For new writers or bloggers, if you want to make money, but don't want to spend a lot of money; google adsense is the way to go.

What is google adsense you ask? Well google adsense is a free program that you can join where google will place ads on your website. Why would you want ads on your website? Because when someone comes along and clicks on any ad, you get paid. Sure it does take a lot to make decent money, but the more traffic = $$$$$. So your whole goal is to bring traffic to your website.

I have only been using google adsense for a week, and already I have made almost $5.00. I know that seems like small change, but I have also only had my website up for a week, so that's pretty good. The more content you have, the more ads you can have on your site, the more your site is indexed...and voila! Money will begin to role in. Plus what's great is there is no cost to you. And it's fully automated. The only thing you have to do, once you set it up, is just get as much content to your site as you can. Build your pages up.

One thing google does not like, is you having a whole website based on telling people to click on your ads. You can do an informative article, like this one, but you can't straight out ask people to click on your ads. Basically the more traffic you bring to your website, the more chances you have that people will actually click on your ads.

What's great about adsense is that google will give you ads that relate to your content on your site, so if your site is on dogs, your ads will be on dogs too. Or if your site deals with money, celebrities, news, shoes, fashion, etc...so will your ads. Also you can add a search bar powered by google, and any time someone uses it to search the web...bling! Bling!

I recommend google adsense to any website, most websites out there use it now so it won't take credibility away from your site, plus it generates extra revenue that perhaps you hadn't counted on.

There are many reasons why people hate AdSense and most of them are quite silly. I've taken the top 10 reasons below, and discussed each of them individually.

There are some valid concerns, definitely, but a few of them are just ridiculous.

10 - Poor email support / Poor support overall

This is a fair point - AdSense can and should do more in terms of tech support.

However, when you consider the sheer number of people who use AdSense and even if you place the percentage of people who need tech support generously low, that's still a lot of users.

I'd like to see the Google AdSense team do more (they've improved since last year, IMO), especially in replying to all email support queries within 12 hours. Impossible? Hardly.

Read the rest of this entry

There's something big happening on the neterwebs. Don't know if you've noticed.

For whatever reason, Google has been taking a serious gut check. Lately, they've been cracking down hard on AdSense publishers from a number of angles (spammyness, mature content, etc).

Well, not "for whatever reason" - I'm sure its because they're feeling pressure from some corner of the woods. I'm sure they feel dollars and cents and shareholders breathing down their necks.

I'm sure they notice things like the recent Real Simple article my wife showed me entitled "the digital doc" which outlines 5 rules to find good medical information online. What was Rule No. 1? Skip Google.

Ouch. I bet that hurt. The "don't do evil" company let status quo evil reign for too long, while money poured into their bank accounts, and their search results got all facked up with spam. Now even the common person doubts Google. That's sad.

Think about it. Google originally succeeded through grassroots word of mouth. Now their empire is on the downturn for the very same reason. I mean, thing's can't be good when the "Google isn't a reliable source of information" meme gets into the mainstream. Larry and Sergey must be furious about negative PR like this.

In an effort to clean up its act, Google is taking down AdSense publishers left and right. Some of those publishers are at least mostly legit. They are trying to kill the beast they created.

The good news is that if Google executes this properly, it could ultimately help the web along with white hat publishers. I say that with multiple meanings. On the one hand, more room in the search space will hopefully open up for good content. But on the other hand, hopefully those of us who got stung by Google's recent crack down will start to diversify out of the Google AdSense monopoly. Hopefully Yahoo will make its move into the market soon. Hopefully alongside Microsoft. Stung by Google, hopefully publishers will try out companies like AdBrite, AuctionAds, ContextLinks, Azoogle and more.

It's in all of our best interests to stop the dependency on a single company that so many people have developed. If your livelihood depends on Google, do you have a backup plan? Have you tried out other ad systems?

Here's a recommendation. Put a backup plan in place. Try out other ad systems. While you may not see the immediate results of AdSense, you may come to discover that with a good combination of partnerships, you can make as much or more than with AdSense.

I'm glad that my most profitable site was booted from AdSense. It forced my hand to try out other systems, and in the process to discover that my site's were undermonetizing. Dependence on the ease of G can create artificial plateau's on your profit.

So here's to the collapse of the Google empire and to the success of the web. Let's hope it happens quickly, smoothly and productively.