How Much Money Can I Make With AdSense?

Now that is a question that everyone would like a solid answer to. The problem is, there really is no standard answer. You can make a few cents a month to a few thousand dollars a month, but there's a whole lot of difference between the two, and how to get from one to the other is a long, hard job. At least if you do it honestly.

There are very few "ordinary folks" making thousands of dollars a month, and almost nobody who is new to AdSense will make this kind of money. Forget what you've read all over the internet - especially in those blogs that are all about making "easy" money.

Ordinary people (like me, and like you) can and do make a few thousand dollars a month (I don't), but not by sticking some ads on a couple of half-finished or just started blogs. THAT kind of money takes work, and usually multiple websites (of the dot com kind, seldom blogs), as well as long hours of hard-earned knowledge on the correct way to optimize for search and get real, organic, non-paid traffic.

There are organizations (such as large media sites, for instance) that do make thousands of dollars on their advertising, but many of these have been invited to be a "premium publisher" due to the sheer volume of daily visitors. That's a hard thing to come by, so while you might set your goals toward becoming a premium publisher, it isn't something you should count on early in your AdSense career. Work towards that goal, but in the meantime, don't forget to be realistic about your earnings.

The average blogger who writes their own articles (not copying work from elsewhere) once or twice a week (every week, regularly) can earn some pretty nice pocket money - anywhere from $100 to $500+ a month. But ONLY WITH WORK AND TIME invested in the project at hand. You can't open a dozen blogs with two or three posts on each one and expect to earn much more than a few cents a month.

Part of the reason people don't earn much (or in some cases almost nothing at all) is the advertiser's and what they are willing to pay. If you don't have much of an interest in your blog/website, the advertisers probably aren't going to be willing to put their ads on your site. Those that do may be some of the lowest paying advertisers, and of course, with very little content to interest visitors, you won't get much traffic and without traffic you aren't going to have much chance of getting anyone whose interested in any of the ads.

Getting started the right way can help you build up to a better income. The right way is not to create a blog just to earn money from. That might work for a month or two months, but there are so many "made for AdSense" blogs (blogs/websites designed around nothing but the advertising or earning fast cash) that sooner or later the traffic peters off to very little. Why? Because there are thousands of blogs out there doing the very same thing. The ones that are successful are the ones that really are making their income the right way, and have learned the best and most honest ways of keeping that income. All the rest who are riding along on the coat tails of those types of sites usually fail after a while. Partly because the author's of the blog aren't actually making much money and partly because they copy articles from other more successful blogs.

Copying articles from someone whose work is successful doesn't guarantee you the same success. After all, the original writer is already getting all the traffic you are hoping for, and that isn't likely to change.

You need to provide something other people aren't, or at least provide something fewer people are doing.

So when we see questions like "how much am I going to make on average" in the forum, the answer is essentially "nobody knows". How much you might make depends on how much work and time you are willing to put into it.

If you aren't willing to work for your money, you aren't going to keep getting it for long. There is no free money, and very little easy money. Nobody is willing to pay money for no work these days, not even AdSense.

How to win? Stay on the right side of the AdSense policies and terms and conditions, work hard, produce original content and articles, research SEO techniques, stay away from paid links, and work hard. (Yes, I know...I said that twice to make a point.)

Why You Need "Alt Text" Tags

What exactly is "alt text"? AltText is something you may have heard of, but aren't sure what it is, or what it's purpose is. When you upload an image to your blog, the "alt text" is the stuff you normally won't see, but it describes your image to those who can't visually see your image.

And there are other purposes - a search engine bot (robot) is what crawls through your website or blog and indexes your pages and posts. These bots can't "see" images, they only read text. If your image doesn't have alt text, the bot doesn't know it's there, so your article or website might look like it has a lot of big spaces to the bot, and very little actual content.

This is particularly a problem for those whose sites contain a large number of images - such as mine do. If you want to be indexed properly and have your sites and pages show up well in search engine results, you need to optimize your images by using alt text. It also makes it difficult to get approved for AdSense if you have a lot of images, but no alt text tags. After all, AdSense wants sites or blogs with a lot of good, original content. If it can't see your pictures, then there could be a lot of content "missing" as far as the AdSense bot is concerned.

Another good reason for using alt text is your visitors themselves. Some people still do have dialup connections, and some can be pretty slow when they need to load a lot of images. Because of this many dialup users turn off image loading in their browsers, which means they will only see a blank page if you have no text, or very little text and a lot of space where the images should be, or simply a bunch of boxes with red "x"s in them in place of your images. If you use alt text, these browsers will see that text so they will at least know what the image is.

