1. GETTING STARTED WITH GOOGLE ADSENSE

1.1 The Basics : Buil ding Yo ur Site

Since this book came out lots of people started asking me how they can
make money with AdSense. I’m always happy to help people make the most
of Google, but man y of these people didn’t even have a website!

Here’s the bad news: to make money w ith AdSense, you’ve got to have a
website. There’s no getting around that. The good news though is that it’s
never been easier to create a website from scratch and use it to generate
real revenue.

I’m going to gi ve a brief introduction here to creating a website from the
ground up. You can find plenty more information online and I’ll tell you where
to look. A good place to start is my own book How To Build Profitable
Websites Fast, available at
www.buildawebsitefast.com
.
If you already have a site u p and running, you can just skip this bit, head
down to 1.1 0 and begin reading about how to improve your AdSense
revenues.


1.2 Naming Your Site

The first thing your site will need is a name. That’s easier said than done
these days. All the best words in the dictionary have either already been
bought and built by developers or they’ve been bought and offered by
speculators.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t create a good name and buy it for a song.
Putting two words together w ith a hyphen can work (like
http://w ww.adsense-secrets.com) and there are plenty of good names
available if you’re prepared to move ou tside the world of .coms into .net and
.biz etc.

Your first stop should be www.DomainAnything.com
This is a nuts and bolts
service that lets you hunt and buy names, order hosting plans and even
submit your site to the search engines. When you’re looking for a name, you
can just toss in ten options and the site will tell you which (if any) are
available. Find a good one, and you can either buy it there or pick it up at
www.godaddy.com
(they can be a bit cheaper). All in, buying a name from
one of these service won’t cost you more than about $9 a year.

If you can’t find a name you like and that hasn’t already been grabbed, you
can take a look at sites like www .moderndomain s.com and
www.bestnames.net. These are companies that buy domain names and sell
them for a profit. There’s a good chance you’ll find some good names here
but they can cost you anything from $50 to $50,000. Before you part with a
penny, think about the advantage that a good name can bring and ask
yourself if you can’t get the extra traffic a cheaper way. Often, you can.

1.3 Choo sing A Hosting Service

Your site is going to be stored on a h osting company’s server. (You didn’t
wan t thousands of people dialing into your computer every hour, did you?)
Again, there are lots of different options available depending on how much
you want to pay and what you need.

In general, you’ll want to make sure that you have about 50 megabytes of
space (that’s enough for 100 pages!), full statisti cs reporting and most
importantly, 24 hour service. If your site goes down, you’ll be losing money
every hour it’s offline. If there’s a problem with the server, you want to make
sure it’s fixed ri ght away.

You get what you pay for w ith Web hosting. “Free” services will cost you
more than you save in lost revenu e, and you can pay up to $200 a month for
dedicated servers. Twenty bucks a month is a reasonable price to pay and
GoDaddy.com and NetworkSoluti ons.com both offer good programs.

1.4 Designing T he Site

It used to be said that absolutely anyone could create a website. That was
true: absolutely anyone who knew HTML. Today, you don’t even need to
know that. Programs like Microsoft’s FrontPage or NVU (which is free; you
can download it at www.nvu.com) l et you create sites without you n eeding to
know your tags from your tables. If you can use Word, you can create a
website.
You can either have fun playing with the programs and designing the site
yourself or you can hire a professional designer to do it for you.

Freelance sites like www.elance.com and www.guru.com
are good places to
advertise. You can invite designers to give you quotes and pick the best
based on price and talent. Be sure to check feedback and portfolios though; a
low bid is often low for a good reason.

1.5 Crea ting Content

In Chapter 11, I talk in detail about building content and optimizing what you
write to attract traffic and maximize your AdSense revenues. There are al l
sorts of ways to do th at but for the moment just bear in mi nd that the ads
that appear on your site will depend on the content on your pages. That’s
how AdSense w orks: users click on the ads because they’re relevant.

And that’s why it’s not worth putting up a site just to cash in on particu lar
keywords. Google doesn’t li ke it and neith er do users. If your site doesn’t
genuinely i nterest your vi sitors, you’ll find it hard to get traffic, links and
clicks on your ads.

But there are still a l ot of different ways to create content very easily that
improves your income. I’ll tell you all about them in Chapter 11.

