Welcome to the full guide to Google Adsense. First of all, this guide will be very long, so feel free to take breaks during the guide.
Introduction
First of all, we will start of with what Google Adsense is if you haven’t heard of it. Google Adsense is one of the most popular Pay-Per-Click Programs there is. It is a great way for Website Owners to make money from their websites by putting advertisements on their websites. There are different types of advertisements you can put on your website - depending on what the purpose is.
There is Adsense for Content firstly. This is normal advertisements you can find - Just general advertisement blocks to display on your website. There is also link advertisement blocks too, which is quite similar. You get paid for each click on one of the advertisements, and the amount varies depending on your websites content.
There is also Adsense for Search. This is where you place a Search Bar on your website which allows your website to search Google easily and quickly, and you get paid whenever someone clicks a Sponsored Link at the top. It would probably be better if publishers were paid per search instead. The amount paid also depends on the websites content.
Thirdly, there used to be Referrals. This was where you get paid for every action completed on an advertisement (Such as a signup, purchase of a product) and not paid for the click. Unfortunately Adsense have removed this now, although it was a good way to earn money.
Fourthly, there is Adsense for Feeds. If you know what an RSS Feed is, then this is simply like an Adsense for Content ad block but in the RSS Feed itself. If you don’t know what one is, then it is where a websites content is fed into a feed so users can see the new content made, often used in blogs.
Fifthly, there is Video units. This one explains itself pretty much, it is where you display Videos from YouTube directly on your website. There is a small ad block above the video, and you get paid for every click on the small ad block above it.
Lastly, there is Adsense for Mobile Content. This is basically an advertisement block but for mobile phones to use, so if you have a website that is made for mobile phone users, you can put Adsense on these pages and get paid per click, as usual.
Account Activation
Before you can receive any Payments from Google, your account has to be activated. Your account can undergo the activation process as soon as you hit $50 in your account. Depending on how much you earn, this can go from a few days revenue to months of work for you.
When you reach this $50, you should be able to request a Pin Number to be sent to your address. After you’ve requested, you’ve just got to wait a few weeks (normally) until you receive it. Once you’ve received it, you need to login through your Adsense account and enter the Pin Number you received. After you’ve confirmed the right number, that is your Account Activation all completed. Very simple.
Sometimes though you may not receive the Pin Number. You can request the Pin Number up to around 3 times, and if you still don’t receive it after that many times, then you should know that Google can’t seem to reach your address. This means that either you entered the wrong address or simply Google can’t do that address. If the details are all correct, then you should contact the Adsense Support Team who will give you other ways of activating your account. If you can’t receive your Pin Number, then you probably won’t be able to receive cheques through it either, so you might as well select a different Payment Method if you can’t to save you time.
Activation has to be completed by all Adsense users. Luckily, its a very simple process to follow.
Payment Options
Now you need to learn all about how you can receive from your earnings from Google Adsense.
First of all, the minimum payout you can receive is $100. That means if you get over $100 in one month, then you’ll be paid. If you get less than $100, then your earnings for that month will be passed on to the next month, and the cycle continues until you eventually reach $100.
The first Payment Option is Electronic Funds Transfer. This is basically Bank Transfer as most call it. You give them some of the basic details to your bank and they will transfer the funds themselves without any input needed from you. The benefits of this is that you don’t have to go to the bank to receive it, and its also a lot quicker than the other Payment Options too, which is good if you want your money quicker.
The second Payment Option is Cheque. Everyone knows what this is. There are two extra options to this one however. You can select Standard Delivery or Secured Express Delivery. With Standard, the delivery is free but it takes 2 - 3 weeks to arrive which can be quite bad if you want quick delivery. Secured Express means that the Cheque is delivered by courier, meaning that the Cheque arrives in around a week. However, you have to pay a fee of around $29 to do so, which wouldn’t be that effective if you’re only just reaching $100 per cheque, it would take a lot out of your money.
There are some other Payment Options available too for other countries that can’t do those Payment Methods.
Sometimes you may not receive your payment. This isn’t a problem, Google give you an option to request another payout around a month after.
Channels
Now we need to learn about Channels in Google Adsense. A Channel is something you can create through your account so you can keep your Payments organised. The main benefit of it is that you can check which sites are earning you which amounts, if you run multiple sites. This would mean you could do something about it if you were earning low on a specific URL instead of just seeing the amount earnt with no real information.
To create a Channel, login to your Adsense account, go to Adsense Setup and then navigate to Channels. You have two options - URL Channels or Custom Channels. It doesn’t really make much difference which one you choose from, they both do the same job. You then just create the Channel with the details you want, and then when you create an advertisement block, select it from the list of your Channels and after it registers some impressions and clicks, you should be able to track it much, much easier.
Color Palettes
The next thing to learn about is Color Palettes.
