Making Money Part 1: Google Adsense

I've been a blogger ever since blogging became a 'thing'. From about 2002 - 2005 I was on blogspot, from 2005 - 2009 I was on Livejournal, and after 2009 I was on Facebook. Now I'm on all 3. After I left blogspot in 2005 because I wanted more control over who read my blog - and Livejournal offered many options for privacy - I didn't tinker around with blogspot for a while.

Between 2006 and 2011 I worked for What a Bargain, a brick-and-mortar local store trying to make some money on ebay. I learned a LOT about ebay during those years, and decided that one day I would love to be a Trading Assistant and put random people's things up on ebay. I shelved that idea once I became a busy mother of children, although it's still something I plan do once my children are older, IY"H.

When I was bored of just putting things up on ebay and answering inquiries, I decided to try my hand a little at marketing for What A Bargain. I opened a facebook page and placed facebook ads. It cost me a few pennies and I have no idea if it panned out. My second idea was to open a blog - Bargain Ebay - where I simply copied and pasted some of the ebay listings, figuring if someone did a google search for a certain item they might stumble across it on blogger. It turned out to be tedious and I dropped it. (One of the pluses of having a blog like that in conjunction with your ebay account is that if you put a 'linkback' at the end of the links of your items - i believe the link is "?refid=store, the storeowner makes a little commission off every sale. This was my first intro into the world of affiliate marketing.) But just when I started the blog - in 2007 - Google Ads had been launched and I knew very little about it but was curious what would happen if I would put up google ads. Back then, starting a Google Adsense account and putting the code into the blog was very clumsy and cumbersome and the earnings weren't that great either; I didn't think I would make much money from it. But I did it anyway - what did I stand to lose, really?



Anyway, fast forward five years. Affiliate marketing has become huge. My friend Ellen at HelpEllen.com was raving about affiliate marketing on a mothers' forum we both belong to. I didn't think I had the determination or tenacity to be busy with blogging and writing and all it entailed so I put it out of my mind. When I finally did decide to try my hand at it - and was shocked how easy it was - I checked my google Adsense account and was extremely surprised that I had made a grand total of 36 cents in the short time I had been involved with the bargain ebay blog. 36 cents! Ha! But it was money, and it was my jumpstart point to rekindle my Adsense account.

The question most people have is - how prudent is it to put adsense ads on your blog? Should you put it there the minute you start blogging? Should you wait until you have more content? Personally, I think that putting Google Ads on your blog right away is not wrong. You do want to start making money as soon as people start visiting your blog. But don't overdo it; don't put google ads EVERYWHERE, or other ads etc. Whenever I start a new blog  - and I'm now up to five blogs, I just recently launched JMVids, a collection of Jewish Music Videos on Youtube - I put adsense up immediately. (surprisingly, that blog already has 22 views, and I did no marketing for it, except to put links up on my other blogs. More on marketing much later.) I save the Amazon and Linkshare ads for later, once I'm a little more established, so that I don't appear greedy. (I will walk you through Adense soon, and will walk you through Amazon and Linkshare in later posts.) The only exception is of course the Sample Blog, because I'm designing it as a work in progress with you. That blog already has 33 views so I'm a little antsy as time is passing by and I'm not putting up Google Ads (although I probably wouldn't make much money there anyway.)

Let me add one little caveat here though: I am NOT a google ads expert. I know there is so much that ca be done with Google Ads - you can tweak around the ad placement, put on video or image links or text links - there is a lot to play around with. I never bothered; it's too time consuming and confusing to me. Google Adsense is one of THE MOST CONFUSING WEB SITES there is; it took me several months just to set up the financial parts of it. Therefore I won't be able to really guide you through Adsense; there are no doubt other blogs that are more comprehensive on that - heck, there are hundreds of blogs similar to this one with articles on affiliate marketing - and I will try to find a good link with good explanations for you that I can even perhaps borrow from.

But for now, let's do the very, very basic Google Adsense setup.

Before I begin, let me say this: Google Adsense is not a goldmine; it depends on how much traffic your blog gets, and it also very largely depends on how many of your readers actually click on the ads. My autism parenting blog gets pretty high traffic by now -  I'm up to 13,000 + views and the blog is only 2 months old - yet on a good day I make $2 or $3. That is because I get 1000s of impressions but very little clickthroughs. There isn't much you can do to get people to click on your google ads. You're not allowed to ask your readers to click. They have to click on their own. and youre not allowed to click on your own google ads, tempting as it may be sometimes simply because the ad content looks good. But imagine this: on the very day I started the KosherDelish blog, I made $10 in google ad revenue. Somehow I got about 5 or so clicks. It was shocking.

So I can't guarantee you any big money from Google Ads. In my 2 months of blogging I still haven't cut the $100 minimum for a check. But I'm patient. Affiliate marketing/blogging is totally an investment. You never know how many months down the line your readership will pick up suddenly. You never know when you'll have a good day and get many clicks. It's something to invest in and hope for the best.

So, go to your blog dashboard. Click on 'earnings'

Ignore "Google Affiliate Ads" for now. They really don't have such good companies and I haven't found  it very useful. Amazon and Linkshare have better companies. Glick on "Get Started" on the left part, the Google Adsense part.

If you don't have an adsense account, choose the button on the left. If you do already have an Adsense account, from an old blog - like I did - go with the option on the right. You can also choose to familiarize yourself with the q & a - 'how much will I earn? When will I get paid?' to find out more information.

I will not run you through the process of setting up your Google Adsense account since I already have an account associated with all of my blogs. I will give you some time to set it up; once it's all set up you should see the above screen on your Dashboard.

You will then be able to choose whether you want ads displayed only in the sidebar or also in your posts. Of course I choose both; the more exposure the merrier. But it's up to you to decide how you want your ads to appear.

Your next step is to customize where and how those ads appear. Personally I like when they are the first thing on the sidebar. I don't like when it's a flat banner between your blog heading and your posts; that feels a little too greedy to me. But it's a personal decision you can make.

Having Google ads appear in your sidebar as the first box on top of the sidebar is Google Adsense's default layout. If you don't like it, you can move it around in the Layout portion of your dashboard.

This is how the google ads will appear by default. The first thing in your sidebar, and right underneath the first post.

To tweak the settings of your adsense gadget, go to your dashboard, Click on Layout, (you will be prompted first to save your adsense settings). Scroll down until you see the Adsense gadget, the first gadget on the right side.

Hit the 'edit' button on the adsense gadget.

You can now configure the width, coloring, text vs text & image, placement, etc. You can also move the  adsense gadget elsewhere if you don't like the default placement.

Hit preview to check if you like the changes, then save arrangement. Your initial Google Ads setup is done! You'll now start making money from getting many views and the clicks from your viewers.

There are a few adsense tips that I still want to add at a later date, but I'm rushed for time and want to research it better. If any of you readers have anything to add that will be helpful to this post or have any questions please do speak up! Thanks.