I never wanted to have ads on my website, but I’ve become a big fan of Google’s AdSense ads. I’ve actually found the targeted advertising to be sometimes useful instead of being a distraction – like advertising normally is. That and I wouldn’t mind earning a little money from my website, perhaps enough to pay for web hosting. I really don’t get very much traffic, but just in case I begin to, I’d like to know how to take advantage of it.
It’s as easy to setup as I would expect from Google – that is very easy. All you have to do is register with AdSense, decide what size ad you want, and paste some code they give you into your page. It took a few hours before ads started to appear. At first it was just PSA’s (Public Service Announcements), but I’m guessing Google just needed to index my site. I also noticed that I didn’t have permalinks enabled in WordPress, which made it so that AdSense couldn’t target content on a lot of my links. As soon as I enabled permalinks though, the ads came in immediately.
It’s hard to tell how much I could get paid. Sites that use AdSense don’t seem to talk much about their earnings. I’m sure it’s different for everyone too, so I figure the best way to figure it out is to just do it and see. I got paid 7 cents just for the few clicks I made myself last night after setting it up. It hasn’t updated the total for what I’ve earned today, which I’m guessing is mostly from my clicking and playing with it.
So if you want to help me out, click a few ad links. I’ll try to let everyone know how it goes.