Color Palettes are data that you can create that stores the style of the advertisement blocks. For example, when you’re creating a new advertisement block, you can set style information about it - such as the different colors used. If you save the colors used to a Color Palette, then you can easily use these colors on other advertisement blocks you create. This is a great way to make sure all of the advertisement blocks on a website are consistant, and it saves time making them all the same colors.
It is very easy to create color palettes. Just login through your Adsense account, into Adsense Setup, and then finally into Color Palettes. From there, you can create new palettes, edit existing ones, and just general management.
Color Palettes are recommended because it can save you a lot of time in the future, and it doesn’t take long to setup.
Competitive Ad Filter
Now to learn about the Competitive Ad Filter.
The Competitive Ad Filter is used in Adsense to stop inappropriate advertisements from being displayed on your website. If you notice (Or if a visitor tells you about it) that an inappropriate advertisement is being displayed, or maybe you’ve seen that some of the advertisements are really low-paying, then it would be a good idea to block them from being shown. You simply enter the URL that the advertisement links to and then after submitting, it takes several hours for it to stop being displayed on your website.
To start blocking some of your low paying advertisements, login to your Google Adsense account as usual, go into Adsense setup and then into Competitive Ad Filter. You should see some instructions on that page anyway. You just need to enter the URL’s on this page and the rest is taken care of.
In some cases (Mainly for Image Advertisements), it doesn’t show the URL that the advertisement goes to, and the only way to find out is to actually click it. Unfortunately publishers aren’t allowed to do that, so you would need to use a tool called the Adsense Preview Tool to see the advertisements and click them without harming your account. We’ll go onto this now.
Adsense Preview Tool
This tool is very effective because of how it can help with the Competitive Ad Filter. Its a tool that you can download and install on your computer, and then you can simply use it on any websites you want. It displays advertisements that would normally show on the website, and you can click on them like a normal advertisement, but the publisher won’t be paid for the click. Its mainly used as a tester tool to use with the Competitive Ad Filter.
A simple search on Google will give you the access to download the tool.
The tool is very simple to use, so there isn’t really a need for instructions on how to use it. You just go to the URL’s you want, check the advertisements shown, click them and get the URL’s of the advertisements. Then you could block them with the Competitive Ad Filter.
Site Authentication
This is another feature of Google Adsense.
If you have a lot of content (With Google Adsense Advertisements on) that can only be accessed by logging in, then obviously Google can’t crawl these pages, and you’ll probably end up with terrible advertisements being shown on those pages.
Luckily, the Site Authentication feature was created to get around this. You can give Google access around the login form, normally via some login details for the form, and when Google tries accessing those pages, it will login automatically with the details you give and it should be able to crawl those pages, meaning you should still be able to get relevant advertisements shown.
To use the Site Authentication feature, you need to login to your Google Adsense account, go into Adsense Setup and then into Site Authentication. You’ll then be given a form you need to enter with the details of the login form. It shouldn’t take you long to setup. Once you’ve done that, you’re all setup.
Allowed Sites
The Allowed Sites feature is very useful to stop other people putting your Adsense advertisements on their website. Although you may think if someone did that, it may actually be a good thing because you would make money from it, you may have a problem if the user is putting your advertisements on a website that is against the Adsense Terms of Service. This could mean that you could get banned because of someone else. The Allowed Sites is a great solution to this problem. With Allowed Sites, you can select the sites that you are giving access to show your advertisements on, so you could just select your websites. Then, it wouldn’t matter if they did because it wouldn’t count.
To use the Allowed Sites feature, login to Google Adsense, go into Adsense Setup and then into Allowed Sites. You should have two options; one to allow Adsense advertisements from all URL’s and one to put the blocks on. If you choose to enable the Allowed Sites, you should be given a big area to input all of the URL’s that you’re allowing to be displayed. Once you’ve been finished, submit and you’re all done. There is no more work required.
Advanced Reports
This is probably one of the most used features in Google Adsense. It does exactly as the title describes, it allows you to look at the report that it gives you on impressions, clicks and earnings at a more advanced look. It means that you can look at your earnings between specific dates, looking at specific channels and their revenue, different advertisement units and a lot more extra information.
You could use Advanced Reports to compare your revenue from what you were earning a while ago, and to see how things have changed in different periods of time.
To access Advanced Reports, you need to go into your Google Adsense account and then go into Advanced Reports in the link navigation bar. You should be taken to a page full of options that you can select and choose from to give you the Advanced Report that you want to look at. After you’ve selected all of the options you want, you click the “Display Report” button and your report will be generated within several seconds.
The advanced reports feature has been created for a while, and it is recommended that you use it.
Image Advertisements
Image Advertisements is an option you have of using when creating an Adsense for Content unit. You can choose from Text Advertisements, Text and Image Advertisements or just Image only.
