wayne on August 29, 2008
Making money online is possible through a variety of methods on the Internet. Using Google's AdSense is a great way to get started. You'll see on my blog here that I have implemented two AdSense units, one to the left of this text, and another at the end of the post next to my bookmarking widgets. In this post, I'll show you how to create your first AdSense ad unit and integrate it into your blog.
An AdSense ad unit is a set of ads displayed as a result of one piece of AdSense ad code. I'll show what this looks like when we get into implementing the code. Just like any other third-party tool you might use, there is code that you'll need to integrate into your web site or blog.
When your page is displayed to users, the code that you need to make this all work will reach out to Google and obtain ads that are relevant to the content of the page the ads are to be displayed on. This is a really nice part of the whole AdSense set up since you can place a single piece of code into your template or AdSense widget and get a variety of ads based on the text within your post.
Disclaimer: I'm not the authority on how to make money, I leave that to the 'Make Money Online' guys, whose blogs normally have that new car smell. However, I do know one thing, if you want to give yourself the opportunity to make a little extra cash, you have to at least try. You can't expect to make a little extra money without giving it that old 'college try' right? Right.
Setting up your AdSense account
Before you can create your first AdSense ad unit, you need to have an account with Google. If you don't already have an account you can create one and then login to your account.
Once logged in, from your Manage Account page you might see it in the 'Try Something New' section, or you might not. Look for the AdSense link, and if you don't see it, you can access the AdSense login page here.
Apply for Google Adsense
Google treats AdSense just like any other application they offer, however you need to fill out an application and provide Google with more information than you did for simply creating a Google account. They're going to pay you money after all, so of course, they want to know where the ads are going to display, and a little more about you and your site.
I'm going to use my Blogger blog ViewsOnLife.net for the examples within this post. For those of you that are not familiar with this blog, it is a testing ground for all the examples and walk-through's I'm doing for the Blogger.com Help Series.
NOTE! If you are using Blogger and already have an AdSense account, you can add a new AdSense ad unit using the AdSense widget in the Page Layout administrative area instead of going through all these steps. I can do the same thing too, but I won't. I'll be implementing this using the HTML/JavaScript widget instead.
Fill out the registration form
The registration form is pretty simple. Give Google the address of your web site, your name, address and contact information. Also, you may want to give the form a good read since you are also going to be agreeing to several important policies. What it boils down to is that you agree to not work the system and use it as Google intends. Seems fair.
Once you submit, you will need to confirm the information. Go ahead and review the form and submit it.
Play the waiting game
Now that you have submitted your application for Google AdSense, you'll need to wait a few days before you can continue. It could possibly take up to a week due to the volume of applications they receive. For testing purposes I went through this process, I tried to create a test account and was shut down. Shot out of the sky as it were. They reviewed the application within 24 hours, which is excellent turn time in my opinion.
Once your application is approved, you will want to revisit the account information screens and provide Google with the important stuff, like where to have the checks mailed. I'm sure no one will forget that part.
Creating your first ad unit
Once you have gained full access to your Google AdSense account you can begin to create AdSense ad units.
There are currently 5 different types of ads at your disposal.
- AdSense for Content - This is what we'll be implementing in this post.
- AdSense for Search - When you implement this component on your site or blog, the users search results will contain ads that are relevant to their search terms.
- AdSense for Feeds - This will place ads within your RSS feed
- Video Units - Will display videos with ads
- AdSense for Mobile Content - If you operate a mobile enabled site, this will allow you to display ads within the constraints of a small viewing area.
Choose the AdSense for Content link since we are only covering those ads in this post. Once you do, you are then presented with an option, would you like to use an Ad Unit or a Link Unit? The main difference between the two is that the Link Units will only ever show a list of links, whereas the Ad Unit will show both links with descriptive text or graphical ads. I will be using the Ad Unit ad type here.
Ad units
Ad units can come in three flavors, text and image ads, text only or image only. For example, the ad unit I have at the beginning of this post is always going to show an image, because I chose image only for that ad unit. The ad unit I have at the bottom of the post will show text and images. It all happens automatically for me, and I like that I don't need to think much about it once I'm done creating the ad unit.
Once you decide on which type of ad you'd like to display, you can click the continue button to move to the next step in the ad creation process.
Define the size, color and corners
The second step in the Ad Unit creation process is to define the dimensions and color of the ad unit. There are a variety of options and you can see what each one looks like here. You want to ensure that the ad will blend well with your site and looks as though it was meant to be there, and not an afterthought. Ideally at least.
Given that I have recently decided to go with a new theme on my blog, I want to ensure that I choose something that fits well into the sidebar, where I will be placing my ad unit. I've decided on a 250x250 Square unit.
The next step is to choose a color theme for the ad unit. The area provides you great flexibility as to the colors you can use and parts of the ad unit you can modify. If you do any modifications to the default color schemes, you can opt to save the color palette with the 'Save as new palette' link below the palette drop down. Google provides you with some thoughts on what color palettes are the most successful.