And then there are those browsers who are blind, or classed as "legally blind". And before you ask, yes the blind do surf and enjoy the internet. At least when people consider them and use alt text for the images. There are voice programs which read text on internet pages that are used by the blind. Their computers read to them, but this software can usually only recognize text, just like a search engine bot. If there's no alt text, there's nothing for the software to read.

Lastly, if you own the image (and you should if you are uploading it) or if the image is being posted with permission of the owner, you can also add this text in the alt text area, or you can add a caption to the image so people are given proper credit for the images.

Those who don't use alt text as often as they can could be missing out on a lot of visitors.

So, how to put the alt text on your images? If you use a blog service like wordpress or blogger, they have box right in the imager uploader where you can type your alt text. Below are screenshots of how to add the alt text to your blogger images:

• upload your image into your post
• click the image to get the options box
• click properties
• type description in the text box that opens and click OK

Make your blog or website more accessible by using the Alt Text whenever you upload an image - this newer method works on old previously uploaded images as well!


(note: originally posted by me on another of my blogs)

Using the AdSense Help Forum Effectively

If you want to get answers that help resolve your problems or questions in the AdSense Help Forums, there are some things you can and should do before you start posting to the forums.

First, you need to read the AdSense Support Forums Terms of Service. You shouldn't post profanity, or advertising. You also must not use your website address as a signature. This is considered advertising. You can, however, use your Google Profile to list your websites if you so choose. Posters can access your Google Profile from your nickname on the forums. (You may post your website url in your question if it's necessary to the question, just not as a signature.)

Next, at the Help Forum "home page" you'll see a list of discussion categories. These links will bring up questions in each category, filtering out other categories. It's helpful to read through other postings, because often your question will already have been answered in someone else's post. On the right side of the page is a listing of "popular" discussions that may already answer your question as well.


At the bottom of the home page is a link to "browse all discussions". When you click on this you get all the discussions and threads in the forum, including some you should check before you begin a new post. At the top of the help forum discussions are "pinned topics". These are topics posted by AdSense/Google Employees, and often will include things like current problems (ie: "Known Issues"). If there are system bugs that many publishers are experiencing, you will probably find it here in the pinned section, unless it has already been resolved. Many duplicate complaint posts could be avoided if people would check the pinned topics first.

Another thing to do before posting your own topic is to search the forums. Just think about where you are. You are in a forum hosted and run by Google. And who are Google? They're the people who are pretty well known for their search engine, which means they do "search" extremely well. You should make use of this. Type your problem into the search bar at the top and click the "search help" button.


Look through the results and see if your problem (or a similar complaint or question) is there, and if it has been answered or not.

After doing all of that, if you still have a question that hasn't been asked or that is more specific than what's listed, then go ahead and post your question. Click the "post a question" link on the left menu.

How to Post an Effective Question

If you want an answer to your question, then you need to post a question that addresses your issue as clearly as possible and contains details. Questions like "I can't get approved" or "What's wrong with my website" or "Why?" are really not going to get you helpful answers.

Don't:

• post questions unrelated to AdSense problems
• post the full question in your title
• post one word questions (why? when? what? help!)
  
• post the same question over and over again (simply edit your question or post a "bump" and it will move back toward the top of the forum again)
  
• post "bumps" every minute
• post without checking the help articles (link is in left sidebar)
• post in any language except english (there are help forums available in other languages - down at the bottom of the page linked here is a drop down box with the avalilable languages for help forums)
• post spam (this will get you banned from the forum)
• post your email address, publisher ID or personal details
• post your website address unless the help you are asking for is AdSense related
  
• post personal insults and profanity
• post links to pornographic websites
• post adlinks in the forum

DO

• use a title related to your question
• post a full explanation and question within the body of the post. If your question doesn't make sense, we can't answer it properly without asking further questions.
• use the search function before posting
• read the help articles before posting
• include your website url if you think people need to look at your site to offer help (this is necessary for questions on ads that won't display, help with disabled accounts, ad placements, ads that aren't related to your content etc.)
• check your posts for answers instead of posting again
  
• try to be patient. There are a lot of questions every day and not that many of us to answer them.
• try not to take your anger a frustration out on the people answering your questions. Almost none of them are employed by Google or AdSense. Most of them are volunteers who are publishers, just like you. Unless a responding poster has "Google Employee" by/under their name, they are just ordinary folks trying to help others.

If you post a question and can't find it later, you can check your profile and see a listing of your questions. In the menu bar at the left is a link for "My Discussions" this will take you to your profile where all the questions you've asked are listed. You can click the link for the post you want and it will take you to that thread.

If you post a question that doesn't get answered, amend your original question to bring it back to the front of the forum where people can see it again. Posting the same question multiple times simply makes everyone annoyed. There are some types of questions that we just can't resolve in the forums, so you may not get an answer.

