The Why and Wherefore of AdSense

AdSense is a nifty way to do a couple of things, one of which is to increase revenue from your website. Another is to add value to your site. Google prefers sites with good content and AdSense adds to that content by placing targeted links on your site. Like this:

Here's how it works: You sign up for the AdSense program, Google will check out your site and, if it meets their standards, accept you into the program. (This take a couple of days.) You then log into your AdSense account, define the size and color of your AdSense banners, copy the javascript code they give you, and simply paste it into your web page. You're done, the AdSense links will automatically appear, and they will automatically match the content of your page.  So if you have a site about fishing then fishing ads will appear.

Based off Adwords

So what does AdSense draw from? Good question. Google has a second program, called AdWords. This is Pay Per Click advertising that you can do with Google. For example, say Fred wants to buy some pay-per-click advertising on google. His specialty is fly fishing. He creates an AdWords account and wants to target fly fishing related key-words.

To start, he targets the phrase "fly rods" and writes his ad. He then assigns how much he's willing to pay each time someone clicks on his ad. Call it 50 cents. Now, when Rebecca FlyFisher goes to Google and searches on fly rods she will see two ads on top of the page and several on the right side, in addition to all the normal search results. All of these top and side links are AdWords.

If Fred's is among those ads displayed, and if Rebecca clicks on Fred's ad, then Fred's account is charged the 50 cents and Rebecca arrives at his fly rods page. Note that Fred doesn't pay unless someone clicks on his ad.

So, you ask, what the frog has this got to do with AdSense? Simple. AdSense is the system which allows Fred's AdWords to appear on my site. If I have a fly fishing site I can log into my AdSense account, nab the code, and place it on any or all of my pages.

Google's system will then, automatically, key the AdSense links to the topic of the page. So if I have a fly rods page of my own then the AdSense links that appear will have something to do with fly rods. Fred's ad might be one of them.

Now if someone clicks on Fred's AdSense link from my web page I get some portion of the 50 cents Fred paid for his AdWords ad. Google doesn't reveal what percentage of the action it pays whenever someone clicks on Fred's ad from my site. The owner of the ad benefits by having his ad appear all over the web, not just on google. Another cool feature: AdSense is 100% free to the website owner.

More on Adwords

By the way, if you want to use AdWords to drive targeted traffic to your site(s) then you should know that while a great many people use AdWords very effectively, if you don't know what you're doing you can waste a lot of money. Here's a reference which will save you a lot of time and severe marketing headaches, prevent premature baldness (you won't be tearing your hair out due to a bad AdWords campaign,) and maybe help you make a lot of money (if you follow the author's advice.) 

So does anyone really make any money with AdSense? Yep. In fact, AdSense is likely to far outpay any other affiliate programs you might have. (You do have to have a site first as Google will take a look at it to approve it, or not, for their system.) You get paid everytime someone clicks on one of those links. If you have a small site and can get some traffic going to it then you'll start making money with AdSense. Not alot, but some. If you have a bigger site and/or  are getting some bigger traffic then your check will be bigger.

Some people make websites just to generate AdSense revenue. Of course, you'll need webhosting, a domain name, enough HTML skill to lay out a site, and some knowledge of how search engines (and other traffic generating methods) work.  

By the way, Google's psychic fraud checking systems keep people from spoofing the system. So some sleazy person can't set up a site with AdSense links and then click his own links 500 times. Google's system will detect that and do horrible things to the violator, such as: redirecting every link he ever clicks to random Barney sites, cause his fingernails to grow inside out, cause his stereo system to play nothing but loud polka music, and so on. Actually, they'll probably just ban the violator from ever participating in AdSense again. Read their terms of service for more accurate information.

Join the Adsense program here:

Join Adwords here:

Good luck!

Greg