Making Money With Google Adsense (Video Tutorial)

Is making money with google adsense hard? How can I make money with Google Adsense?...I get asked these two questions a lot. that's why I made two videos that will show you how to sign up, setup, and use Google AdSense more effectively on your website or blog. Hopefully, when you are done watching these video you will know exactly how to use Google AdSense and all the ways you can increase your website's revenue with AdSense. There are also many optimization tips given in this video to help you understand the best ways to use Google AdSense on your website or blog. I hope you enjoy the video and find it helpful! *the video notes are below the video

Making Money With Google Adsense (Video Tutorial)--Part 1

Making Money With Google Adsense (Video Tutorial)--part 2

• Google AdSense is a Pay Per Click Advertising Program.
• Similar PPC programs are Azoogleads and bidvertiser.
• Most Pay Per Click Programs work in a similar fashion:
  • Website administrators (you) apply to use the PPC program (Google AdSense in this case).
  • Once you get accepted you can start using the program and placing code on your site that will produce ads.
  • Advertisers bid to have their ads displayed on websites (like yours).
  • PPC programs will analyze the content on your site and provide you code to place on your website/blog that will produce relevant ads to what is on each individual webpage.
  • So if an individual webpage on your website or blog is about boats—the PPC program should display ads relevant to boats. And if another webpage on your site is about financial advice—the ads should be relevant to financial advice.
  • Basically, when people go to your site and click on the ads--you make money.  Each ad will be worth a different amount.
  • Note—make sure you don’t click on your own ads or encourage people to click on your ads because Google will terminate your account.
• To sign up for Google AdSense go toà https://www.google.com/adsense
• Once you are there, click “Sign Up Now” and fill out the forms.
• After you submit that information you will receive  2-3 emails.
• The first email is to verify your email address.
• The next email will either tell you that are accepted into the program or that you need to fix something before you will be accepted into the program.
• If you had to fix something, resubmit your website after you fix the problem and you will get an email telling you that you are now accepted or that you need to fix something else.
• Once you get accepted, go to google.com and click on “sign in” (in the upper right corner) and enter your email address and password you registered with Google.
• Then go to “Settings” (upper right corner) and click on “Google Account Settings.”
• Click “AdSense” in the middle of the page.
• You now have an account and can start making money with Google Adsense!
• The first page you will see is the “Reports” page (we’ll go over this later) but click on the “AdSense Setup” tab.
• The “AdSense Setup” page is the place where you customize what kind of ads you want and what they will look like. You also get your code here once you go through the setup process.
• You can create “AdSense for Content,” “AdSense for Search” (this is a search box you place on your site that your visitors can use. They will get relevant search results but also ads. If they click on the ads you make money), “AdSense for Feeds,” AdSense for parked domains, and AdSense for Mobile Content.
• Today we’re going to work on “AdSense for Content”—so click on that now.
• You can create an ad unit or a link unit.
• A link unit displays just links on your site and when a visitor at your site clicks on the link they will be taken to a page with relevant ads on it. If they click one of the ads you make money.
• An ad unit is either a text ad or image ad. We will create an ad unit today so make sure the circle is checked next to “Ad Unit” and click continue.
• At the next page you can customize the ads you are creating.
• Tip—Google’s research shows that the most successful ads are the 336 X 280 Large Rectangle, 300 X 250 Medium Rectangle, 160 X 600 Wide Skyscraper.
• Tip—Before you choose which size ad you want—know where you want to put it on your site so it fits.  Below is a heat map created by Google to show where the best places are to place ads on your website or blog. The darker the color the better the area to place ads.
• 
  