Once you have defined the colors you want to use, the next step is to define how the corners of the Ad Unit will look. You can have squared off corners, rounded or very rounded corners. Each one you select will display in the sample ad unit that is also on the screen, or you can preview the AdSense unit by clicking the link that say, you guessed it, 'Preview this AdSense unit'.
One final step for the ad creation process is to tell Google what to do when it cannot find a relevant ad to display. While I have never seen this happen, it's a good idea to give this some thought. Your choices are:
- Show public service ads - My personal favorite, Google will pick a public service ad to display when it cannot determine what ad to display.
- Show non-Google ads from another URL - I have yet to use this option, but if you choose this, you will need to supply Google with a URL.
- Fill space with a solid color - This will fill the ad space with a solid color when an appropriate ad cannot be determined. This may be a nice option, but keep in mind that the space will appear as particular color and that the space will still be 'filled' and will not collapse to allow other page content to fill the space. A nice option for a header perhaps.
Define your channels
Clicking continue from here will take you a page where you can define a channel for the ad unit. You can think of a channel the same as a category for the ad. As you continue to build different ad units, you might be interested in categorizing the ads into channels to be able to determine which channels are performing better.
Consider this, if you have two ad units on a page, you can specify one to be in channel 'A' and the other in channel 'B'. By specifying them into different channels, you can then tell which ad is being clicked on by the channel you place it in. Google's AdSense reporting will display your results by channel if you specify a channel for the ad unit.
You don't need to make a selection here or define any channels for the ad unit. This is an optional step. I use them because I like to know which web site and which ad unit was displayed and clicked on. Here are the channels I've defined for my account:
The above image shows that I have defined 5 channels, one that I'm not going to share with everyone for personal reasons. You can see that my ViewsOnLife ad on the ViewsOnLife blog has already received a click which earned me a cool 20 cents. yay. This is why you might want to use the channels, to be able to identify which ad units are viewed, and how they are performing.
For the ad unit I'll be using, I've defined a channel of 'ViewsOnLife SideNav' which describes the site and where I will be placing the ad unit. When I view my daily results, I'll be able to see the number of times this particular ad unit was displayed and how many times it was clicked by visitors. Very handy to have when you are dealing with multiple sites or blogs, or even different ads in various parts of the same site.
Name your new ad unit
Finally, on the last step before we get our implementation code, we can give the ad unit a name. Normally, I will keep the existing name and add the channel text I supplied to the front of the ad unit name. I end up with this:
ViewsOnLife SideNav 250x250, created 8/27/08
This pretty much tells me everything I need to identify the ad unit amongst several ad units. As you become more proficient with the Google AdSense interface and create more ads, you will see the importance of giving your ads an appropriate name just so you can keep track of what's what.
Clicking the 'Submit and Get Code' button will complete the process and provide you with the code necessary to implement the ad unit on your web site or blog. There is a lag time of about 10 minutes after you create the ad unit to when it will actually work on your site. If you immediately pop it on your site, you might find that it doesn't work. Give it a few minutes and check it again, it will eventually start to display ads.
Check out the resulting AdSense code
Here is the resulting AdSense code that was generated when I stepped through this process.
<script type="text/javascript"><!--
google_ad_client = "pub-xxx";
/* ViewsOnLife SideNav 250x250, created 8/27/08 */
google_ad_slot = "xxx";
google_ad_width = 250;
google_ad_height = 250;
//-->
</script>
<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">
</script>
You can see there are two script tags in the above code. The first script tag defines a few properties that is used by the second script tag. You'll also notice that my name for the ad unit is also there as a Javascript comment. Makes perfect sense to include it since it will also help me identify the ad unit when I'm looking at the code in my web site or blog. I've replaced my ad unit info with xxx's for display reasons.
If you ever need to make changes to the ad unit in the future, you should not do it within this script, you should go into Google AdSense and use the 'Manage Ads' area where you can find the ad based on the name you gave it and make your changes there.
Implementing your ad unit
I will be implementing this new ad unit onto my blog ViewsOnLife.net, which is a Blogger.com blog. Other blogging systems may provide the same type of support, but I can't guarantee that of course. I'm sure you understand.
View the Layout Page Elements administration page from within the Blogger management area, add a new HTML/JavaScript widget to your side bar. Simply dump the code that Google has provided into to content area and leave the title blank. Click 'Save' and you're done!
Like I mentioned before, you will need to wait a few if you just created the ad unit before it displays on the site.
You can see the results of this effort on the ViewsOnLife.net blog.
Conclusion
Establishing your AdSense account and implementing the ads is a pretty easy thing to do. Google has made it easy for the lay-person to get into online advertising, so good on them.
Personally, I don't mind seeing ads on a web site. There are those out there that feel the opposite, but I think we all agree on one thing. A site without content and only ads is a site that we don't like to visit. Be mindful of how and where you place your ads, and don't place too many. Either you are going to get hits on the ad or you are not. Too many will make your site or blog look like you are desperate to make money, and that will only work against you in my opinion.
I hope that you have found this post helps you out and that you have now got your feet wet in all that is online advertising with Google AdSense.
If you have found it helpful, or find there is more to be said about anything in this post, please let us all know by leaving a comment.
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