Gets what you want.!

The first milestone with Google that you'll hit is the $10 amount. At $10, Google should send you a post card with your pin number. I can't tell you how many people never see that first card. Google has a predetermined amount of days before they'll allow you to request the card be sent out again. I can tell you that our second card wound up in our recycling pile, even though we were both looking for it.
It's a small, easy to miss card. And it will most like be stuck in with your weekly circulars, where it's easily lost. Once you find/get the card, key in the pin number. You'll never have to worry about it again.
If you missed keying any information, it should show up under the screen in Adsense, under the "My Account" tab. When you key in your pin, that's a great time to double check that your information is complete.
Your next milestone for Adsense will be achieving $100 in clicks and all Publishers will tell you that the first $100 on Google is the hardest.
$100 is the first level at which Google will release funds to you. Some publishers have reached their first hundred to find that Google has discovered click fraud and closed their accounts.
Others realize they need to supply Google with payment information, which in the US includes a Social Security number.
If you double-check your information at the $10 mark, hopefully you will avoid any hiccups in getting paid.
Google Requirements
There are a few things that Google requires from their Publishers. You, as an Adsense Publisher are responsible for checking out Google's Terms of Service (TOS.) Following are a few things I try to make sure I do on my own sites
The first thing is to never click on your own ads. It's called click fraud. While Google says you don't have to report yourself when you click on your own ads, I do. I believe it shows them good faith.
Google has complex algorithms they use to analyze clicks. Since you probably use Google's GMail, Toolbar, Analytics, etc., you can spend half your online time logged into Google systems. If my statistical program can give me a user's IP address along with their latitude and longitude, I'd imagine Google pretty much knows your underwear color and size.
Number two on my list is the Privacy Policy, linked from your homepage. You can use a cookie cutter Privacy Policy for all your sites. Just change the site name in the policy from site to site. This link is to a generic privacy policy on one of my sites, just change the name of the site, to the name of your site. And note, under "Email," this has a provision for e-business, you may want to change or delete.
Third, do not try to modify ads beyond what's allowed in Google's ad setup. When you set up your ads, Google allows you to customize the colors and you can change your initital decisions in Adsense. Don't try using a third party program to change a background color to a graphic, to add interest or make your ads stand out more.
Fourth on the list are pop-ups. Do not have Google ads in pop-ups.
Fifth is to avoid the words "click here" anywhere near your ads.
The next two issues are misunderstood by a lot of Publishers.
Do not have your ads directly under an article title that's asking someone to click on the ads. "Click Here to Find Hemorrhoid Relief" is a bad title, while "Hemorrhoid Relief Products" is fine. Many Publishers think that you cannot have ads under titles at all, and that's not true.
Another false perception is that you can't have ads near pictures at all. You can't have ads next to pictures without delineating the ad from the picture. I have galleries on some of my sites; and make sure the ads have a border around them. Make sure you have space between the ad border and the pictures. Never put ads next to, above or below pictures without including borders and try to make sure they don't seem to be attached.
Flashing arrows pointing to your ads, even if a border separates them is a no-no. It's the equivalent of "click here."
If you ever have a situation where you are not sure if what you are doing violates Google's TOS, email them with specifics and ask. It sometimes takes several weeks to get a reply, but it's better to show that you're concerned enough to ask. Save the email response in case someone from Google comes back to question your practices.
Placement
While Google has a heat map demonstrating where people are more likely to click on ads, with the left column and the top of articles being the "hottest" spots, the heat map placement did not work on my sites.
So, what do you do to get your click through rate to the 5% to 10% rate?
Experiment with placement. Change your ad placement every week, with the exception of the last week of the month. Adwords advertisers tend to run out of money the last few days of the month and your Adsense revenue will not necessary reflect your average earnings.
Make sure you write down what you've done, especially if you make radical changes. And when you find ad placements that work for you, stay with them.
Ad Size
Many Publishers prefer the 336X280 ad size in their articles, with a full Leaderboard on top in their header. Following are the ad sizes for Google ads.
Ad Units
728 x 90 Leaderboard
468 x 60 Banner
234 x 60 Half Banner
125 x 125 Button
120 x 600 Skyscraper
160 x 600 Wide Skyscraper
120 x 240 Vertical Banner
300 x 250 Medium rectangle
250 x 250 Square
336 x 280 Large Rectangle
180 x 150 Small Rectangle
Ad Link Units
728 x 15
468 x 15
200 x 90
180 x 90
160 x 90
120 x 90
You are allowed to have 3 Ad units, 3 Link units and 3 Search units on a page. Don't add more than the allowed amount of advertising units.
Ad Types
Ad units are the ads, which have a title, a description and a URL at the end. The title and the URL are clickable.
When it comes to Ad Units, what you need to keep in mind is that the highest paying unit is the first ad unit that appears in your html. I say that because depending on how your site is set up this may or may not be the first ad on your page. If your first ad unit is a leaderboard or skyscraper, the highest paying clicks will be in this unit. However, if your most clicked ad is the rectangle in your article, you may want to think about changing your leaderboards to link units or to reduce the size to smaller rectangles, which have less ads.
Link units are the one-liners.
Link units, which pay less, do very well on some sites. I get a large amount of click-through on them on one site. (Link units bring up secondary choices, which must be clicked before you get paid. Since they require a second click, they are not a popular choice with webmasters who know that getting a first click is difficult enough.) While most of my ad links pay a penny to $0.10, a few pay $0.59, which is very high for my niche.
Ad Appearance
Try to blend your ads into your site. You can customize the ad background, border, and type colors, including separate colors for the title, description and URL. If you don't know your background color, you can look up the hex code of colors on the net and make an educated guess.
