Is Adsense Right For Your Website?

By Author: Stephanie Foster
Total Articles: 12
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You have an online business or maybe just a resource website. Earning money online isn't the easiest thing to do for most people, but running a website is often one of the better ways to market your business.

No matter how good your products are, however, not everyone will buy from you. That's where AdSense comes in.

AdSense is a service from Google that places ads on your website for you, then pays you by the click on the ad. These ads are targeted and based on the content of each page they are place on. You can decide for yourself how they will appear, including color scheme and 10 layout options. Most AdSense ads are text, but Google has recently started offering the ability to show image ads through AdSense as well.

The first benefit of this is the convenience to you as a webmaster. You don't have to search for ads for your website, Google takes care of that for you.

The next benefit is the ease of earning money. Now, you are not allowed to discuss your earnings with anyone, so I will not disclose anything resembling numbers here, but just consider that you will be paid per click. ...
... It doesn't matter what the visitor does on the site they click to, you still get paid. The amount varies, depending on the value of the particular ad.

Many people worry that they will lose sales by having AdSense on their website. However, most webmasters have not had their sales drop after adding AdSense to their websites. This is certainly something to watch out for, of course.

AdSense revenues are not likely to be terribly consistent, so they are not something you should depend upon. You will have good months and bad months.

Now, you may worry about competitors advertising on your website. This is a legitimate concern, but you do have a limited amount of control over whose ads appear on your website. You can block up to 200 websites from appearing on yours. This is a very easy number to fill up for some, so think carefully about who you really want to block.

You have a limited amount of tracking capability with AdSense to see which pages are generating revenue. You do this by creating channels, but you are limited to a maximum of 20, so you will probably want to go by themes. In addition, it takes two days for channel data to become available, so you cannot look on a day by day basis and see which channels are doing well. I prefer to look at channel data by month, so that I have a range of days to compare. You could use this to decide if you are losing sales on some pages and not earning enough from AdSense to make it worth leaving on your pages.

Now, if you are in direct sales, you will want to ensure that there is nothing in the terms of your program forbidding you to add any sort of advertising to your website, assuming you can make that kind of change in the first place. You always want to be careful to stick with the rules you agreed to so that you do not lose your business.

AdSense is quite simply ideal for pretty much any resource website. It is one of the easiest ways to add advertising with minimal effort. If you are trying your hand at affiliate programs this is a great supplement. You can block links to the companies you are promoting, but it is harder to block other affiliates who link their ads to their own website. Blocking too many websites can impact your earnings as well.

AdSense is a great solution for many websites as a way to monetize your business. Give it a try.
About the author:

Stephanie Foster is the owner of Home with the Kids, a resource that knows that there's more to staying home with your family than just business. For more home business tips, visit http://www.homewiththekids.com