How to Google Adsense

by lakeerieartists

If you are considering using Google Adsense to make money online, here are some basic instructions, and information on how to set it up so that you can track your progress.

Google Adsense is a powerful tool in your arsenal to make money online. Publishers make thousands of dollars each year by placing Google Adsense advertisements on their websites.

The way Adsense earns money is that advertisers sign up with Google and pay for ads. This side of the program is called Adwords. You may be familiar with the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. This tool is actually designed to help advertisers choose keywords for their ads.

Google takes all of the ads that are generated through Adwords, and then distributes them to websites across the globe based on matching the content in the ad with the content in the website. The best results are when there is an exact match.

Google Adsense Can Be a Lucrative Income Stream

How it works for the publisher

Publishers, authors who write content online to make money, invite Google to place Adsense ads on their websites, pages, or articles through the use of unique code.  Publishers can choose where to place their ads, what size ads they want, and how many ads per page up to a limit of three per page.  Adsense ads are usually placed near the top of the page, or the top of the sides of the page, because that is where most people will see the ads and click on them.

Google Adsense is Pay Per Click Advertising

The publisher gets paid when the ad is clicked on

The way a publisher earns money from Google Adsense is when someone clicks on an ad.  Each ad has a predetermined monetary value based on the subject of the ad and the price the advertiser is willing to pay, and if a reader clicks on an ad, you get paid by Adsense.  This payment is for your willingness to have the ad where someone might click on it.  Remember, that the reason for the ad is to get a person to the website of the advertiser.  They are really the people that are paying you.

Because you get paid when someone clicks on an ad, this is called Pay Per Click advertising or PPC.  Therefore, it is considered to be click fraud if you click on your own ads.  If you are found by Google to be clicking on your own ads, you will be banned from using Google Adsense on any website, and your account will be closed.  It is also good practice to avoid clicking any ads on a site that you have Google Adsense on.  This will alleviate the chance of the appearance of click fraud.

There is a wide value range of ad prices, and ads can pay you as little as .01 per click to as high as $10 dollars per click or more.  Publishers who know which topics pay the most, and can rank highly in the SERPS (search engine results pages) for those topics will make more money.  I also believe that when you, as a publisher, show that you can drive buying traffic to your Adsense ads over time, you will get better and better paying ads for your topic.

Signing Up for Google Adsense

If you do not already have an account

To sign up for Google Adsense, you need to be an established publisher.  You can use Adsense on any blog or website that you own, and on many community websites.  You only need to have one Adsense account.

Certain countries have a waiting period for being able to use Adsense, and people from those countries should use the waiting period time to establish themselves as quality publishers.  These are rules put in place by Google, not by any other sites, and if a site wants to have Adsense as a revenue source, the Google rules need to be followed.  Sites that want to keep Adsense will follow the Google Adsense TOS including types of subject matter.

I originally signed up for Adsense when I started blogging several years ago on Blogger, which is also a Google website.  I have used this same account since then.

It is important to understand that not everyone gets accepted by Google for Adsense immediately, and if you don't, then you can reapply later.

Google Adsense Dashboard

Google Adsense Dashboard
Google Adsense Dashboard

How to Set Up Channels in Adsense to Track Your Earnings Per Site

Understanding where the money is coming from

While it may be nice to see your total income on Adsense go up, it is even better when you can track where it is coming from, and what pages, so that you can continue to tweak your ads, or keywords to improve the performance.

I highly recommend setting up channels.  Channels is the Adsense term for a tracking method to watch specific site's earnings.  If you look at the dashboard screenshot above, you can see my channels listed on my dashboard.  It is against Google's policy to talk about specific click through rates (CTR) and earning percentages, so I have blanked that out.

You can view your earnings by day, week, month, or since last paid.  Google Adsense pays out each month that you reach the threshold, which in the U.S. is $100.00.  You can have the payment mail you a check or direct deposit to a bank account.

The list of sites on the left side are my channels.  As you can see Wizzley is listed as a separate channel.

To set up a new channel, click on the Adsense Set Up tab at the top of the screen next to Reports.