It’s also worth remembering that Google doesn’t place ads on particular
types of sites, so if you’re thinking of building a casino site stuffed w ith
AdSense ads, you can forget about it; it’s not going to happen.

Before you build a site that contains any content that’s remotely (TOS) to make sure
controversial, check out the AdSense Terms of Service that it’s allowed. It will tell whether your idea is sound or whether you need to think again.

1.6 Getti ng Started With Blo gger.co m...
Want to get up and ru nning wi th AdSense really fast? One way is to open an
account at Blogger.com

Blogger is like those old free websites that you could set up in a flash but
which looked like they’d been cobbled together from bits of left-over graphics
that no one else wanted. Except that the blog you create at Blogger.com is
the real McCoy. It’s professional, it looks great… and it takes just seconds to
put together.

All you h ave to do is choose a name and title for your blog, take your pick of
the good range of templates available and get writing.

You don’t have to worry about coding or design work or images or anything
else. If you change your mind about the way your blog looks, you can just
pick a different template. All that’s left for you to do is write… and add
AdSense.

Even that’s been made easy for you.

Blogger.com lets you apply for AdSense directly from its site. It even gives
you a preview of w here your ads will appear and how they will look. While
you’re waitin g for your approval, you can play with fonts and colors so that
you’re all set up and ready to start earning.

Of course, once you’ve done that, there are all sorts of ways to play with the
layout and content. You can easily move the ads into the sidebar by clicking
the Template tab and looking for the line that says:

< !- - Begin #sidebar -- >
< div id="sidebar" >< div id="sidebar2" >

Just paste the AdSense code directly beneath it. But that’s certainl y not all.
In Chapter 11, I explain lots of different, advanced strategies that you can
use to maximize your AdSense earnings on your blog. You should certainly
use them but more important is that you make a start.

With Blogger.com, you can do that in seconds. It’s a great way to get
started, but you should think of it as blogging wi th training w heels. After a
bit you’ll want to move to your own domain so you can really pick up speed.

1.7 ... Or Goo gle’s Pa ge Creator

But blogs aren’t for everyone. Although they’re now one of the easiest ways
to get online, they have to be updated regularly and aren ’t the best option
for static content.

Fortunately Blogger isn’t the only way to get onl ine fast. Google’s Page Creator
makes building a website as simple as poin t, click
and type.

Again, you get a template that you can edit freely, and you can
also break into the H TML to paste the AdSense code. Check to see

how it looks, publish, and all you’ll have to do next i s let people know
where you are.

And that’s where the disadvantages of creating a website using a free tool
like Page Creator kicks in.

With a website created through Page Creator, Search Engine Optimization
becomes difficult. Your URL will be [yourname].googlepages.com, which is
about as catchy a ball of slush. It’s unlikely to get very far in search engines
and when you try to spread it around, it will simply make you look
unprofessional.

Page Creator can be a useful pl ace to get started bu t it’s really designed to
help people like teach ers display information to a closed audience. It’s not a
good way to earn a lot of money.

If you’re keen to get started though, if you have an audience already set
up... or if you just want to see your stuff onl ine fast — and with ads — then
it’s a fun toy to play with.

And you can always move your content onto your own URL when you’re
ready.

1.8 Search Engine O ptimization

However you decide to build your first site, people have to know you ’re
there. One of the most important ways to do that is get yourself a high-
ranking in a search engine.

There are lots of different search engines, but only three are really
important: Google, Yahoo! and MSN. In Chapter 21, I’ll talk i n more detail
about improving your search engine rankings.

If you want to take a shortcut, there are plen ty of companies which will make
the submission s for you and they’ll even optimize your site to get you as high
on the rankings as possible.

1.9 Links

Your search engine rankin g wil l depen d on a number of factors. One of those
factors is the number of si tes that link to yours. As far as Google is
concerned if lots of sites about model rai lways link to your model rai lway
site, that must be a pretty good sign that people who like model railways
think your site is good. So they’ll want to offer it to people who search for
model railways, bringing you lots of free traffic.

Once you’ve got your site up and running you’ll want to persuade other sites
to give you links. You could offer to exchange links and you could even set
up a page that contains recommended links so that you’ll have somewhere to
put them.

There’s a range of other strategies and services that you can use. You can
find out about those in Chapter 2 0.