There are many reasons to start your own blog these days. In fact, there are probably almost as many reasons for doing so as there are blogs out there! One reason that many people start their own is tomake money online. It may not be their full-time job, but a little extra cash never hurt anyone. So how does one go about doing this?

Well there are many ways to monetize a website.  One easy way is by using Google AdSense! All of the other major search engines have similar programs, including Bing and Yahoo, as well as a number of other companies on the internet, but Google is the one that many people go to first.

So in today’s post we will be taking a closer look at Google AdSense and how you can use it to make money on your site.

Google AdSense is a way of placing adverts on your website that pay you on a pay-per-click (PPC) basis. Google pays you a percentage of the revenue that they generate from the advert based on getting people to click on the link. How much you are paid can depend greatly on what ads show up on your blog and how often visitors to your site actually click on them. It can also depend on which adverts you are allowing to display on your site. It is usually only a few cents per click, but that can really add up if you are able to attract enough traffic to your blog.

The AdSense ads will be generated automatically by Google to match the content on your site.  So if you have your own blog about pets, Google will display adverts about pet related products.  If you blog about travel, Google will display ads related to holidays and travel.  You can however get in a bit of a mix up if you blog on a wide variety of subjects though, which is why it’s so important to pick a targeted niche and stick to it.

It can also be a bad idea to have lots of AdSense ads on your website if you are also trying to sell a your own products. You are basically advertising your competitors right next to your own product! Now, this doesn’t stop you from endorsing or positively reviewing a specific products on your blog, but it may be wise to remain somewhat neutral in order to get more clicks. Focus mainly on good, original content and stick to the facts.

Well first things first, you need to sign up to the Google AdSense program!  Once you have, you are able to setup your adverts to fit in with your website.  You can choose between; Display ads, Text ads, Video ads, Mobile ads & Link units, all of which will display adverts that are related to your website content.  You can choose between a number of different sizes and layouts for your AdSense ads, which makes it easy to include them on your site.  You may want an advert placed in your sidebar, in which case you may opt for a ‘Wide Skyscraper (160-600)’ or a ‘Square (250×250)’.  Perhaps you want an advert beneath each of your blog posts, where a ‘Leaderboard (728×90)’ ad would be more appropriate.

Either way, you pick which type and size of advert you want and you save it to your account.  You are then given a short bit of code that you can add to your website, which will display your chosen advert type.  Your adverts won’t appear immediately, you will have to wait a short while whilst Google assesses your site content so that it can display related adverts to your site.  Once they do show up, anyone that clicks on them will generate you some money!

Word of Warning! – Don’t click on your own AdSense ads!  Google will delete your AdSense account if they think you are repeatedly clicking o your own adverts to generate money.  Only your website visitors should click on your adverts.

WordPress makes it really easy to install Google AdSense onto your blog. Once you have gone toWordPress.org and set up your site (See our ‘Start A Blog Today‘ guide), you are able to install plugins for your blog. You just need to search for an AdSense plugin of your choice and install it on your blog. Just copy & paste the AdSense code that you were given to the AdSense plugin and your WordPress template should setup the page automatically with the AdSense ads in place. No coding or serious computer knowledge is required.

After you have your AdSense ads up and running, the real work begins. As I mentioned before, AdSense works on a pay-per-click basis. The question is then how to get the traffic that produces the clicks. That can be answered in one simple word – content!

The more quality original content you have on your blog, the better. You should also try to include keywords & keyphrases in your content that aren’t extremely competitive. If you pick one that is too competitive in the search engines, you will likely never rank high enough on search engine results pages (SERPs) to generate any serious traffic.

When it comes to AdSense, less is more!  Don’t fill every part of your site with adverts as this puts readers off.  People don’t mind adverts, as long as they aren’t intrusive and don’t take away from the actual content on your site.  Remember that your content is what they came to your site in the first place!

Setting up a blog with AdSense is extremely easy and can be done on a lunch break, but you really have to work in order to get people to read and spend time on your blog. They call this making your blog “sticky” and there are a number of ways you can research and accomplish this (i.e. videos, pictures, etc.) In the end, if you create great and presentable blog content, you will start to attract large amounts of traffic that will in turn earn you money via your AdSense ads.