Google Adsense Dashboard: Channel Set Up

Setting Up a Google Adsense Channel
Setting Up a Google Adsense Channel

Google Adsense Channel Set Up

In the Adsense Set Up tab section, you have several items that can be set up.  Click on Channels.

The screenshot above is the top of the screen for the Channels tab.

In most cases, you are going to be using Adsense for Content, which is why it is the first option.  Adsense can also be used in other ways that are listed: search, domains, and feeds.

To set up a new channel, you can create a custom channel or a url channel. 

To connect the Wizzley system with the system on Google Adsense, you need to set up a custom channel.  This will show all of your earnings on Wizzley under one channel.  After the custom channel is set up, Adsense will assign a number to that channel.  The number is listed in the column to the right of the channel name.  This is what you put into Wizzley form as the Adsense channel. 

To create the custom channel, just click on the Add new custom channels link, and follow the instructions.

The second option is to the create URL channels.  These will track any Adsense income that comes through a specific URL.  You can create a URL channel for each Wizzley article, up to a total of 200 channels.  This is a good feature if you have a specific article that you want to track.  Keep in mind that your total Wizzley earnings will include the separate url channel earnings.  You can also use channels to track your blogs, or any other website that earns money from Google Adsense.

Google Adsense Dashboard: Get Ads

Google Adsense Dashboard: Get Ads
Google Adsense Dashboard: Get Ads

Setting Up Google Adsense on Your Blogs and Websites

Get and Manage Ads

Using Google Adsense on Wizzley is only the beginning.  You can also set up Adsense on any of your own blogs and websites.  Wizzley has the configuration for the ads already set up in their code, so as a publisher you do not need to worry about setting that up.

If you set up Google Adsense on your own sites, you will need to create the ad blocks on Adsense, then place the code on your site dependent on the configuration of that particular website.

To set up your own ads, you just go to the Get Ads tab on the Google Analytics Dashboard, and follow the instructions.  You can modify ads by size, type of ads, and colors.  Then Google will give you the code to plug in to your website.

Google Analytics: More Tracking Date to Check Site Performance

Linking Google Analytics to Google Adsense will show you even more data
Google Analytics allows you to track traffic to your website and analyze how to capitalize on that traffic.
Updated: 03/16/2012, lakeerieartists
 
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lakeerieartists on 08/01/2012

@WriteSheSaid Sorry I need to update the pics on this article. You don't need to set up a url channel for Wizzley. You do need to set up a custom channel, name it, Wizzley is fine, and then put the channel number on your Wizzley dashboard. The way you have to set it up now will get you the earnings, but not define them on your Adsense dashboard.

lakeerieartists on 03/16/2012

See above:
"To connect the Wizzley system with the system on Google Adsense, you need to set up a custom channel. "

evelynsaenz on 03/16/2012

Yes, They are listed as url channels.

lakeerieartists on 03/16/2012

@Evelyn did you also add a channel to track those sites?

evelynsaenz on 03/16/2012

I added my Google Adsense ID when I signed up for Wizzley a about a year ago. When I go to my Adsense Account, however, it doesn't show that I have ever earned any money from Wizzley nor for Hubpages for that matter. I can see where I am earning from my blogspot account. Am I missing something?

lakeerieartists on 02/15/2012

@Guarded Secrets Glad it helped. :)

Sheri_Oz on 02/01/2012

Thanks, that makes it a bit clearer for this muddled brain of mine.

lakeerieartists on 01/31/2012

Sheri, If you have an Adsense account, for Wizzley, you just need to put the account number in the space Wizzley provides. That will "turn on" the collection of earnings for you. If you want to know how much you are earning from Wizzley, you will have to create a channel.

Sheri_Oz on 01/31/2012

If I understand you correctly, for wizzley I don't need the code I got from adsense even though they told me I have to plug in the code for them to continue verifying my application. Is that right? I just wait patiently for them to continue verifying my application? I hope so because I don't understand anything you wrote above. :(

lakeerieartists on 12/01/2011

@teddletonmr Good question. Once your site is signed up for Google Analytics, it automatically tracks each page separately in Analytics. If you want it to track separately in Adsense, you need to make separate channels.


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