Introduction
Do you want to make money from your website or blog?
Well, you can—by running ads on your web pages.
To do this, you need to partner with an ad network that works with advertisers to serve ads to your pages. The biggest such ad network is Google AdSense, and a lot of sites make a lot of money from running AdSense ads.
All you need to know is what types of ads you want on your site, where you want them, how big they should be, and other such details. AdSense will determine the most relevant ads to run on your site and automatically serve them to people when they visit your site. It’s really quite simple.
In fact, using AdSense to generate revenue from regular old websites is so simple and so popular that hundreds of thousands of sites have been doing it for several years. Those sites got a bit of a surprise in November 2011, however, when they woke up to a brand-new interface for Google AdSense, as well as a load of new and changed features.
Of course, all these changes were designed to make AdSense easier to use, and thus easier to generate more revenues from those AdSense ads. But change of any kind, even good change, can be both surprising and difficult to adapt to. What’s the new way to do all the stuff you used to do?
That’s where this book comes in. Over the past several years I’ve written several books that covered Google AdSense, including Que’s Using Google AdWords and AdSense and Googlepedia: The Ultimate Google Resource. I know how AdSense works and how different websites use it. Heck, I use AdSense myself on my own website and blog. So when Google made those big AdSense changes, I knew it was time to do a new book that covered all of AdSense’s new features—and helped current users navigate all that was new or changed.
What’s in This Book
Google AdSense Quick Guide contains everything both new and existing AdSense users need to know to make money from online advertising. I’ll walk you through the basics of pay-per-click advertising and show you what you need to do to place ads on your site—with a particular focus on AdSense’s new and changed features.
This book contains eight chapters that walk you through the entire AdSense process:
1. Making Money from Google AdSense
2. What’s New in the New AdSense
3. Navigating the New AdSense Interface
4. Monitoring and Managing Your Account
5. Creating and Managing Ads on Your Website
6. Reviewing and Blocking Ads
7. Viewing AdSense’s New Performance Reports
8. Doing Your Old Tasks the New Way
And although I’ve dedicated several chapters to new and changed features, I’ll make it a point throughout the book to point out what’s different, for existing AdSense users.
Who Can Use This Book
Google AdSense Quick Guide is written for both existing and new AdSense users. I cover everything beginners need to know to start making money from AdSense, as well as focus on the new and changed features of the new AdSense interface. There’s something here for everyone.
How to Use This Book
I hope that this book is easy enough to read that you don’t need instructions. That said, there are a few elements that bear explaining.
Most notable of these elements are what we in the publishing business call “notes.” They look like this:
This is a note that presents information of interest, as well as tips and cautions for using AdSense.
Obviously, there are lots of web page addresses in the book, like this one: www.google.com. When you see one of these addresses (also known as a URL), you can go to that web page by clicking the URL in the text or by entering the URL into the address box in your web browser. I’ve made every effort to ensure the accuracy of the web addresses presented here, but given the ever-changing nature of the web, don’t be surprised if you run across an address or two that’s changed. I apologize in advance.
There’s More Online
When you want to learn a little bit more about me and my books, visit my website at www.molehillgroup.com. There’s a lot of good information there. And don’t forget to visit www.quepublishing.com for other fine books from the publisher, too!
Get Ready to Click!
With all these preliminaries out of the way, it’s now time to get started. So get ready to turn the page and learn how to generate real income from your website—using Google AdSense.