Blend your ad, but make sure your title and URL are another color. Preferably the color you use for your links. You want your visitors to easily spot what's available to click.
Clicks, But No Money
After you've set up Adsense on your site(s), you eagerly start looking at your numbers and sooner or later, you'll run across a click with no money.
If it's a link unit, it may be because nobody clicked on the second set of ads that opened up.
Or, it may be that Google determined that the click on an ad unit was a fraudulent click. Or someone clicked on an ad and then immediately clicked on another ad. You'll only get monetary credit for one click, but both clicks will be in your click statistics.
Clicks Changing Value
One day an ad click is worth $0.25. The next day the click is worth $0.01. No, Google is not trying to cheat you.
Remember that the first ad, in the first ad unit is worth the most. If you're running three ad units on a page, with a total of nine ads, there can be a huge difference between the value of the first ad and the last ad.
Adwords Advertisers pay a premium to show up the first ad position. The next advertiser can pay a lot less for the second ad position and the third advertiser can pay pennies in comparison to the first two. If there are not a lot of advertisers for your keyword, and if there are many websites optimized for the keyword, the value of your clicks will be low to begin with and the further down in the ad block the clicked ad is, the less you'll be paid.
In addition to this, if you get a lot of page hits and not a lot of ad clicks, Google can and will "smart price" your sites. If they decide even one of your sites is not providing value for the program, they will "smart price" your entire network of sites. Smart pricing equals lower amounts paid per click.
I'm not sure if Google admits to smart pricing, but Publishers know it exists and feel the effects, especially when they launch new sites.
Also, clicks from visitors outside the US, Canada and UK are paid at a lesser amount.
Google's catch phrase is "value" for the Adwords advertiser. And you, as a Publisher, get paid accordingly.
Hey! What Happened to Google?
Once a month, on a Saturday, Google runs maintenance. While they are still collecting your click information, you won't be able to get it. If you have a GMail account, you'll receive notification in advance of the date they're running maintenance. After the system is back online, it will take a while before your page views and clicks are accurate.
Once in a blue moon, Google will go down. It doesn't happen often and they assure the Advertisers and the Publishers that their accounts are being accurately kept and that all clicks will be counted correctly.
As every once and a while I find clicks and money not attributable to my sites, I have no reserve that Google is correcting information where my clicks were shorted because they were researching them. It's reassuring.
Getting Banned by Google
Google bans either a Publisher or a site. If a site is banned, you can easily take it out of your portfolio of sites and keep going.
If you, as a Publisher, are banned, you should be warned that it's very difficult to get reinstated. Google will not necessarily tell you why you were banned; you have to figure it why yourself. 99% of the time, it is the Publisher's fault that they were banned and you will find very little sympathy from other Adsense Publishers.
Since Google is notorious for banning Publishers as they hit their first $100 plus payout, it seems to indicate they complete a click and site review as you hit this benchmark. Once you get banned, whatever money you had will not be paid and any checks Google has sent you will not clear your bank. Even if you get reinstated, you'll lose all the money in your account.
Let's go over some reasons Publishers get banned.
Terms of Service (TOS) Violations
Google might actually send you a warning instead of banning you outright for a TOS violation. Take the warning seriously, correct what's wrong, and contact Google that you have taken action. It is your responsibility as an Adsense Publisher to read and understand Google's TOS, which are updated constantly.
Click Bombing
You normally get 30 clicks a day. One day you get 150. Notify Google that you think you've been click bombed. Save the email. Try to download your statistical information from your site for that day. If you don't know how to access this information, contact your hosting company and ask them to show you how, or do it for you. Being able to show Google that you contacted them about the problem and that you did not click on your own ads may save you from a permanent ban. Be prepared to lose your earnings for that day.
Also, if you've done something that will significantly increase your visitors, let Google know. Did one of your articles make the front page of Digg.com? Is your site being featured in the news? Report this to Google so they know to expect a notable increase in your clicks.
Arbitrage
Google has been cracking down on this practice. Arbitrage is buying an advertising campaign with low cost keywords to drive traffic to site and get higher paying clicks from this traffic. If you're selling a product or an ebook and you're buying traffic to sell that product, that's fine. If your buying traffic to increase Adsense clicks, that's not.
MFAs
MFA stands for "made for Adsense" site. These are the sites you see with very little content and a lot of ads. Sometimes, the ads resemble site menus. Google frowns on MFA sites and will ban the site sooner or later.
Remember that you are competing with other sites for search engine position and your competition will have no problem reporting you to Google for violating the TOS.
As some Adsense Publishers are also Adwords Advertisers, it's in their best interest to report what they see as violations. If they're reporting a competitor as well, it's a double benefit for them.
Contacting Google
It's fairly easy to contact Google, but Google reacts at the speed, of well, Google. It can take two weeks to get a question acknowledged. It can take six weeks to get a question on reinstatement acknowledged.
The reason I say, "acknowledged" is because you might get a form response that basically says that you need to read the terms of service, or that your site is not in the best interest of Google's Advertisers.
That's when it's time to ask a webmaster forum, (no, I won't recommend any in this article, but there are plenty of free forums available, including Google's,) for a site review.
The reviews might be scathing, as Publishers can be notoriously blunt and cutting in their views, but many responses will have valuable and constructive criticism.
Hopefully, this overview of Adsense will help you understand some of the concepts and terms you hear the "old-timers" tossing around and give you some grounding on the way the program operates.

