How Much Does Your Google Adsense Really Make by Danny Wirken
Since its introduction in 2003, the Google Adsense program has greatly help
bloggers defray hosting charges and other costs related to running blogs.
Blogging can be very expensive especially when you have high levels of traffic
and numerous pages. Many are turning to Google Adsense to generate some revenue
from their blogs and what's more, earn some extra on the side.
What Google Adsense Is
Adsense is an advertising program run by Internet giant Google. Google Adsense
allows you (blog owner) to sell advertising space on your blog. The program
enables you to display relevant text and banner ads on your blog's content
pages. Banner ads are the most common form of online advertising displayed at
the top of many blog pages. Google pays you a fee when the visitor clicks on
the ad.
When you join the Adsense program, you get access to Adsense for content which
places ads on your content pages. Because the ads are targeted to what visitors
are looking for on your blog or they match the interests of the visitors your
content attracts, you earn and at the same time enhance your content pages.
Google uses its vast search technology Subscriptions to serve ads based on blog
content. In this regard, Adsense has become a popular choice for placing
advertisements on a blog because the content of the ads is relevant to the
blog. For example, ads for kitchen utensils will appear on a blog post about
healthy cooking. Google has an extensive inventory of ads for all categories,
business, practically for all kinds of content. If Google is unable to display
targeted ads on your blog page, you can display a default ad of your choice.
A companion to the Adsense for content is the Adsense for search. It allows you
to add a Google search box on your pages. This keeps the visitors on your blog
longer since they can search from right on your blog. When a visitor searches
the web using the search box, Google shares any ad revenue it makes from those
searches with you and you shell nothing to participate.
Another recent addition is the Adsense for feeds. This runs on RSS and Atom
feeds. RSS and Atom feeds are standards for publishing regular updates to
blog-based content. Ads are displayed in the most suitable feed articles. You
are paid for your blog's original content; visitors see appropriate advertising
and more relevant feeds to choose from.
How to Join
There is no rigid criteria to conform to for acceptance into the Google Adsense
program, unlike other online ad networks that place minimum traffic requirement
to be accepted. The only real criterion is acceptable content. Of course, any
ad program wants to attract quality content blogs only. Assuming you already
have a blog on which you can include Adsense links, you first need to be
accepted into the program. The first step is to go to
http://www.google.com/adsense
to sign up. Google will review your blog to find out if you have the necessary
traffic and the content that would bring in sufficient clicks to make your
taking part in the program beneficial to Google and to you.
Once you are accepted, all you need is a bit of javascript code to incorporate
the advertisements into the accepted blog site. Google does the rest like
providing appropriate ad links from its inventory of clients to your blog.
Targeted ads will start showing up on your blog.
How It Works
There are two sides to Google advertising - one for advertisers selling a
product or service called Adwords and Adsense for blog publishers. Advertisers
pay Google to have their ads designed using Adwords appear next to the search
page results in Google and a list of significant keywords for their offerings.
Google will display an ad only if the provided keywords conform to a visitor
search. An advertiser pays Google on a cost per click (CPC) basis. This means
an advertiser pays only for that ad if the visitor clicks on the ad and visits
the advertiser's site. Advertisers compete with one another to buy search
keywords usually from five cents and above. Nevertheless, Google also takes
into consideration the search engine ranking of the advertiser blog, so no one
site can just buy keywords. For example, a purchase of the keywords "digital
camera" produces ads next to Google search result in its home page. Said
purchase also shows Adsense ads for digital cameras on other blogs where
digital cameras are mentioned.
For their part, blog publishers using Adsense create relevant pages. Google
sends out Mediabots (digital robots) which use special algorithms to crawl the
host blog page and evaluate the content to determine what keywords are relevant
and report the result to Google's ad server which then serves the appropriate
ads. Blog publishers get paid a percentage of the fee that Google receives from
the advertiser. This is done through a combination of a pay per click (PPC) and
pay per impression basis. Impression is the number of times a specific ad has
been displayed. A blog publisher is reimbursed at a fixed rate per thousand
impressions. If a page isn't significant enough, a blog publisher doesn't get
paid as much. There is no charge for the blog publisher to join Adsense. All
costs are covered by the advertiser who participates in Adwords.
How Much Money It Makes
The amount of money you (blog publisher) can expect from Google Adsense depends
upon several factors. If your blog draws tons of traffic and you focus on a
particular niche, Google will serve ads that appeal to visitors of your site.
For instance, if you maintain a popular blog devoted to portable media player,
you can make a windfall because of the high level of competition for related
keywords. Rates for competitive keywords can exceed $1 which impacts your
blog's earning potential. Conversely, if you are in a less competitive niche,
you get occasional traffic only, thus less visitors click on your ads which
equates to less money earned.
How much each advertisement pays per generated click is also another important
factor. Each Adsense ad is not worth the same. An ad may give you ten cents
while another may give you $1 per click. It depends on the demand for that kind
of ad. If a number of advertisers are bidding for the same advertising space,
the advertiser offering the most per click will get their ad displayed first.
Ad formats and placements influence revenue. Placing ads on the right part of
the blog page is significant so that visitors looking at your page will see the
ad, at the same time it will be not be overly intrusive to put visitors off.
Fundamentally though, it is all about content. To make money from Adsense, you
have to know what your visitors are looking for. It may be information on a
topic, a product they want to buy or a service they want to avail of and
entertainment. Offering visitors good content will generate highly relevant ads
which in turn will draw more clicks on the ads displayed. To optimize content,
the same basic rules for search engine optimization apply.
Google doesn't publish the percentage it takes as a commission and only
displays what the blog owner receives in member reports. However, you can make
a rough estimate. The average click through rate (CTR) for online advertising
is generally around 0.5 to 1%. CTR is the rate at which visitors click an
advertisement usually calculated as a percentage of ad impressions (number of
times a specific ad has been displayed). What each click pays is dependent on
the content and keywords that are generating the ads being served.
Although Google doesn't release the amount it pays for keywords, you can sign
up as an advertiser on top of being a participant in the Adsense program for $5
and see for yourself how much advertisers are paying Google for various click
through. For example, a thousand page views with Google ads on them per day, at
1% click through rate and 25 cents per click will yield $2.50 per day. Not a
lot but it can cover hosting fees or service fees.
Google Adsense is not a get rich quick program. But there are documented cases
of bloggers earning as much as $5,000 a month and more. In fact, Jason
Calacanis sold his blog network, Weblogs Inc. for a whopping $25 - $40 million
on Google Adsense revenues of $1 million yearly. There isn't any sense why a
blogger can't earn much from Google Adsense program. Definitely, there are
thousands of dollars worth of reasons to make money from Google Adsense.
About the Author
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