Image Advertisements generally don’t have as high CTR than Text Advertisements, probably because they are easier to detect as advertisements. They seem to stand out more because you can’t really blend them in as much. However, they are a great way to add variety of advertisements to your website. Image Advertisements can be quite effective on some types of sites, such as humor or image hosts.
It is recommended that you use Image Advertisements on your website, but you use Text and Image together, so that you get a variety. This may help the amount of clicks you get.
Link Advertisement Units
Link Units are quite popular in Google Adsense. They aren’t as popular as the ordinary units, but they are good to use to make sure you use every little section of advertising space.
Link Units are long strips of links. There is no URL or descriptions to them, it is just ordinary links. Like Resource Links. The links should be relevant to your content if the Adsense Bot has done its job properly. You have the choice of 4 or 5 links in each box, and you can still change the colors used in the advertisement block to make it fit your website.
You can create Link Units like Advertisement Blocks - You go into your Adsense account, into Adsense Setup and then Get Ads. Then, you go into Adsense for Content and then finally into Link Units. From here, you can select all of the options you want.
Link Units are recommended so you can maximize your revenue.
Revenue Sharing Websites
There is a way how you can make money from Adsense not from your websites. Some sites, mainly Webmaster Forums, run a Revenue Sharing system. This is where when you post on their forum, there is around a 50% chance of your advertisements being shown on that thread instead of the forum owners. You probably won’t earn much from these, but you can still earn something if keep posting on the forums.
If you make a simple search on Google, you should be able to find some of these types of websites.
Smart Pricing
Smart Pricing is when Google reduces the amount of revenue you make per click to as low as $0.01 or $0.02. Obviously this means that the revenue you earn will be a lot lower than usual.
There could be several reasons why your account could be Smart Priced. The most common one is that a lot of your traffic comes from low-paying countries such as India, China, Iran. Other reasons could be that a lot of fraudulent clicks have been detected in your account, advertisements placed in places that could cause accidental clicks (Where the visitor didn’t intend on clicking the advertisement) or there could simply be a bad conversion rate for the advertisers. Smart Pricing is often given to Proxy Bypass Websites, so don’t be surprised if your Proxy gets as low-paying clicks as $0.01 or $0.02.
Getting out of Smart Pricing could be easy for some websites, or could be quite difficult for some. One of the easiest solutions (especially for Proxies) is to block incoming visitors from low countries. This could harm your traffic a lot, but it would get you out of Smart Pricing after some time. You could also move your advertisements so that they cannot be accidental clicked.
Section Targeting
This is a great way to get more relevant advertisements shown on your website if you’re having trouble getting them to show.
It just involves simple HTML to add to your coding, it doesn’t make any physically differences to your website, its just code that is noticed by the Adsense Bot.
To make Google know which content is the important content, use these tags:
<!–– google_ad_section_start ––>
(CONTENT TO BE EMPHASIZED)
<!–– google_ad_section_end ––>
Obviously the information you have on the page should be in the middle where the CONTENT TO BE EMPHASIZED is.
Also, if there is content that you don’t want Google to use in order to collect the advertisements, you can use these tags:
<!–– google_ad_section_start(weight=ignore) ––>
(CONTENT TO BE IGNORED)
<!–– google_ad_section_end ––>
The tags won’t have that much effect, but it is a good idea to do if you can’t get good advertisements shown.
Getting Good Advertisements
The first thing you should consider to getting good advertisements shown on your website is making your advertisements blend in.
The first step to making your advertisements blend in is to make sure that the background color of the advertisement is the same color as the background of the area that it is placed on. The second thing to do is to make sure that the border color of the advertisement is also the same as the background color.
If you run a blog, you could have the title of the advertisements as the same colors as the titles of the blog posts to make it look like a mini blog post. You could also make the URL’s the same color as the colors of hyperlinks.
In some cases, blending in doesn’t seem to work well. You could try making the advertisement stand out slightly. You should still the same background color as the area its on, but you could add a different border color, and you could play about with the colors of the texts.
You should really play around with the colors a lot and see which ones work the best for you.
Another important consideration is the Placement of your advertisements. This is very important. If people can’t see your advertisements, obviously they can’t click them. It is quite difficult to say where to place advertisements because everyone runs different websites with different designs. However, Google did create a small image showing where they think the best performing placements are. You can see it below:
Its what you call a heatmap. The darker the area, the better the performance is estimated. As you can see, advertisements near the footer perform very poorly, whereas advertisements near the content on the website perform the best.
It can be quite difficult for forum owners though, its a completely different story. Advertisements near the top may not perform well at all. Sidebar advertisements and advertisements in the middle of posts would probably be better, but you need to make sure that the colors of the advertisements change often so people don’t get used to the advertisements (Therefore meaning hardly any clicks).
Try to play around with your advertisements until you find the combination that works for you.
Conclusion
Thank you for reading the Google Adsense Course. We hope you’ve learnt a lot about Google Adsense if you’re quite new to it. All comments and social bookmarks are appreciated a lot.
