Why AdSense?

See those stacks of Google links below? That's Google.com's 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 enhances that content by placing relevant, targeted links on your site.

It works like this... You sign up for AdSense here. 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.

If you don't already have a website then you'll have to put one up and work on it so that Google will accept your site into their program.

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. The idea being that whenever someone searches Google for "fly rods" then his ad will pop up on the right side of the page.

He then assigns how much he's willing to pay each time someone clicks on his ad. Let's call it 50 cents. Now, when Rebecca FlyFisher goes to Google and searches on fly rods she will see a couple of ads on top of the search results 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, 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.

Or let's say I put up a page about adsense. Then the same code that I plop into the fly rods page will now display ads related to adsense. Pretty cool.

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, but it's not trivial. Of course, if you click any of the AdSense words on this page then I get a portion of whatever the ad owner paid for that ad. 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, AdWords will cost you money.

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 it'll help you make a lot of money (if you follow the author's advice.) See it here.

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 the 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 are getting some traffic your check will be bigger.

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, or maybe even other wierd things. Actually, they'll probably just ban the violator from ever participating in AdSense again. Read their terms of service for more accurate information.

Here's a nifty set of adsense videos which will show youi have every inch of the system works. Not free, but if yoiu follow the advice you'll make more than enough to cover the cost.

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. Don't worry if you don't actually know any of that, just click here and take a look at SiteBuildIt, a system which has all of that covered.

You'll also need to put appropriate content on your site, since you're going to have a content based site to drive the AdSense and attract search engine traffic. For example, say you're a building contractor. What you would do is write a bunch of pages appropriate to contracting, such as: How to find a good contractor, avoiding getting ripped off, 21 great tips, etc. Some people are expert enough to write a bunch of pages, others do the research (like writing a term paper, almost) and still other hire out the writing. eLance.com is a good source for that.

If you just want a nice quick sitebuilder then check ouit XsitePro. That's what this site (keepmoney.com) is built with. If you don't like the look of this site then it gives you a good reason not to buy the program. :)

Good luck!

Greg