The process is simple.
You sign up for AdSense and if your site is accepted, (we’ll cover this process
later in the course) Google gives you some code to paste into your web pages. It’s
JavaScript stuff that you can simply add into the HTML of your page. When
someone views your page this JavaScript fetches ads from Google. If they then
CLICK on your ad, Google charges the advertiser a click through fee and shares it
with you.
This is entirely AUTOMATIC so if you have a content rich site with lots of traffic
that is not currently making you any money, AdSense is something you should
seriously consider.
Now maximising this process is much harder and it raises what I call the content
dilemma which we’ll explore later too: Is your site designed to earn AdSense
revenue or is its main objective something else?
The reason you need to think this one through is that when someone clicks on an
AdSense ad on your website they go away because AdSense ad clicks never open
up a new window.
So that’s the background to AdSense. Tomorrow we’ll look at ways to maximise
the amount of money that Google sends you. There are two pretty complex
processes going on behind the scenes that we will examine, paying particular
attention to those things that are within your control. Not everything is!