Please note that questions related specifically to how to place your AdSense code into your website are often more related to:

1. the specific website creator you are using
2. the webhosting or blog service you are using
   

than they are to AdSense. Unless one of the volunteers has used your specific website builder, questions of this nature may not get answered. Your best choice for questions relating to your website is to ask at the webhosting help center, or the web builder help sections.

Please try to remember that as AdSense publishers most of the volunteers have experienced similar problems and have experienced the same frustrations as you have. Please don't come into the forums with a nasty attitude towards those who are trying to help you. All this will do is make the volunteers reluctant to try and help you.

You can express your frustration, just don't make it a personal attack on your helpers. That won't resolve anything.

If your question is related to other Google services (YouTube, gmail, google search, blogger, etc.) then you need to ask your question in the help forum for the related product. You can start here at the "Getting Started with Google Help" page, or if you want to look at all the help forums and groups available for Google services and products you can do that here.

Frequently Asked Questions...With Simple Answers

These are some of the questions we see over on the AdSense Help Forum on a pretty regular basis. In most cases, the answers are mostly simple and can be found in the AdSense Help Center pages by doing a search - a topic which we'll cover in another post.

1. How long does it take to get an Adsense account?

Although the AdSense sign up pages say that you should receive a notice from them in about 48 hours, over the past year that has changed. While some applications might actually get reviewed as quickly as that, most do not. Currently it can take anywhere from a week to a couple of months.

1(a) - Why is it taking so long?

This is because the influx of applications has grown tremendously over the last year. The growth of "get rich quick" sites and scam sites using AdSense and Google to further their scam earnings has created an enormous backlog and constant increase in applications for AdSense accounts.

Along with this, the fact that the economy all over the world has taken a nosedive over the last year and half means that individuals who would not have thought about using AdSense previously are all trying to get in on "the money", which many websites tell you is "hundreds" or "thousands" of dollars a week. Which is a very large misrepresentation.

Because of the thousands of applications every week (perhaps even every day), it now can take anywhere from a few days or a weeks, to longer than two months. The wait time is long, and you'll need to have patience.

2. How old do you have to be to have an AdSense account?

AdSense requires that you be 18 years of age to have an account. This is because in most US states you must be 18 years old to legally enter into a contract. Agreeing to the AdSense Terms of Use is considered entering into a legal contract.

3. How many times can we click per day?

Yes, we do get questions like that.

The answer is NONE. Publishers are not allowed to click on ads on their own websites. Ever.

If you are visiting another publisher's website you should only click on an ad if the ad is something that you are looking for or interested in. One click is enough. If you see more than one ad you are interested in, visit the site a little bit later and view the ad then.

4. Can I use AdSense ads in my e-mails?

The answer is NO. AdSense policy does not allow AdSense code to be place in an email.

You can, however, place a simple link to your website in your email signature. You mustn't use this for sending unsolicited mass emails; that would be considered email spam and sending email spam can get your email account disabled.

5. Can we ask visitors to click ads?

Again, the answer is NO. AdSense publishers must not draw undue attention to their ads in any way.

You may not write "please support us and visit the advertisers", "please click the ads to help me" or anything similar.

You also may not write things like "please don't click the ads" because that draws as much attention to the ads as asking someone to click them.

6. Is there a phone number for AdSense?

I'm sure there must be one, but it's not one that we get to know about.

A simple search for a telephone number for Google or AdSense will get you a phone number, but the phone call would be very short as it's highly unlikely you'd get past the answering receptionist.

There really is no telephone support for AdSense publishers. Many have tried, and many have failed.

7. What is the email address for AdSense?

The email address to contact AdSense can be found throughout the help pages on the AdSense website. Unfortunately, the only reply you will probably get is one directing you to their help forum, so you might as well start there and save yourself the aggravation of waiting for an email reply.

8. Can I use other advertisers on my pages with AdSense ads?

Yes, AdSense allows it's publishers to use other advertising and affiliate programs. They do have rules for other ads - these other ads must not be formatted to look like or be confused with Google AdSense ads.

You can find out the details about AdSense requirements for using other advertisers on this page.

Why Was My AdSense Application Rejected?

There can be many reasons for having a rejected application - from incorrect personal data, or a typing error in your website address (url), to poor navigation on your website, or content that's not suitable for AdSense.

Application Details

The details you fill in on your AdSense application must be correct, and complete. Your name will be the name your payments go to if you are approved for an AdSense account, so you need to make sure this is correct in your initial application. The same thing goes for your address, and other personal details.

AdSense applicants must submit their website url when they complete an application. The website url is the part that looks like this: http://helpfulinformationfornewbies.blogspot.com/ or www.google.com .

