Whether you’ve been blogging for five minutes or five years, monetizing is one of those topics that almost always comes up. Should I try to make money from blogging? Can people really make a living online? How should I try to make money from my blog?
Google AdSense is one of the most common ways to monetize, though I’ll warn you now: AdSense is NOT a get rick quick scheme. In fact, it can take a long time to make more than a few pennies. But it can also pay off big in the long run.
What is AdSense?
AdSense is a program that allows bloggers and website owners to make money by displaying Google ads. You’ve probably seen the ads all over the place, including in Google search results. Basically, Google gets the largest cut and you get a small percentage. There are two ways to make money from AdSense:
- Impressions – this is based on the number of pageviews of pages or posts with ads
- Clicks – this is based on how many people click on the ads (don’t EVER click your own – more on this later)
To make it as basic as possible, you sign up for an AdSense account and add the code to your blog or website. You can choose how your ads look, where they show up, and even what kind of ads you’ll accept. Once you get to a minimum threshold of $100, Google will either send you a paper check or make a direct deposit into your bank account.
Who’s Eligible?
If you use Blogger, you can use the Monetize tab to set up and manage an AdSense account.
If you use self-hosted WordPress, you can visit the AdSense website and apply for an account. You’ll receive a code that you can place wherever you’d like, or you can use a plugin to help with placement.
*If you use free WordPress, you cannot use AdSense, but you can use WordAds if you have your own custom domain. (Just another reason why self-hosted WordPress is better.)
How Much Can I Make?
As I told you before, you will not get rich quick using AdSense. It took me 9 months to make $2 (yes, two dollars) on my personal blog. However, I made $81 last month. That’s still pathetic compared to many blogs – some people can earn a full-time income from AdSense alone. But it takes a LONG time to get there, and you have to have a ton of traffic.
Some ads are worth more money per click than others. This is also affected by the amount of traffic you get, the keywords the person searched for, the percentage of visitors who click on a particular ad, etc. There are a LOT of factors that determine how much you’ll make, but a rule of thumb is that newer blogs simply won’t make as much money.
My personal blog is about 14 months old. Some days, I don’t get any ad clicks at all and I might still make 10 cents or so just from impressions. Sometimes every click is worth $2 or more. Yesterday the clicks were worth a whopping 26 cents each.
Many people get impatient when they’ve had the code up for a month or two and haven’t made more than a few pennies. If you’re looking for something that will pay TODAY, AdSense may not be for you. And to be honest, I don’t know of anything instant – if I did, you can bet I’d be using it!
How Can I Make More from AdSense?
Basically, your best bet for ad clicks is increasing your search traffic. When people are trying to solve a problem, they usually turn to search engines like Google or Bing. If you have a post that solves that problem, using SEO will help your post rank well in search results. SEO will also help AdSense serve up relevant ads, so when people click on your blog post, the ads may answer the exact question they’re asking. Result? Ad clicks!
Here’s an example. Let’s say I write a post about the health risks of liposuction. I use SEO techniques to help Google realize what my post is about, and my post is the third one when someone searches for “liposuction risks.” AdSense also knows what my post is about, so people reading my post will see an ad that might say something like, “Safe liposuction services in New Hampshire” (or wherever).
If the person is interested in finding the safest place for liposuction, s/he is likely to click that ad. As I said before, the rate per click depends on a lot of factors, but my concern is making sure that people read MY post and not others! If they go to another blog to read about liposuction risks, they’re possibly clicking that person’s ads instead of mine.
IMPORTANT!
There are a few things you need to know about AdSense before you ever put the code on your blog.
1. Never, ever click your own ads. In case you aren’t aware, Google pretty much knows everything. And they can tell if you’re clicking your own ads. It’s very tempting to click about 50 times and make some money, but all it will do is result in being banned.
2. Never, ever encourage friends or family to click your ads. Same as above. You can and will be banned from AdSense, and don’t ever think Google won’t figure it out. I don’t know how they do it, but I have seen it happen to people I know. JUST DON’T.