Google is readily providing well written and highly relevant ads that are closely chosen to match the content on your pages. You do not have to look for them yourselves as the search engine will be the doing the searching for you from other people’s source.

You also don't have to spend time in choosing different kind of ads for different pages. Google makes it very easy for you, with no codes to mess around for different affiliate programs.

You will be able to concentrate on providing good and quality content, as the search engines will be the ones finding the best ads in which to put your pages on.

You are still allowed to add Adsense ads even if you already have affiliate links on your site. It is prohibited, however, to imitate the look and feel of the Google ads for your affiliate links. One of the things you can do, however, is to utilize Google's custom palette to customize your Google ads, making them to appear a part of the web page itself. The idea here is to match background and links to match the theme of your site. People on the internet today are trained to click on a link that is blue, and if your Google ads have the same theme as your web page, it makes the Google ads appear to be a portion of your "content."

You can also filter up to 200 URLs. This gives you a chance to block ads for the sites that do not meet your guidelines, and also block competitors. Remember that it is unavoidable that Adsense may be competing for some space on web sites that all other revenues are sharing.

Owners of small sites are allowed to plug a bit of a code into their sites and instantly have relevant text ads that appeal to your visitors appear instantly on your pages. If you own many sites, you only need to apply once. Then ,you are issued a unique "publisher ID", which can be used on any site you currently own. A small snippet of Javascript is placed on your site in the location you wish the ads to appear in, and generally speaking, the ads from Goggle will appear in minutes. This ends the hassle of having to apply to many affiliate programs, and keeping track of many different URL's and user ID's and passwords.

As Google ads are very easy to customize, and can be placed anywhere on your site you wish, you can experiment with placement, colors, and themes. Many tricks are available to the resourceful webmaster, including adding images in conjunction with your Google ads to make them more noticeable.

The payment rates can vary extremely. The payment you will be receiving per click depends on how much advertisers are paying per click to advertise with the use of the AdWords. Advertisers can pay as little as 5 cents and as high as $10-12, sometimes even more than that too. Some savvy lawyers are currently paying as high as $75 for advertising the keyword mesothelioma! And you, as the ad publisher, are earning a share of that money generated.

If your results remain stagnant, it can help if you try and build simple and uncluttered pages so that the ads can catch the visitor’s eyes more. It sometimes pay to differ from the usual things that people are doing already. Google has many tutorials, including a "heat chart" which shows you where the best placement for ads are. You will need an account to access these tutorials. Sign up for an Adsense account at Google Adsense. It is also a refreshing sight for your visitor once they see something different for a change.