Your website url must be correct because AdSense reviews your website to ensure it fits with AdSense policy, and contains the type of content their advertisers want to place ads on. If you type the url incorrectly, or if your website doesn't yet exist, then AdSense is likely to reject your application because they can't access your website.

Double check all the details in your application before you click the submit button. Once you send it, you can't edit it. You'll have to wait for them to review it (this can take anywhere from a few days to a few months) and send you an email. At that point, you can edit your application to correct any errors and resubmit it again.

To learn more about the AdSense application, visit their help center.


Website and Content Issues

When AdSense rejects an application, the email they send is usually pretty generic. It might say "wrong page type" without giving any further details, or it might list "poor or no navigation", or "under construction" or any one of a host of other reasons, most of which aren't very detailed.

The best place to get help in determining the actual issue(s) will be at the AdSense Help Forum. Volunteers and "Top Contributors" deal with questions like this every day, and most of them are pretty good at being able to tell you what the reasons will be, and can sometimes offer other suggestions to help you get your application and website "AdSense ready".

Page Type issues can mean anything from content that isn't acceptable to AdSense and doesn't comply with their policies, to not enough content.

In the forums we constantly see applicants whose blogs or websites have almost no content - one post or article is not "content". It's a beginning, but it's not enough to satisfy advertisers, so it's not enough to satisfy AdSense.

For some areas of the world, AdSense requires that a blog or website must be 6 months old - this actually means they want you to have six months worth of content. If you open a blog or website in January, make one post and wait six months you probably still won't get approved. The blog might be six months old, but there is still no content.

There's a saying over at AdSense... "Content is King".

Content must also be useful to people, and interesting. A blog full of posts that aren't going to interest people, or provide some useful information isn't likely to interest AdSense either. The sort of content that's going "out the door" (ie: getting less approval) at AdSense are sites that are built specifically to earn income with "get rich quick" schemes, or money making sites that have no purpose other than to accrue income from AdSense.

All content on your website or blog must adhere to AdSense policies. If it doesn't, you probably won't get an approved account. To see what the content policies are, you can visit the AdSense Program Policy page.

Poor navigation issues can be anything from having "flash only" navigation, to having no navigation, or to having navigation or menu buttons that don't link to any page, to broken menu links.

All flash navigation is difficult for the bots to follow, and if they can't follow a navigation link, to them, it's broken - they may be able to follow some of the links, or none of the links. On top of that, many people still don't allow flash in their browsers, so those people can't use your website. You need to create text links as well as flash links. You can put the text navigation in your website footer or sidebar, or create a sitemap with text links and link to the sitemap with a text link on your home page.

Menu buttons or links that are meant for future pages should either be removed, or should link to the page. Don't leave incomplete links in your navigation menu.

One of the biggest navigation problems we see are with blogs. Everyone thinks because it's a blog, it already has navigation. In some cases, this is true, it does have a form of navigation...but only if you have a bunch of posts. It's the posts and their pages that create navigation in the form of the archives on most blogs. If you have only one or two posts, you really don't have much in the way of navigation.

You'll notice in the sidebar of this blog, the first thing is titled "Pages". That was created using a blogger gadget, and the blogger pages function. You could also use the links gadget to create a menu. In the links gadget you can enter a url (in this case, the url of the page with the post on it) and a website title (instead of a website title, I use the post title) - everytime I make a new post, it is added manually to that menu. Anybody visiting my blog doesn't have to hunt through the archives looking for a subject they want. It's in the post menu. As a blog grows and has hundreds of posts, you won't want to use this method. You'll need to do something else, like only include important posts. You should always have an archive listing in your sidebar for navigation, and a text sitemap can be very useful as well.

Under Construction might seem like a pretty specific reason, but for many it is anything but. We see lots of people in the forum whose websites aren't under construction, but that's the reason they are given.

We see this a lot with websites that contain mostly graphics or images, and very little text. Landing pages or home pages that have an image and no text are another problem, as are photoblogs and videoblogs (nothing but videos in a blog is not considered good content for AdSense).

Photos and images should always have "alt text" tags so they can be "seen" by the AdSense bots and crawlers. They can't see an image if there is no text, so a website or blog of nothing but photos will look completely empty. A bunch of pages with nothing on them is a website under construction.

Websites built entirely of flash can create problems too - sometimes they can crawl them, and sometimes they can't. The best flash sites I have seen are the ones that also have a plain html version of the site for users without flash in their browsers. Some of the worst sites I've seen are those that require you to use a specific browser, like IE only sites.

Language - AdSense has a list of supported languages, and if the language your website was built in is not on that list, you won't be able to get an approved AdSense account. You can learn more about the languages AdSense supports at the AdSense Help Center.

In the end, there are some websites and content that are just not suitable for AdSense advertisers. Not everyone is granted an AdSense account.