Advertisement, website

On occasion, a visitor will write to me at thesitewizard.com asking how they can get Google advertisements to their website. While this may seem very obvious to those who have read my article on How to Make Money From Your Website or visited the list of free advertisers for web publishers on thefreecountry.com's Affiliate Programs: Free Sponsors and Advertisers page, I decided that an article explaining briefly the steps involved will probably be useful for a number of people.

What is Google AdSense?

Adsense is Google's advertising network that places those sponsored ads you see on many websites. Google automatically checks the web page it places the ads on and displays advertisements that are relevant to the page. This produces highly targeted adverts for the page, allowing, hopefully, higher returns for the advertiser, the advertising network (Google) and the publisher (you).

Before You Start

You must have an existing website before you apply to the Google AdSense program. If you don't already have one, read How to Create / Make Your Own Website to get started with your site first. The Google AdSense team reviews your site before accepting new applications, so you must first put up a working website and not just some "under construction" page. For example, if you are starting a personal blog, post a few articles about yourself or your experiences first.

Steps to Getting Google AdSense Ads on Your Site

1. Apply to Google

   Google will then send you an email to verify your email address. Follow the instructions in that message (which is basically to click a link). Once you do that, your application will be sent to the Google AdSense team, one of whom will pop by your website to review it. Don't hold your breath though, it may take a couple of days before they get around to your site. During this time, if your site is a blog, continue to post to it as per normal.

2. Configure Your Ads

   Once your account is approved, you can log into your account to get the necessary HTML code to paste into your blog or web page. The code can be found in the "AdSense Setup" tab. There are a number of options, but the code for the context-sensitive advertisements can be located under the "AdSense for Content" link. You'll be able to customize the appearance of the advertisements, choose between text advertisements, image ads or a mixture of both. Once you have finished configuring, you will be given some HTML code which you can cut and paste into your site.

   There are other types of adverts beside the context-sensitve ads. "AdSense for Search" provides you with a Google search box that you can place on your site. When your visitors search through that box, and click an advertisement, it will be as though they had clicked an ad on your site. "Referrals" provide you with ads for specific products.

3. Pasting the Google AdSense Code onto Your Blog or Web Page

   Make sure that when you insert the code into your site, you insert it as HTML. Instructions for doing this in different WYSIWYG web editors can be found here:

   If you run a blog, you may want to paste the code into your blog's template instead of individually stuffing it into every post you make. For blogs hosted on Blogger, one of the free blogging services listed on the Free Blog Hosts page, you can use my tutorial on How to Insert Google AdSense Advertisements in a Blogger Blog to help you insert your advert.

4. Entering Your PIN into the Google Site

   When your earnings reach a certain amount (it was US $10 the last time I checked) for the first time, Google will send you a card by snail mail (ordinary paper mail) with a series of characters printed on it. You will need to log into your AdSense account and enter this series of characters, the PIN, before they will send you any payments. It takes a while before this card is sent (a few weeks after you reach the threshold amount they define, depending on where you live), so just wait for it. You will only have to do this once in the life of the account.