It is still wise to look at other people’s information and format your Adsense in a like manner. A wise old business axiom is to "find a good business model, then copy it." Let others do the hard work for you, and learn from a successful site. Just think about it as doing yourself a favor by not having to work too hard to know what content to have. Look to sites that have high page rank, and carefully observe their layouts, their content, and placement of their ads. A little time spent doing research can put dollars in your pocket down the road.

Publishers have the option of choosing to have their ads displayed only on a certain site or sites. You can also have them displayed on a large network of sites if you so desire. Google now has the option to allow other people to advertise on your site. This only makes good sense. If you are marketing to a tightly defined niche, you can place your own ads, written by you, on site that allow this option. The choice is yours, depending on what you think will work best to your advantage.

It is important to note that you cannot choose certain topics only. If you do this, search engines will not place Adsense ads on your site and you will be missing out a great opportunity in making hundreds and even thousands of dollars cash.

Topics to be avoided includes gambling, firearms, ammunition, tobacco or drugs. If you are being offered more cash in exchange of doing Adsense with these kinds, it is just like signing your own termination paper.

With all the information that people need in your hands already, all you have to do is turn Google Adsense into your own cash cow. It all boils down to a win-win situation both for the content site owners and the webmasters or publishers.

Our website, Adsense Tool, is a good source of information for the beginning adsense. We present a lot of content for those needing more information on a variety of subjects.

There are multiple benefits to having a blog including the low cost (or no cost), the resources that will help you get traffic to your blog and the fact that you can provide your blog as an RSS feed. An RSS feed will allow readers to automatically receive your updates into their RSS reader.

Let's get started with our 6 steps.

1. Set up your blog. You will need to decide what you are going to blog about. You should decide on a theme and name your blog appropriately.

There are a number of free ways to set up a blog & to have it hosted for free. We will go with Blogger.com for our first blog.

Blogger will allow you to set up a blog for free they will host it for free and they will ping search engines every time you update, meaning you will get spidered & found.

Visit blogger.com & click the button on the front page labelled 'create your blog now' then follow the step by step instructions that Blogger provide.

Some key settings you will want to get right are:

I) 'Host your blog at Blogger' = Yes
II) 'Add your blog to our listings' = Yes
III) 'Ping Weblogs.com' = Yes
IV) 'Publish Site Feed' = Yes

2. Write some content. Before we move any further there has to be some information on the site & that means that you have to make some entries. You can write some of these entries yourself & some can be quotes from sites of interest to your reader that you can post using the Google Toolbar.

You can download the Google toolbar for free at toolbar.google.com. The toolbar includes a Blogger button. When you visit a site that has something of interest to your readers you can highlight the appropriate text & click the Blogger button. The content will then be added to your blog along with a link back to the site.

3. Once you have some content eg a weeks worth of blogging with 1 or 2 entries for everyday, you can apply for an adsense account. When you sign in to Blogger you will see an invitation to join Adsense. Use this link and apply for an account.

You can find out all about Adsense on the Adsense page but basically you get Google ads on your site & get paid if your visitor clicks them.

Google will decide what adverts show on your site based on the content it finds within.

You need to be aware that Google will decline your application if your site is not considered to have content. Nobody outside of Google knows the precise rules on this.

Once you have been accepted you can get some javascript from Google to add to you site. Copy this & then log in to Blogger.

Once you have logged into your blog you will see that one of the tabs across the top of the screen is labelled 'Template'. Click this. You will need to know a little bit of HTML to help find the right location to paste your Google code. But with a little experimentation you will find the right place for you. See the resource box at the end of this article for more help.

I would suggest that the ads need to be seen when the site loads but should not be too obvious or dominate your site.

4. Write some more content. Try and keep your content coming at regular intervals as a number of directories will check on your site at regular intervals & the smarter ones will visit on a schedule based on your update schedule. They will probably determine this in the hours after you first submit to them. Which is what we will do next.

5. Submit your site to Blog & RSS directories. Because you are hosting at Blogger, Weblogs.com will already be notified when you update your blog. (That means that every time you make a new entry they are automatically notified) You will need to manually submit to the various other directories some of which will require a link on your site to theirs.

You can add these links to your template below your Blogger logo. For a list of directories to get you started visit www.themoneyseed.com/rss

6. Keep writing interesting content. Ideally you want people to come back again and again. As with customers its harder to get a new visitor than to keep existing visitors. So make it interesting, in fact make it so interesting that they can't help but tell all their friends about it also.