3. Pay attention to your ad clicks. If you average 2 clicks a month and you suddenly get 100 in a day, chances are that something is wrong. If you’ve pissed someone off and they decide to fight back by clicking all over the place, you can get banned even though you didn’t do anything.
4. Never rely on AdSense as your sole income source. Even if you get really good at SEO and you have 100 websites making thousands of dollars each month in AdSense, you never know when something could happen to trigger Google’s no-no sensors. You can make good money with AdSense, but you should also use other monetization strategies just in case.
5. Don’t use more than 3 ad blocks on a single page. Google allows up to 3 ad blocks on a page. So if you have one in your header, one in your sidebar, and one at the end of your post, that’s the limit for that page. Also, don’t plaster ads all over the place and annoy your regular readers! There are ways to implement the ads without making your site ugly.
What Questions Do You Have?
It’s impossible to cover a topic as broad as AdSense in a single post. This overview gives you an idea of what it’s for and how it works, but it still may not answer enough questions to make sense for you.
Let me know what would be most helpful. Do you want screenshots and step-by-step instructions on inserting the code? More tips on how to improve your earnings? A breakdown of all the acronyms you see in your AdSense account, like CPC, RPM, and CTR? Leave your questions in the comments and I’ll address them in future posts.
All Nuts and Bolts projects are built on the Genesis Framework because we believe it's the most stable and well-supported framework available. Our partners love it and so do we - once you try it, you'll never use another WordPress theme!
Comments are now closed for this article.
Right now I’m mad at Google and AdSense. Maybe I’ll go back and start up again. I’m not sure how to put it on my site though so it’s not fugly. More about not letting AdSense make your site fugly.
I signed up for adsense before I found out that you can’t have it on the free worpress. After reading about it and seeing comments about how its not that great, I decided im not going to put it on my self hosted domain. Do you know of other ad programs that can be used instead if adsense ? Also please excuse my spelling errors as I am typing on my phone.thanks andrea
I run my blog…i have adsense account…but i cant see ads on my page…y?
Did you add the Adsense code recently? If so, it could take awhile before any ads show up. If it’s been awhile, make sure your browser is the latest version and is able to run Javascript. Also, you have to insert your ad code if you haven’t done that already - try a plugin like Quick Adsense if you’re using WordPress. Hope that helps!
Hello,
I have had Adsense on my blog for over two years. I average about 3,000 visitors a month on my blogger blog, but I have never made any money on
Adsense. Is there something wrong?
If you have traffic coming from other blogs, it’s unlikely that those visitors would click on ads. Adsense usually only becomes profitable once you’ve got traffic coming in from search engines. If you don’t have a lot of search traffic yet, it might be helpful to use SEO to build it up.
hi i got adsense account on 7 july 2011. i worked alot on my web but unfortunately in the first 1 year i just could earn 3 dollar . yep 3 dollars. that was my worst experience then i stop working oon in and my website got blocked because of my friend ..he wanted me to pay him , but that was loss,how could i? now i opned a blogspot and from the first month i earned 2 dollars .i want to increans and please guide me how to get seo on my blog and please suggest me some new thingsthat i can upload on my blog thank you .looking forward for ur answer
Hi! Thanks for visiting. It’s definitely not easy to make money with AdSense, but if you can implement SEO and increase your search traffic, that should help.
Andrea,
Your blog post on AdSense is very helpful for a novice blogger to understand how it works and how much one can make to begin with. However, getting banned from google for not authentic clicks on ads is something which is of concern to me. Is there any way we can avoid such things since there can be people who can work against our blog posting and harm our profit out of it. Any suggestion is appreciated. Regards, Vijay K Kerji
Hi Vijay,
There is an option within AdSense to limit your code so that it can only be used on the sites you specify. That helps with security. Beyond that, I recommend installing the StatCounter plugin - it allows you to see the IP addresses of those who click your ads (among other stats). If you see that a visitor clicked multiple ads, you can self-report via the AdSense website and let them know what IP address the fraudulent clicks came from. It’s not a perfect system, but so far I’ve managed not to be banned despite several click-bombing attempts by malicious visitors. Hope that helps!
