How to use Adsense

bydonherby

214 followers

4 years ago

This is my first tutorial blog, please fell free to send me some feedback. I wanted to try out Google Adsense and couldn't find many tutorials in WA and all I found on line was outdated, since Adsense must have changed just recently.

Training Level 3, lesson 7 explains how to set up Adsense.

https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/training/online-entrepreneur-certification-making-money-level-3/getting-paid-for-ads-on-your-site

In this lesson Kyle suggests so experiment with it and see if you can make some extra revenue by adding ads. I wanted to try it out right away. Getting set up with Adsense is straight forward, and I won't get into that. There is an approval process, but if you build your website according to the WA training, there won't be a problem to get approved.

But from here on I had some challenges. I think I resolved them and here are my findings. First I would suggest that you link google Analytic to Adsense, it is convenient to have your analytics available on the Adsense site.

Log in to Adsense, I'll walk you through: The menu is on the left.

Home: Gives your earning overview and below your analytics. Not important when you start.

Ads: Gives you two options on the top bar:

1.By Site: This requires you to set up Auto Ads. This means google will place the ads for you on your site. You can choose the ad density. I wanted to try it and chose the lowest ad density. All I can say that I was shocked. My beautiful site was completely covered with irrelevant ads, like ads everywhere. I immediately removed the code. Funny is to mention, that I made $1.08, in the half hour the ads were up! But to me a clean site is more important than the possible ad money. If you are still interested in Auto Ads, it's really simple, you click on "get code", adjust the ad density and import the code, done.

2. By ad unit: To me this is the way to go. It's more work to set up, but worth it. This is how you proceed: First you have to block all the ad categories you don't want to see on your website. If you don't block certain ad categories you will see any possible type of ad on your site. You want to avoid that and be as relevant to your niche as google lets you to be.

Click on "Blocking Controls" and activate the review center. This will open "content" as a subcategory to "blocking controls", and below you'll see "all sites" and after a bit it will show your website. If you have only one website you can block unwanted categories in "all sites", or you can wait for your website to show up below "all sites" and then choose the categories specific to that one site. If you plan to have multiple sites, this is the better way to do it.

When you click on "all sites' or your website name, it will show you a few boxes. If you are not familiar with any advertiser companies, all you have to look at is "Manage Sensitive Categories" and "Manage General Categories". Have a look at the other boxes, they are all self-explanatory. Go on "Manage Sensitive Categories" first. Its easy, just block the categories you don't want to see on your website. I blocked them all.

Then go to "Manage General Categories" and now the work begins. You have to know that google won't let you block all but one. If you block the first lets say 20, it will eventually not let you block anymore. You really have to dive into the category details. I first blocked what I knew for sure I wouldn't want to see on my website. Then I went thru the categories that I thought could be acceptable. I am in the food business, so I decided to allow some car ads. So you have to click on "Automotive" and it will give you all the subcategories and some sub-subcategories ( which are indicated in blue). You can block each sub- and sub sub-category individually. The system counts how many you block and might cut you off when you reached the limit. It took me some time to eliminate what I really didn't want. At the end you have to take the good with a bit of the bad. Make sure to open all 50 rows, since it will only show you 15 rows by default.

Once that is all set up you can go back to "Ads" and choose "by ad unit". It will give you three options, which are self-explanatory. I tried all three options ( display, in-feed, in-article) and I found the display ads by far the easiest, and I couldn't see that much of a difference to the other two options. Once set up, it will give you a "create" button, which will give you the code to import into your site. Now go into the WP back office of your site, click on the post or page you want to show the ad in and import the code into the spot you want the ad to appear. The ad will show up within minutes. I started with one ad per blog. I showed the result to several people and everybody thought it didn't disturb my blogs.

I want my site to be clean and I want to build followers that keep coming and I don't want to chase them away with ads. On the other hand people are so used to ads, that I think when ads are placed carefully, they can add some easy revenue. I just started, so it is an experiment for me. My focus will always be content and offering people a great service.

if you have questions, I am happy to share my thoughts.

Thanks for reading, all the best!