As with most free ways to make money this will take time to get going, but if you can build a following you will make money.

I make revenues from AdSense at a very high click-through rate. I experience high click-through rates with AdSense without resorting to questionable tactics like tricking site users with photos (the AdSense trick and tip dujour).

So my perspective is from one who has made decent income from AdSense to fund aspects of his business like advertising seminars -- and outsourcing to his virtual assistants. Yes, AdSense is a legitimate and significant revenue source. However evaluate AdSense with some type of balance.

By now you may have heard about people like Joel Comm's six figure income with AdSense, or Jason Calacanis of Weblogs being on his way to generating 1 million dollars in AdSense revenue. Google's Ad revenue sharing affiliate program for publishers certainly seems to be an eSales Nirvana for many webmasters.

But there are obvious and not so obvious times not to use AdSense ads on your sites. Let's list - examine - and explain them below.

~~~~> 1. On Sales or Mini-sites

This is a no-brainer. If you are trying to sell a particular product that is important to your bottomline, you don't want AdSense ads distracting your customers from either joining your email list, or hindering your site's online sales process.

However I do see hybrid sites that are mini-sites or full scale eCommerce sites, with AdSense at the bottom of their pages. This might not be so bad since only 1% - 15% of your site visitors will either buy from you or fill out a form.

The thinking with this approach is you might as well make money from disinterested parties using up your server's bandwidth.

~~~~~> 2. SEO Business Sites

If your livelihood depends on search engine optimization or marketing for a living you might want to think twice about displaying AdSense Ads on your site. I can tell you this from personal experience. I once was on top of MSN for search engine marketing in my local area. I concentrated on my local area because I found people felt more comfortable hiring an eCommerce consultant locally.

One day my site fails totally out of the MSN index. After intense study I noticed that I obviously had a filter on my site from MSN.

I analyzed all the top ranking sites in MSN and noticed the only difference between me and the other top ranking sites was I had Google AdSense ads on my site. Someone at MSN felt that my AdSense ads, and perhaps to a less extent, my book on SEO, was getting a free ride in the MSN search engine database.

In fact I noticed that there were no sites with AdSense ads for at least the first 3 pages. Plus the sites with AdSense were only using 1 ad unit at the bottom of the home page (there were very few of them in the top 5 pages).

I knew it was strange to not have AdSense ads on the top Internet marketing sites. This prompted me to scan other industries where I noticed the same trend.

Many of the leading SEO gurus have sites that have been banned from the top listings by the search engines. It seems the more visible you become, the more of a target your sites are to the search engine auditors.

Some of my sites are still on the top of MSN with AdSense ads but that doesn't mean they won't also be targets in the future.

Let's face the facts. MSN and Yahoo! have competing ad networks to Google's, and this competitive situation is rife for a potential backlash against SEO sites with AdSense ads.

Many SEOs will point to exceptions to this position. However you have been warned!

Think about it, how long will MSN and Yahoo! sit back and watch SEO driven websites use their search indexes to fund Google? Did you know SEO in MSN and Yahoo(!) --- is much easier to obtain.

Therefore optimized sites are creating an ad sales wealth transfer from MSN and Yahoo into the pockets of Google! It won't be long before Yahoo! and MSN begin to devalue ranking on AdSense sites in their databases -- if not outright ban them.

If you are in the search engine business stay search engine neutral, or create multiple sites for different search engines.

~~~~~> 3. When AdSense Becomes Your Only Business Model

When you become so myopic in your thinking that you build a business solely on AdSense revenue -- think again my friend. Why build a business solely on the largess of Google?

I don't know if your realize it or not, but the sites making the real big AdSense money usually have a following that doesn't depend on the search engines. Internet mavens like Chris Pirillo or Joel Comm have been on the Internet a while and have followings for their websites. Therefore they can consistently make six figures with AdSense.

These content powerhouses are an asset to Google and not the other way around. But do you think Google is going to sit back and watch just anybody make big bucks off of their top rankings?

If you do a search on most keywords you will notice many of the top ranking sites are news sites, .gov sites, or .org sites these days. The only exception is in industries where these sites don't really exist like eCommerce industries (clothing, shopping, etc.).

No doubt in most industries you will notice a conspicuous scarity of AdSense sites in the top rankings. In other words don't bet your future fortunes on AdSense.

An IPO based on projections of AdSense revenue isn't in the future for the average eBusiness. Think of Google AdSense as supplemental income. Building a business solely on AdSense revenue isn't just silly -- it's just plain stupid.