your site, and
  • Compliance with google policies.

To build a website, you can take help of a developer. You should focus on the design and platform they choose to create your website. To start with a content rich blog, you can choose WordPress platform.

Get Traffic to your site

Revenue from adsense will depend on the traffic to your site. If you are getting more traffic, then there are chances that more people will take interest in advertisements. 

Remember, as per google policies, you should not click on your own ads, otherwise your account will get deactivated.

Traffic to your site depends on the quality of your content and how you promote them to visitors.  Remember, content is king. Therefore, you should build good quality content that will attract more followers to your site.

Get Google adsense approval

Participation to google adsense is free but to get approval you must adhere to their policies. If after getting approval, you violate any of google’s adsense program policies, then they may disable your account.

Below this article, we have given a list of resources to know more about Google’s policies, terms and conditions.

We suggest you to go through Google policies and guidelines thoroughly before applying. 

Place ads to your website

After getting approval for Google Adsense, you can use it’s inventory to place ads in your blog.

You are required to paste certain specific ad codes based on ad units available in your Adsense account, into your website where you want the ads to appear. 

These ad codes will automatically determine which ads to be shown in your site.

Google offers different types of ads. Here is a list of few ad styles;

  • Text-based – it adds one or two lines of text link in your website known as sponsored links. Those text ads will have links to advertiser’s websites.
  • display – graphical ad formats
  • Video

To know the type of ad units to be placed in your site, you need to understand your follower’s mindset and interest. 

You can use google analytics to know how your ad units work and what is the best way to place these ads. 

In general, the best ad sizes used by bloggers and website owners are 336×280, 728×90, 300×600 and 300×250. You can try your luck with different sizes and see which one suits you the most.

You can even place google adsense custom search, which shows advertisements along with the search results of your site. 

Which means, when your visitor wants to search something within your site, they can use google adsense custom search in place of your own search engine to get results along with ads from google inventory. It not only provides a good user experience, but also monetizes your blog.

You can use YouTube as a platform to monetize your content by making useful videos for your followers. You are required to create your own YouTube channel and start publishing content rich videos.

Google also shows ads based on user interest on certain specific interest categories.

Now you know the steps to get started making money online with google Adsesne. We suggest you to use Google Analytics to track your website performance regularly. It will help you improve your site visibility and traffic to make more money.

You should not take Google adsense program as a get-rich-quick scheme or easy-money-making option.

After getting approval for google adsense, you need to work on to get more followers to your site. It’s possible only when you invest your time to build useful content for your followers and promote them to visit your site frequently to get updates.

If you do not have a website to monetize, then try creating a YouTube channel to start vlogging and/or reviewing products.

Certain important points you should remember

  • Google pays every month only when your payment liability with them meets the $100 threshold. If you don’t reach the $100 threshold limit in one month, then earnings in your account will roll over to next month to get added to that month’s earnings.
  • Before applying for an adsense, your site must comply with google’s policies. Link provided at the end of this article.
  • As discussed above, do not click on your own ads. You should not even ask others to click on your own ads.
  • Create useful content in your website and promote it to get more traffic to your site. Choose a topic that you love and know a lot about it. This will help you to produce unique and relevant content for your followers on a regular basis.
  • Use search engine optimization to build a keyword rich site. For this you need to write a number of articles on a topic to tell google that you have more useful information for the searched keywords to search. Don’t write garbage with lots of keywords in it as this type of content will not get you more followers to your site.
  • Make sure that your site is responsive to all devices.
  • Monitor your site’s result by using google analytics. It gives you online tools to analyze your blog traffic and performance.

Is there any alternative to Google Adsense program to earn money online

There are a number of ways to monetize your website traffic. Today, we have many advertising platforms to help you earn money.

You can use any publisher’s platform which has a very good inventory of ads to show in your site. Remember, whatever advertising platform you choose, they will always have a tie up with google adsense to use their ad inventory. 

Here is a list to help you search for good alternatives;

Apart from ads and affiliate marketing, you can also try selling your own products, ebooks and coaching or consulting online. We have written a different article on 10 ways to make money online, you can read that to know more.

Helpful resources you must visit before applying for google adsense approval;