How to Earn Money Using AdSense on Your Blog
Creating content can be a grueling process for many people. You need it, in order to attract your audience, enjoy organic traffic and ultimately, earn money online. You want to maximize your profits in every way possible, whether you struggle to create content or love the process.
Google’s AdSense program is one way you can do this. If you publish content, you can sign up to be a publisher with them, and they will basically connect your site’s content with the promotions that Google AdWords customers, known as advertisers, are paying to have shown on people’s blogs.
Every time someone visits your content and clicks on the ad, you earn money. However, it’s not that simple. There are measures in place to make sure the system isn’t gamed by unethical publishers.
Below, you’ll find a strategic guide on how to get started as an AdSense blogger, setting your site up for success and long-term profits by abiding by the Google rules as well as being strategic with your content creation.
Which Topics Pay Best with Google AdSense?
The first thing you need to do is determine what topic you want to pursue. You can go about this in different ways. You might want to focus on building a site with massive amounts of content on a topic that you know a lot about.
Or, you might be approaching your strategy from a place of profit potential. You need to find a niche topic that garners a lot of traffic. Without a high volume of visitors, your site won’t rake in as much money.
Some of the top earning topics for AdSense include things like insurance, digital marketing, crypto, real estate, health, fitness, cars, finances, legal, travel, technology and more.
You don’t have to pick a broad website topic, either. It might be harder for you to break into the top of the SERPs (search engine results pages) when you cover a broad topic such as insurance.
However, you can drill down and cover one topic such as travel insurance or homeowners insurance and have the potential to get your content ranked higher in the search engines.
Some of these CPCs (cost per click) earnings can be upwards of $100 or more per click. Generally, most niche topics will earn far less than that. But you may be able to dominate in a niche that is being targeted by fewer marketers.
You can conduct some preliminary research from the perspective of an AdWords buyer who is looking to run ads on a site for your topic. That way, you can see the approximate cost per click and you’ll know what that will pay to you as a publisher.
How to Sign Up for a Google AdSense Account
You may already have a Google AdSense account. If you are using Gmail or a different type of Google product, you will already have one created. But if not, you can go create a Google account that will connect to your AdSense profile.
Visit https://www.google.com/adsense/start and click on the Get Started option. The system will ask you to sign into your Google account if you are not already signed in. Then, it will want you to enter the URL of your website that you are going to be showing ads on.
Keep in mind that if you have not yet created the content that you will be monetizing through AdSense, you can leave this blank and come back later to fill it in when you are ready.
You have to have enough content on your site to begin with so that Google reviewers can look at it and determine whether or not your site is ready to run ads. This means it has to load quickly, be easy to navigate and have good content.
The system is going to ask you to choose whether or not you want them to help you with your AdSense efforts. For example, they can customize some performance suggestions for you and send them to you so that you can implement them on your site.
You’ll need to enter your country or territory so that they know how to pay you when the time comes. Then, you just have to accept their terms and conditions and you can begin using AdSense.
You’ll copy the code they give you on your AdSense home page and paste it between the and of your site’s code. If you fail to go through this process within a 6 month timeframe, they will deactivate your account.
If you notice anything that says you have to activate your AdSense account first, it means you still have items to enter. That may be your payment information or the process of connecting your blog to your AdSense account.
Once everything is in place, they will process your request to start using AdSense and the approval process usually takes 48-72 hours, but be prepared to wait anywhere from two weeks to four weeks, too.
Sometimes, something small like a typo or error of omission can result in a delay. If you don’t provide your name exactly as it appears on your bank account, it might encounter a hiccup, for example.
Another thing that might delay approval is if your site doesn’t get enough traffic. You want to choose pages to submit that get the most traffic to your domain. If you don’t have traffic yet, build up your content and drive social traffic to it before applying.
Once you get the email that you’ve been approved, you can set the ads up on your site and begin blogging more to get your revenue growing. You may have already turned on Auto Ads, in which case those will start running without you having to do more.
Auto ads are great because it gives Google control over what is shown on your site, and it works on a variety of gadgets, too. You don’t have to go through all of the other steps to choose specific ads, unless you want to.
Strategically Placing Ads on Your Blog
For those who want to be in total control over the ads on their domain, you’ll want to keep Auto Ads off and use their Ad Units instead. This is a more tedious process because you’ll have to place them on the pages where you want the ads shown.
You also choose the types and sizes (as well as positioning) of the ads. Once you have a piece of content that you want to monetize with AdSense, you’ll log into the program and click on the Ads option.
Sort it by Ad Unit and click on Display ads so that you can give it a name. This will be helpful for you to track, so have a system for naming your ad units that helps you navigate where they are on your site.
For the ad size, you can choose fixed or responsive ads. Fixed ads make you enter the width and height of the ad, and these options might be more limited. With a responsive choice, they can adapt the ad to fit whatever space and layout you provide for it.
Once you go through this process, just save it and copy the code to use. For Ad Units, you’ll go to the page you want to place it on and past it between the and code.
Then click the Done option. A few minutes up to an hour later, you should see the ads start to appear on your site, but if not, check the status of your site to see if it’s still in review or if they’ve sent a notification that something needs to be fixed.
Once the ads are running, you can track how well they perform by using the Reports section of your AdSense account. This helps you determine whether certain types of sizes of ads work better with your targeted traffic.
