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The Ultimate Guide to Google AdSense for Search on Your Blog

Ileane

AdSense publishers are bloggers and webmasters who have been approved by the Google AdSense team to participate in the program and earn a cut from the ads placed on their blogs.

In a nutshell this is how the AdSense program works: Advertisers set up accounts in AdWords and Google will attempt to match up the ads and display them on the web pages with relevant content. The hope is that people will see an ad that interests them, and they will click through to the Advertiser's site and eventually invest in their products or services.

Face it, some people just don't like AdSense

Seems like a nice simple strategy were in the end, everyone is happy. The Advertiser gets business, Google makes money, and the AdSense publisher (you) get's a nice cut too. But the the concept of using AdSense as a method of monetizing your blog or site is met with some controversy. Here are some of the arguments I hear against using AdSense:

My response to this negative feedback is summed up in a podcast that I recorded for teaching new bloggers how to launch their first blog. This episode is called Start Your Blogging Journey Today and one of the things I share is how you need to develop goals for your blog.
Let me explain how this relates to using AdSense or not.

Let's use this example, let's say the goal of your blog is to introduce your own products or services that you want people to buy. In that case you might not want to use AdSense. But let's face it, most of us aren't selling our own products when we start blogging.

We want to create our own products, and we might even be working on creating our own products, but we're just not there yet! In that case, there's nothing wrong with using AdSense to supplement our income until we do launch our own products.

Next, I know that a lot of people have failed to earn a good amount of money with AdSense. The primary reason people can't earn with AdSense is because they simply don't get enough traffic. It took me 2 years to get a payout from AdSense and it wasn't until I monetized my YouTube channel that I started getting regular payouts. The point here is that if I didn't have my AdSense account in the first place I never would have found out what a Gold Mine there is waiting for me on YouTube.

My rebuttal to AdSense making your site look “cheap” might is a little more controversial and opinionated.
Maybe it's just me but most of the bloggers that I see saying this are using Amazon (don't get me wrong I have nothing against Amazon, in fact I like Amazon) or they have those intrusive pop-ups on their blogs. I know this is a generalization, so with that being said, here are a couple of ways that you can use AdSense that can keep your blog out of the “cheap” looking category.

Tips for AdSense Placement with Style

Question: Do you know that I use AdSense on this blog? Probably not because if you're a regular reader of the blog, you probably will never see the AdSense blocks because of my secret placement strategy.

What is my secret placement strategy? I guess I kept you in suspense long enough but before I share it with you, I need to say a quick word about the death of AdSense for Feeds.

For those that don't know we used to be able to integrate AdSense with our RSS feeds powered by FeedBurner.  Here's the statement from Google:

“AdSense for feeds is going away

  • On December 3rd, 2012, AdSense ads will stop serving on RSS feeds and you’ll no longer see feed units in your My ads tab.
  • FeedBurner URLs powered by Google will continue to function. As a result, it won’t be necessary to redirect your subscribers to different URLs or to take any other action on the account.”

For those of you who are worried about FeedBurner going away, please read the second bullet point again and again until you start to hear it in your sleep. Or – you can read about how Sharon Hurley Hall uses Feedly instead.

AdSense for Search To the Rescue

AdSense for search is by no means something new, yet if you're currently using the default WordPress search then it is certainly is a “new” feature that you should consider adding to your blog.  As your blog grows, you will find it more and more difficult to find your old posts to create internal links or simply to solve a problem that you get a question about if you stick with the WordPress search.

For example, those of us who have CommentLuv Premium should be sure to rotate the content in those five extra posts we get so we can leave a relevant link in comments when we're blog hopping. With a Google Custom Search, you'll find the right post every time. Even if it's a guest post! Try it and you'll see what I mean.

Ooops! I almost forgot. I need to show you how EASY it is to set it up don't I? Well, here you go – this is How To Create a Google Custom Search for Your Blog with AdSense

Ok, so now here comes the “secret” strategy that I am testing for monetizing this blog and I'll share the steps with you now:
Now we all know that you can find tons of strategies out there for finding the best ad placement, but this is the one I use and so far it has been working for me. The key is to keep testing the placement of ad until you find the sweet spot that works for you and your readers.
What's your strategy?
Are you using a Custom Google Search on your blog? Share some of your tips with us in the comments below.
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