Andrea,
Statistics Counter plug-in is the solution! Thank you, you relieved me about my concern of getting banned from Adsense because of malicious blog visitors.
Hi,
I want to know if I can get google ads via adsense on a site with something.blospot.com domain name ?
Yes, it’s possible to use Adsense on a Blogger site. In your Blogger admin, there is an option somewhere to apply for an Adsense account. I know that’s not very specific but it’s been ages since I’ve played around with Blogger.
Hi, I restarted my blog a little over two weeks ago and am just wondering how long does the approval process take for adsense since my blog is now under my google + profile and not my blogger profile? This change happened when I restarted my blog and it prompted me to change over. Will this affect the approval process? It said that if the web site changed then it might take 1 to 2 weeks? Can it be longer. I also change the name of my blog. Can this be another issue? I never got a code emailed to me but the red box says that my application is under review but it showed the previous name. Help. I can’t find the answeres I need from any of their forums or help links or do not know how to get a hold of anybody in google.
Unfortunately I’m not sure if changing the blog would delay the approval process or not, but I would guess that it would. Google’s lack of response/support is just one of the many reasons I recommend WordPress over Blogger - it’s basically impossible to get any kind of update or information from Google. I hope you hear something soon!
Hi there!
First off, thanks for the informative post! But I still have one more question.:) When you apply for AdSense and your site is reviewed and you put the code in and everything - are ads placed only on the pages that receive organic traffic through search engines? You don’t get ads on all of the pages regardless of where your traffic comes from? I get a lot of traffic from Facebook and Google+ via sharing - that doesn’t count for anything when it comes to AdSense, huh?
Thanks so much for your time and for sharing your wisdom.;)
You can put ads on any and all pages regardless of where your traffic comes from. Search traffic is just more likely to click on ads than visitors from other places. Hopefully that makes sense!
It does, thank you!!
Have a great rest of the day.;)
Hi Andrea, I just finished migrating my website from WIX to an own-hosted WordPress site. I started from scratch: I didn’t know what tools were out there to create websites locally like there were 10 years ago (like Dreamweaver). I finally installed WAMP, installed WordPress, built my site and transfered my domain.
Now, I’m considering making some money with AdSense and your post is the first thing I read about it. Thanks for the heads-up on what NOT to do. My question is: where do you think would be the less annoying way to place the 3 ads in a single web page?
Cheers!
Hi Alfonso,
I’ve seen several different ways to arrange AdSense ads - a lot of people use one in the sidebar and one at the bottom of the page (on every page), then one midway through the post on single blog posts, with a second sidebar ad on non blog post pages. Hopefully that makes sense. Personally, when I ran AdSense, I only used one ad at the bottom of each blog post because I worried about annoying visitors.
Here is an article about ad placement that might help you: http://www.business-online-guidance.com/adsense-placement.html
I’ve read so much about this, how AdSense just may not be a good choice for smaller blogs. I am only averaging about 200-300 visitors per month, so I’m assuming that isn’t enough for AdSense. Do you have any idea of the general goal someone should aim for if they would like AdSense to be profitable? Basically, how many visitors do you need per month to actually earn something? I am not looking to get rich off my blog by any means. If I could just figure out how to break even I’d be happy, LOL!
When I was hitting 2000 visits a day (unique visits, not pageviews) I was making maybe $100-150 per month from Adsense. This can vary depending on your niche, how much traffic you get from search, whether you have optimized your posts for search engines, and a number of other factors. I know people who make a full-time income from ads across several different blogs, but it’s a lot of work.