• Tip—if you don’t know whether or not to place a horizontal or vertical ad on your site—choose horizontal because Google found that wider ads are generally more successful.
• Tip—Google recommends you follow these guidelines when choosing the colors for your ads:
• If you have a light background and you are placing ads within your content--blend the ad colors with the background 
• If you have a dark background and you are placing your ads within your content--blend or contrast with the background—it doesn’t matter as much.
• If you have a light background and you are going to place the ads adjacent to the content on your webpage--blend or complement the colors of the ads with your background.
• If you have a dark background and you are going to place the ads adjacent to the content on your webpage--contrast or complement the colors of the ads with your background.
• At the end of the customization page you will need to choose what you want Google to display if it can’t find relevant ads to display on your webpages.
• After you are happy with how you have customized your ads—click “continue.”
• The next page you will get to is the “Custom Channels” page.
• Channels are used to track specific ads or ads on certain pages.
• There are two kinds of Channels: 1) Custom and 2) URL
• The page you are currently on is just for Custom Channels.
• Custom channels are used to track whatever criteria you define for an ad.
• For example, if you create an ad with a yellow background and want to see a report about just ads with yellow backgrounds; you would create a custom channel for ads with a yellow background. And whenever you create an ad with a yellow background you would add the yellow background channel to that ad (it would then change the code of the ad you are creating so AdSense can track the that ad with the criteria you specified).
• You could then create ads with different color backgrounds and then make custom channels for those ads. If you go to the advanced reports section, you can then compare which ads do best based on their background color.
• Note--See video for how to create channels and how to add them to your ads.
• Note--by going up to the channels tab (under the “AdSense Setup” tab) you can create and edit “Custom and URL Channels.”
• Note--URL channels are to track ads on specific pages of your website (see the video for more details).
• Once you are done creating or adding a custom channel to your new ad—click “continue.”
• The next page will allow you to rename your ad. Once you are happy with the name click “Submit and Get Code.”
• On the next page you will get the code you can place on your site.
• If you are using a WYSIWYG text editor on your website or blog, make sure to switch over to raw code format so you can copy and paste the code into your site successfully.
• After you place the code on your site your ads will start appearing in about 10 minutes. At that point you are ready to start making money with Google Adsense!
• I’d like to go back to the “channels” page to go over a few more things--so click on the “AdSense Setup” tab and then on the “Channels” tab underneath that.
• When you click on that tab you will be on the “custom channels” page.
• At this time, choose one of the custom channels you already created and click edit settings.
• Next, click the check mark next to “targeting” so I can demonstrate something.
• “Targeting” gives advertisers specific information about the channel you are editing so they can target that specific channel to place their ads on.
• Make sure the information you enter in the “Targeting” section is detailed so advertisers know exactly what they are bidding for.
• If you want to use “targeting” enter the information it asks for and click “save channel;” otherwise, just click the back arrow because targeting is completely optional.
• Once you are back on the “Channels” page you can click on “URL channels” in the middle of the page to go to the “URL channels” page.
• Once you are there, you can enter the URL for the specific domain, page, or directory you want to track. (see video for more details)
• Note—URL channels do not change the code in your ads because they are just tracking pages on your site.  When you add a Custom Channel to an ad it changes that ad's code so the custom channel can track it.
• To see the reports about Custom or URL Channels, go to the “Reports” tab in the top left.
• Once there, click on “advanced reports.”
• Go over to the “Show” area on the page and click on “Channel Data.”
• In the little box that opens up, select the channels you want a report for.
• Once you specify the date, grouping, and units—click “Display Report”
• Use this report to understand what kind of ads are most successful and where the best places are to put ads on your site so you can optimize your ads with what’s most effective.
• The last think I want to go over today is the “Competitive Ad Filter”
• Go to the “AdSense Setup” tab and click on the “Competitive Ad Filter” tab
• The “Competitive Ad Filter” will filter out competitor’s ads that are showing up on your website. This is obviously bad because it will drive your traffic to your competitors.
• Once you are at the “Competitive Ad Filter” scroll down and enter your competitor’s URL to have them filtered.

I want to end this  "making money with Google Adsense" lesson with a couple quick tips:

• Wider ads are generally better.
• The three most successful ads are the 336 X 280 Large Rectangle, 300 X 250 Medium Rectangle, and 160 X 600 Wide Skyscraper.
• When placing ads on your site try to think of where your visitors attention will be focused. Then place the ads there but don’t trash up your site or make your ads obtrusive to your visitors.
• Use link ads if you have limited space on your website or blog.
• If you have a lot of repeat visitors try switching up your ad’s colors and locations so your repeat visitors see them. Otherwise, they will start having ad blindness and will just glance over your ads without truly even looking at them.
• Use URL and Custom channels to understand which kinds of ads are working and which are not. This way you can change your strategy to focus on what’s working.

Thanks for watching! I hope you found it helpful! If you have questions or want to discuss making money with Google Adsense use the comments below or the forums.

--Also, be sure to check out this important report about some changes being made at Google.