What is Google adsense and how does it works? Can you make a living out of Adsense or is it another myth? Read our guide for beginners to Google Adsense and learn how you can start using Adsense in your website or blog.
What is Google Adsense?
If you are a beginner to blogging and to the online World in general, you may have heard about Google Adsense or seen the adsense ads when you searched something on Google and visited a website that is using Adsense.
In this guide, I will try to give you an overview of what is adsense and how it works by taking into account my thoughts when I first started using Adsense (10 years ago) and questions I received from other bloggers over the years.
The ONLY guide you will ever need to read!
Adsense highlights:
- It is owned by Google.
- It generates a large part of Google’s income.
- Adsense ads are shown in the websites that participate in the Google Adsense program (these are called the Adsense Publishers).
- Adsense is a platform for publishers i.e. those people that have a website and want to show Google Ads. The system for advertisers i.e those who want to advertise their products or services in Google, is Google Adwords. See also: Tips for beginners to adwords.
- Adsense ads can be shown on mobile devices as well.
- Adsense works with EPC (earnings per click) and CPC (cost per click). Publishers will get paid for clicks on ads appearing in their websites.
- Currently (Feb 2015), Adsense publishers receive 68% of the click cost and Google 32%. This means that if an advertiser pays $1 for each click on his ads, the adsense publisher will get $0.68 and Google $0.32
- Anybody (above 18) with a website that meets the Google Adsense guidelines can participate in the program.
- Adsense has strict rules that should not be violated for any reason. It is your responsibility as an adsense publisher to know and follow the rules.
- Adsense has a number of products suited for desktop websites, videos, games, mobile apps and more.
- Adsense ads can have a number of formats and sizes including text and images.
- Adsense publishers get paid monthly by Google.
How does Google Adsense works?
Now that you have a better idea on what is adsense, let’s see how it works in a step-by-step mode.
Application process
#1 – Create Adsense Account
The first step is to go to http://www.google.com/adsense and create an account. Your adsense account is associated with a Google Account like the one you use to login to gmail, youtube etc.
#2 – Add Adsense to your website
Before being accepted to the program, Google needs to check that your website adheres to the adsense guidelines. To pass this step, you need to add adsense code to your site so that the Google crawler can access your website’s content.
This is a very important step because as we will see below there are cases that your application may not be accepted.
During this step and until you are fully approved, adsense ads are not shown to your website but they are hidden by default. If your application is accepted, ads will start to show and you will get paid for the clicks.
Have in mind that this is a once off process since after you are accepted as an adsense publisher, you can run adsense on any website you want (provided of course that it is not violating any adsense rules).
#3 – Setup your payment information
The next and final process in the application process is to add your payment information so that you receive payment and the end of the month and once you passed the minimum threshold of $100. Please note that before receiving any money from Adsense, Google will verify your postal address by sending you an envelope with a confirmation code so make sure that the details you provide for your postal address are correct.
Ad placement
Where do the ads appear?
When you are a verified adsense user, you can login to your dashboard and create new ad units. When creating an ad unit you will select the size (for example 336×280), type (images and text), style (text and border colours) and then you will be given a code (javascript) to enter in your website where you want the particular ad to appear. In the space provided Google may decide to show 1 or more ads.
How many adsense ads can you show per page?
In any given webpage, you can show up-to 3 adsense units.
Where should I place my ads?
The general rule is to place the ads where they can be seen by your visitors but without violating any adsense or google webmaster quality guidelines.
You can use these simple rules:
- Place 1 ad unit above the fold in the main content of the website (not sidebar)
- Place 1 ad unit in the sidebar. The 160×600 is very good for placing in the sidebar
- Place 1 ad unit at the end of your page or article (preferably in the main content area)
How does Google decide what kind of ads to show in my website?
That’s not an easy question to answer since there are many factors taken into account before an ad is shown. You can assume that Google will try to show ads that are relevant to your content and interesting for your users. In case you want to block an ad (or group of ads) from showing, you can do so by visiting “Allow and Block Ads” in your adsense account.
How much money can you make with Adsense?
This is a very common question and I have already provided a detailed answer in my previous post: How much does adsense pay. In summary how much money you will make from adsense depends on:
- The amount of traffic your website receives
- The type of traffic
- The number of advertisers in your niche
- The type of content you have on your website
- The position of your adsense ads
How to increase your adsense revenue?
Once you have adsense running, there are a number of things you can do to maximize your earnings. You can read more details in my post 10 tips for maximizing your adsense earnings, but have in mind that asking your friends to click on your ads is NOT one of them.
How to increase your chances of being accepted by adsense?
If you take a look at Adsense forum, there are many people complaining that their applications for joining the Adsense program were rejected. The most common reasons are:
Website was violating Adsense guidelines
Website has little content
Website had no original content
Website had only duplicate content
Domain was new
To increase your chances of being accepted to adsense follow these simple rules:
- Make sure that your website has a lot of content (a number of pages indexed by Google)
- Make sure that your content is unique and original (not copied from other websites)
- Make sure that your pages do have text content (not only images and videos)
- Make sure that you placed the test adsense code in all your pages and that you have ad units above the fold
- Don’t apply for an adsense account if your website is less than 3 months old (that’s not an official rule of Adsense, it’s my recommendation). For some countries (India, Pakistan, Middle east) you may have to wait for your domain to get at least 6 months old before being accepted to Adsense.
Can you make a living out of Adsense?
If you take a look at the success stories provided by Adsense, you will see people (Website owners) that live exclusively from Adsense. So the answer to the question is Yes, you can make a living out of Adsense BUT my 14 years experience of working online, tells me not to count on this.