Honestly, I think affiliate advertising can be far more lucrative, though it does require traffic from search as well (for the most part). I stopped using AdSense about 2 years ago and instead became an affiliate for several products that I use and love, and that makes up about 20% of my monthly income now. Still not getting rich but it’s nice to see that money show up every month!
I have applied many time for adsense but my request is rejected every time. why? please suggest me.thanks
Unfortunately I’m not sure, Zoya. Google is difficult to deal with since there really isn’t anyone you can contact to get more information. I’d suggest posting in the Adsense forums to see if you can find out more, but you might also look into affiliate advertising opportunities instead. I’ve had far more success with affiliate ads than I ever did with Adsense.
Hi there,
Nice article. Does adsense ban you if you pay for the traffic and get traffic trough facbook ads. I have a new site and planning to generate half a million vistors through paid search. So it wil be 1 month old site with such high traffic. Will that be a ref flag?
That’s a great question, and unfortunately I’m not sure of the answer. I don’t know of any penalty for high traffic sites but I would imagine that your clickthroughs may be higher, which could trigger some kind of flag on Google’s end. Definitely let us know how it goes!
Is there any chance to moniterize multiple blogspot acconuts with single AdSense account…
Thanks in advance
Honestly I’m not sure… Since Blogger requires a different process to use AdSense, I don’t know whether you can use an existing account. I do know that AdSense allows you to use your ad blocks across different websites, so unless Blogger has a separate policy against it, you should be fine.
Thanks Andrea for the touchdown on adsense. It simplified and clarified a lot of things in my head now that I am thinking of creating a website and eventually making money.
You’re very welcome! I’m glad the info was helpful for you, and wish you the best of luck in finding some income streams that work for you!
Hi Andrea, can you please tell me how the business end of AdSense works? Do you provide a Paypal address for payment? Is payment sent via electronic deposit to your bank via routing number? I have read a few articles about AdSense but have not found any info regarding this. Also, do you have to have Google mail for AdSense (probably not, but I thought I would ask anyway just to be sure). Hope you can help!
It’s been a few years since I used AdSense, but at the time, you could either get a paper check or have the funds deposited into your bank account via ACH. I’m not sure whether they’ve added any other options since then. The minimum payout was $100. You didn’t have to use a Google email address but you did have to have a Google account to sign up. I hope that sheds a little bit of light!
Yes, thank you for the reply and info!
Thanks for the article. I was just wondering whether you know if getting banned from adsense effects your SEO on google? I just set up adsense today, and someone in my house decided to click on the link, next think I know I got banned (so, I managed to get banned before my account even got approved). I wrote an appeal, but not very hopeful, but I’m more worried that being banned will effect my SEO. If you could shed some light on this, that would be great. Thanks 🙂
I don’t think AdSense is necessarily connected to your site, especially if you’ve removed the ad codes. Lots of AdSense accounts get banned for different reasons, and even if your appeal is unsuccessful I don’t think you’ll need to worry about dropping in search rankings because of it. Hope that helps!
HI Andrea thanks for this wonderful post am very happy to see this, But i have a question. I applied for google ad and i make use of blogspot.com on which i have no domain. but later my brother created a new website with .com on wordpress with premium google ad which doesn’t pay well as we thought and all this i have access to his website and which he also made me an admin too later tonight i saw my google adsense Dashboard and My ad unit i had to copy and paste the Code in my other site which has no domain and google disapproved my request,In the sense i saw Apply with other site in which i put my brother website with domain cux i have access to it .. My question is will Google accept my request or will i get banned for doing this? the site is been ruined by me and i see all jet packs and traffics and i can change anything i like………… Thanks will be grateful to see this reply cux am a bit confuse now
I don’t think you’ll be banned as long as your brother is using self-hosted WordPress. You are allowed to use your AdSense account for multiple sites, so as long as your brother doesn’t mind having your ad blocks on his site, it shouldn’t be a problem. You might get a more detailed answer on the AdSense forum. I hope that helps!