Monetizing 101 - Adsense ~ Hot Shot Blogger

So, your blog is set up, you have some great content, the tags are set on your posts, and now you want to start making some money? What an excellent idea!

There are many ways to make money from your blog, and we will cover several of them in other posts, but for now we'll start with Google Adsense, the most basic and easy way to start making money from your blog.

Why is adsense the best and easiest when using blogger? Well, for starters Google and Blogger are basically the same company now, so Google adsense is already integrated into blogger and ready to use. All you have to do is make an adsense account, and enable it on your blog.

Check out this quick video to get a brief overview of what Adsense is and how it works:

1) Log into your blogger dashboard. Go to the link or tab labeled "Monetize." You will see a button that says, 'Sign up for Adsense'. Click it and follow the instructions to sign up for Google Adsense.

Google Adsense may seem complicated at first, but Adsense has a lot of great tutorials and information for you to read through that would be pointless for me to reproduce here. I will tell you some things that might be harder to find however.

2) After you make about $10 you'll need to verify your phone number. There's a place on the google adsense site where you can click and google will call you and an automated voice will give you a number to punch in. If you don't do this all of your ads will mysteriously disappear from your blog. This is one of those things I had to figure out the hard way.

3) Google adsense will not pay you until your balance reaches $100 or more. That may seem like a lot, especially if you're only making a few dollars a month (if that, which is normal for the first few months you put adsense on your blog). But once you get decent traffic and have 100 or more articles, you'll be making some decent money. Some bloggers make enough to quit their jobs, but keep in mind they devote their work day to their blog instead of going to a day job, so they put a lot of work into their blogs.

4) In order to get paid by Adsense you have to give them your tax information, select a payment method (check or direct deposit into a verified bank account), and input a pin # they will send you in the mail (which verifies that you live at the address you gave them). No worries though, Google is a trustworthy site and will not use or sell your information to anyone.

5) Something very important you must do on every single blog you intend to use adsense on is put up a privacy policy. I usually do this in a post and then link to the post in a widget (see the Build Your Blog page). Widgets appear on every single page, therefor the privacy policy link will appear on every single page. Ads will only display on pages you have a link to your privacy policy on.

Click HERE to view the generic adsense friendly privacy policy used on this site. Feel free to copy and paste the policy for your site from THIS PAGE HERE. Be sure to change all the url's to your own site's url.

6) Google Adsense has a pretty extensive list of rules for what types of sites they will allow their ads to appear on, as well as how you're allowed to use the ads on your site. It would be wise to take a look at those rules on the Google Adsense page, or you could find yourself with money in your account that they take away because you violated their terms of service. It's very important to know the rules and follow them.

For instance, you cannot click on your own ads, and you cannot solicit clicks. This means you can't ask people to click, and you can't ask people to 'visit the sponsors' on your site, because these would be clicks that are worth nothing to the people who purchased the ads in the first place. Google wants to direct people who are genuinely interested in the products to the correct ads so that the ad purchasers get the most for their money. Asking people to click ads so you can get money would be wrong because it would mean the ad purchaser will have wasted money because they paid for clicks that didn't result in purchases etc.

7) You can only place three adsense units on your blog. Generally a good placement is one in the sidebar, one in between posts, and one somewhere else like up by the blog title. Some people put all three units in the sidebar or between posts. A good thing to remember is that you don't want to overwhelm your visitors with ads or they probably won't come back. Your visitors aren't coming to your site looking for ads, they're coming looking for real content that you're providing them, so don't overwhelm them with ads.

8) You may want to try placing ads in certain positions for a few months, and then moving the ads to new positions for a few months to see which positions generate more revenue for you. It's a test and retest process that will take some time to get just right. It's good to take a critical look at your site or have a friend do it and see where the eyes go to first. If the eyes are immediately drawn to the left, then you may not want to put ads on the right, at least not at the top of the page. There are numerous websites out there explaining good ad placement technique, and I won't go into it here more than I already have.

9) You can keep track of your earnings by day, week, month, or all time by going back to your 'Monetize' page on your blog. It's always nice to log in and see you've made a few cents, or a few dollars. Money is money, and it will build up until you have enough to cash out.

Be sure to check out our Build Your Blog and Get Traffic sections to learn more about getting traffic to your site so that you can get eyes viewing those ads on your site and get some revenue!