Why we choose Google Adsense

You may have noticed that this site now carries some advertisements, and hopefully this page will explain why we choose to do this. We also hope that this can be of help to anyone trying to make that important decision of whether to keep their website clean, or hopefully cover their costs by allowing relevant and un intrusive advertisements on their site.

We had been running this website for 10 months before deciding we needed to offset some of the cost of the hosting. Then we began the long search for an easy and reasonable paying advertising scheme.

After looking at a few options it seemed that Google Adsense was the way to go, i suspected that we would not make a great deal of money as our website was not in a highly competitive field such as "mesothelioma" which virtually every website that offered information or help relating to Google Adsense seemed to be pointing to as a holy grail. (i cant confirm this but i believe it was worth over $50 at one point, meaning adds targeted towards this would gain the author of the website $50 per click). Not being the greedy type we decided to continue with our existing website and not to try and specifically design a site to gain as much money from advertisements as possible.

The first part of our article will give you a good background to Google Adsense, the second part will describe our experience from the first sign up with Google Adsense to our first payment, and the final part of this article will give you all the links needed to go and add Adsense to your own website. We hope this proves useful to you.

About Google Adsense
The idea behind Google Adsense is really good, if you have a webpage of any size then you can sign up with Google Adsense and make some money by showing relevant and un intrusive advertisements on your website. It works by using your keywords and page content to display relevant ads from Google Adsense, and if people click on these you make an amount of money (anywhere between $0.01 and $100 per click). Once you have made $100 then Google Adsense will either transfer the funds to a specified account, or send you a cheque.

Eligible sites
According to the terms of Google Adsense then any site that is not personal in nature (i.e. not one about your cat Tiddles, and i guess this covers myspace pages too). It can't contain anything of an adult nature, or anything illegal, and must be have a reasonable design (Although our simple site qualified so don't worry about this too much). I assume they check from time to time that the content of the site has not been changed to anything that breaks the Google Adsense rules.

The signup
It is free to sign up and it takes about half of an hour (which included skimming the rules). Within a few days Google Adsense team look at your site and choose whether you can join Adsense or not. After Google agree that all is fine then you have to paste the code they give you onto all of the pages where you want to display Google Adsense adds, this could take some time if you have a large site. Once complete you can log onto the adsense website and check your account.

Getting paid
Once you have made over $100 then Google Adsense will send you the money the following month. From your account you get to choose whether you to have the money sent as a cheque or transferred into your bank account.

The Google Adsense adds
From your account it is possible to choose different add types, from text lists to picture banners. For the text adds it is also possible to choose the colour scheme so it fits in nice with your website. The advertisements that are shown are related to your keywords and page content, so it is more likely that your visitors will click on the Google Adsense adds. This can present a small problem where advertisements for your competitors are shown on your site, you can fix this by blocking adds from certain websites in your Google Adsense account.

Clicking your own Google Adsense adds
This is strictly forbidden by Google, and there are many ways in place to make sure you will not get away with it. I am sure there is a threshold must be crossed before they ban you, but i would imagine it is only a few accidental clicks. You can report accidental clicks to Google Adsense, this seems the most honest thing to do.

Paying Tax
You will have to pay tax on this income, and as part of the Google Adsense setup you have to say whether you have "interests" in the US (i.e. Staff, and possible web hosting), if you do not then you don't have to pay tax to the US, but must still pay tax in your country of residence as this is classed as income.

Leaving Google Adsense
You can simply do this by removing the code from your webpages at any time.

Our Experience of Google Adsense
We decided to use Google Adsense, and after reading a few FAQ pages, and the rules we signed up. This didn't take too long as it was very straight forward, and after confirming our email address we waited to be accepted. A day later we got an email saying we had been accepted into the Google Adsense program, and we then went about adding the code to all of the pages of our website. The first day we checked the account and found we had made a small amount (less than a Dollar, but cant say exactly as this brakes the rules of Google Adsense). From then on we got a small amount a day, but quite enough to cover the costs of our web hosting. It was a very worth while exercise.

Useful links:
- Sign up here for Google Adwords (advertise on Google Adsense).

Google Adsense Official Blog.