The reason is not that it is not a reliable platform but because you need a lot of traffic to make money from adsense and this can not in any way be guaranteed. You may receive a lot traffic from Google now but after a change to their ranking algorithm, your traffic drops and you lose a large portion of your income.
The above can happen not because you are trying to violate any rules and trick Google but because the competition online is so big that you cannot be 100% sure that your current rankings will remain for ever in the same positions.
Conclusion and Final thoughts
Adsense is a great way to make money online. It’s easy to use, it’s reliable and it works better than any other platform. Adsense works by giving you the opportunity to create ad units of different types and sizes and add those to your website. Google fills that space with ads that are related to your content and audience using a complex algorithm.
When someone clicks on ads appearing in your website, you get a large portion of the revenue. While it’s easy to setup and use, there are a number of things you can do to increase your revenue by tweaking your ad positions and settings.
If you don’t have an adsense account, the first step is to apply and get accepted to the program and then hope that someday you will also be featured in the Google Adsense success stories!
Let me know in the comments if you have any other questions on how adsense works.
How to use ad mob for mobile apps?
Hi Ronit
You need to use Admob. You can create an account here: https://www.google.com/admob/. Admob is a google product and the procedure is similar to adsense with the difference that the ads are shown in mobile applications (for example android or iPhone apps) and not mobile websites. If you want to show yours ads on the mobile friendly version of your website, you should use Adsense instead.
Hope this helps
Alex
Hi,
Your article is very informative for everyone who is beginner in this field. I have read your article from its first line to last line. It is remarkable.
I have one question that is raised in my mind.
“What is current ranking algorithm of google”
Best regards,
Hi
Thank you for you nice comments.
Google is using an algorithm (a set of rules) to determine which web sites to show in their search results and in what position to show each website. This the known as the “Google ranking algorithm”.
To make money from Adsense you need Google organic traffic i.e. traffic coming to your website from the Google search results. Assume that your website has a good ranking position now on Google and you get traffic and make money from adsense since some of your visitors click on your ads. If Google changes their algorithm and you no longer rank in the fist positions of Google, your adsense income will also be negatively affected.
Hope this makes sense,
Alex
Your article always good for the readers, Specially this article will help the newbies who are interested in Google AdSense.
Hi
Thank you Romjan for your comment.
All the best with your Adsense efforts
Alex
Nice , simple and informative piece, you have always been doing well across your published work.
Thank you Idris. Hope it helped you understand more about Adsense and how it works.
All the best
Alex
I found this article very useful particularly for the beginners like me., Thanks
Hi Alex,
Thanks for your valuable article which made me clear on Adsense earnings. I had no picture about this process neither google explained so very well. After reading your article I finally realized that whatever website we make should attract the traffic only then we’ll be able to make money from Adsense which means our website should be popular and have attractive material for users. So thanks once again to make it very clear.
Very nicely explained!
I just want to clear up a point which is causing me some confusion since I have heard conflicting stories elsewhere. Does Adsense pay ONLY when an ad is clicked on or does it pay for simply displaying ads on a blog?
As the others I’ve been reading from you clear, simple and easy to read. Besides so informative! Thank you! Things I never understood before are now coming to be very useful!
Great article for To be adsense account holders.
Everything you want to know about adsense and its here.
Really appreciate.
Thanks Alex
Most of people don’t know how Google AdSense works and gave you lots of money. Your great article could help people a lot and after reading this article definitely everyone got good understanding about Google AdSense. Great Great
Thanks a lot Atul! Hope you are having a great success with Adsense.
Alex
Thank you very much, this article has been pretty usefull, and gives one a good view on how to start on adsense.
But i have a question.
In a previous answer you mentioned “Organic traffic”, could you explain a little bit more of that?
Is this the only kind od traffic?
Thank you very much
Excellent article, my congratulations Alex says, really to make money on adsense it is necessary that the blog has a lot of traffic and quality content otmizado for advertisement that pays high value
Honestly this is quite much of a wonderful Google adsense introduction.
Thanks for a well detailed piece
Very informative article about google adsense. Thank you for sharing.
Hello you article was very helpful. I just wanted to know that if my blog is on any free website like wordpress can i add adsense to it also and also at the time of creation(not wait for 3-6 months).
Thank you very much..
One cannot depend on AdSense for a living. I was a little late to understand that.
Thank you for sharing this great article.
Hi,
I have just started My blog. How much minimum Posts are required so that I can apply for Google Adsense.
Regards
Sachin
Hi Alex,
Honestly, after searching a lot on the web post regarding Adsense, I found this valuable post. You made some bullet points to understand the starting to getting money from Adsense. I wish i could write like you.
I have a adsense running site with my local language. This article will help me writing about adsense in my blog.
Thanks again for the post. Keep sharing 🙂
Thanks for sharing the information. i really enjoyed your blog article. and you’r writing a good point for adsense beginner.
Hii Thanks for giving your great knowledge. You have explained each and everything in details that I learned a lot from this post.
Thank you for sharing this! I started my blog and wanted to know when and how to adsense and how it worked. Definitely not quitting my job for this but as a single parent, I’ll use it as a great tool to have another stream of income. Now to focus on content!
Thanks!
Excellent and much useful post, especially for those who wants to apply for adsense. All these guidelines/tips are much useful to follow, to get adsense account approved. Well, good/quality content, good blog design, easy blog navigation and privacy policy page are the most important one’s. Thanks for sharing