You might choose native ads, which are going to blend in nicely with the appearance of your site. There are also in-feed ads, in-article ads, multiplex ads, AMP ads (which stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages), and search engines that you can install on your site where it will show search results and ads.
How to Craft Content That Will Earn More for You
AdSense wants you to have no fewer than 20 article pages on your site before applying, so make sure you have more than that. If possible, create the very best content that you have to offer.
Focus on making pillar blog posts that are comprehensive and that cover a cluster of related topics on each page. Now only will a human reviewer appreciate the value you provide to your readers, but the site will have a better chance of ranking high in the SERPs too (which will mean more organic traffic to your pages, and more ad money).
AdSense wants you to have original content. So if you’re buying private label rights (PLR), make sure you edit them significantly. One good thing about PLR is that most buyers purchase and never use their content.
You can also take PLR sold for one purpose and put it on your site. For example, most PLR buyers who purchase a lead magnet report or eBook will use it for that purpose. So if the vendor allows it, take that type of content and break it up into individual blog posts for your site, and search engines will usually see it as unique because others won’t be publishing it publicly.
If you’re creating your own content, make sure you’re actually building value for your readers and not just “writing for AdSense.” You don’t want to be using artificial, keyword-stuffed content that doesn’t read well just because you saw that a certain keyword phrase pays out well.
Think about how you can meet the needs of your visitors. What problems, obstacles and pain points do they have that you can assist them in overcoming? Start with that, then conduct some keyword research to figure out what theme and concept you want to build your content around.
Use tools like Answer the Public, Quora, forums, Google’s People Also Ask to see what questions people are asking about your topic. When you answer them with solid advice, it will help your content be seen as more valuable to your readers.
Make sure you’re optimizing your content for search engines, too – not just readers. Use H1 and H2 tags, a table of contents for navigation and links within your site to give an SEO boost.
If you have images on your page, use alt tags to help the impaired and also help search bots understand what the content on that page is all about. By pairing good SEO habits with a solid content strategy, there’s no reason why your ads won’t perform well.
Getting Paid for Your Ad Earnings
You want to make sure you’ve set up your payment options on AdSense so that you can get paid each and every month. You have options on how to get paid. They will pay you via check if you want, and this will be mailed to you.
Or, they can pay you via EFT (electronic funds transfer) or EFT via Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA). They can also do a wire transfer for you. All of this depends on where you live and what payment plans are available to you.
Payments are sent out monthly. You’ll watch your earnings accrue each month as people click on the ads on your content pages. Then at the beginning of the next month, they will tally them up and if you’ve met the payment threshold, your payment will be sent to you sometime between the 21st and the 26th.
If they have detected any invalid clicks on the ads, they will deduct those. They’ll also subtract any revenue if the advertiser whose ads were showing on your site was using fraudulent credit cards to run ads, etc.
If your payment is delayed, make sure you’ve entered all of your tax information so that they can process it properly. They also might need you to verify your identity and address.
Mistakes to Avoid as an AdSense Publisher
There are some people who ruin their chances of becoming a long-term successful AdSense earner by violating policies or simply making strategic mistakes that could cost them revenue.
First, make sure you’re not clicking on your own ads. If you think Google hasn’t expected people to do this, you’re wrong. They can detect it and they can shut your account down for that.
If, for some reason, you want to go to the advertiser’s website, just go to your browser and type the URL in yourself rather than clicking through on the ad. Likewise, don’t have friends go click on the ads.
You don’t even want to encourage people who visit your site to click on your ad. Everything needs to be organic – from you putting out good content that ranks high in the SERPs to people visiting your blog and just wanting to click on the link because it intrigues them.
We talked previously about the strategic areas you can place your ads, and are encouraged to place them by Google. But make sure you’re not trying to game the system by trying to trick people into accidentally clicking on the ads.
You have to have plenty of space between the ad and other elements, so that people aren’t trying to click on one thing, but “accidentally” clicking on the ad instead. In addition to how you manage the placement of the ads, Google wants you to be aware of what content they won’t tolerate.
This, of course means anything illegal or that would constitute intellectual copyright infringement. You don’t want to be writing any kind of content they might deem dangerous or hateful, either.
Certain topics are also off limits, such as get rich quick schemes or adult-themed, sexual content. There are dozens of little rules they have, so when you go to sign up, make sure you read them thoroughly and abide by them to safeguard your account.
Make sure you have a privacy disclosure on your website that tells visitors about data collection, sharing and usage. You have to abide by their policies on spam, cookies and data or you won’t be able to use their ad program to profit from.
Earning money through AdSense is a great way to have an automated monetization in place for your content that allows you a more hands-off approach. But in order for it to be successful for you, you have to focus on developing high-ranking content and driving tons of targeted traffic to your site.
Keep in mind that you can earn money with AdSense by creating video content, too. YouTube has AdSense as one of their monetization options, so if you prefer to be a video content creator (or a mix of the two), you can do that.
The content that you’re creating for your AdSense blog is going to serve you in more ways than one. There are other ad networks, if you ever decide to try those. Plus, you can monetize your site differently, too.
You can link out to products that you recommend using an affiliate link. You can promote items on ClickBank, Warrior Plus, JVZoo, Amazon, Share-a-Sale and commission Junction, for example.
You can also link to your own info products. If you begin to acquire a lot of knowledge about this topic, you can put together an eBook or video course and sell it to your visitors.
Take your time with this process and make sure your number one goal is to impress your readers and everything else will naturally fall into place in regards to profiting from the content you produce for your site.