A quick guide to Adsense - beginners guide (application and first month)

Google's Adsense can be a fantastic way to gain some extra income over a month; it's simplistic to establish and can be applied to most websites, blogs and YouTube channels.

 For the last 3 months I've been enjoying the thrill that comes with blogging and striving for more following, and thus more ad revenue; before the enjoyment comes a few downturns, and it's these I'll be focusing on. 

My experience at the start was of a high income and YouTube moniez. Sadly this is not the case unless your blog, website or video go viral - Adsense is a significant source of income for high rating blogs that retain much of their following of weeks and months, but for the small guy it can be a real struggle. 

Here's a quick guide to your application for Google Adsense.

There are two sections - one for traditional text (blog) and one for YouTube. 

Phase 1 - the application process (blogs and websites)

We've all gone through it. 

You're there, and your product is taking off. You may have a few thousand hits per month and as you feel you have a real shot at making this a full time source of income. 

Google's application process is mostly electronic and 'spiders' will crawl through your product looking for key words which relate to products, goods and services. 

The best way to ensure that you application is accepted is to have larger, wordy pages and posts; websites and blogs that focus on consumer goods such as mobile phones, gaming and music will be significantly higher in their chance of approval than political blogs or personal blogs which focus on an individual. 

Do you have a following of 2000+ a month? Then you're sure to be accepted so long as you have many 'buzzwords' such as corporate names, product titles and so forth. That doesn't mean you should load your articles full of deliberate deception words, but rather it should encourage you to be more descriptive in your articles. 

Make sure your blog or website is open and constructed; Google likes their ads to be placed on a well made websites or blog. 

If you fail, and your application is unsuccessful, then try to apply in the future - perhaps 2 weeks.

High rollers for Adsense:

• Gaming 
• Technology 
• Fashion 
• Consumer review
• Geek
• Music
• Media
• Cosmetics 
• Comedy

Application can take up to 4 days for decision as the automated system will spend some time going through your content. 

Successful? Then you're half way there to earning some quick income.

Phase two - Placement of ads and the 'do nots'

Biggest rule: Never, under any circumstances, click your own ads and never have your friends click them either - Google is the largest software firm in the world, they'd spot it in a second and they could bring you up for fraud. 

Ads are automatically customized and placed on Blogger, however on sites it may be slightly more tricky; on websites, you may add in a specific code via HTML; for those, like myself, who struggle with HTML insertion I'd advise perhaps getting a friend to help you out.

A mistake that most people made is to view their Adsense account every hour or so - Adsense rarely updates accurately and clicking multiple times a day is a waste of valuable time that you could be dedicating to improving your writing style or website design. Sit back, relax and ignore it for a week or two; Adsense has a threshold that prevents you from withdrawing your income (in the UK it's £60) and has a set period of payment -- this makes checking it redundant.

The appearance of ads once accepted will take roughly 2-6 hours; until then you will have a blank box.

Don't expect a massive income for an extended period of time unless your website or blog brings in thousands a day; it's not going to happen.

I recommend investing some time in marketing, networking and making a few friends who can either help get your content out there or who can create content for you; it's extremely hard to make content on a daily basis without help.

Do not every ask for your fan base to click ads on Adsense; Google will be swift in their punishment of you.

 Please note that some Blogger themes do not support Adsense and therefore it's advised to preview any theme prior to choosing it.

Phase three - What to expect and important things to check

Expect a low income and few clicks; quantity is the important key factor in your income. The more clicks you receive and the higher your audience, combined with the relation of ads to your product, will decide your income. There's nothing at present that can be done about this as Adsense is almost entirely automated. 

Here's a quick checklist to make sure you are set up:

1. Do you have your bank account or address validated for payment?
2. Are you ads placed and appear within your theme?
3. Can you keep and retain an audience? 
4. Enough material of interest to bring people in?
5. Networking and contacting more influential community members? 
6. Have you enough coffee, tea or vodka for your content adventures?

Finalized earnings are much different to what you may see during the course of a month; these can be affected by false clicks such as someone using a proxy server or any clicks that Google considered to be non-valid and therefore non creditable. Once again, nothing can be done about this. 

Your earnings may say $40 but then fall to $20. It's a fact. 

YouTube

YouTube is much, much simpler and much more lucrative than traditional Adsense - you only need one account for all your Adsense products. 

To become a YouTube Partner you need original credit that falls under either your own nations Copyright laws, or depending on relations with the United States, the laws of America. 

I'm lucky - I run a Political/News field on YouTube; thanks to Scottish Law, I am able to use clips from news outlets so long as I give credit. 

To earn money on YouTube, follow the standard Partnership application process; this may take less time than traditional Adsense if you account is in good standing. 

For each video YouTube will scan the content and either monetize it or reject it; this can take anywhere from 2 seconds to 2 days and it isn't perfect, for example: I use Copyright free music for my videos however the notes, composition or tempo may be similar to other videos and therefore YouTube may need to manually approve this. Don't feel down about it as they allow videos so long as no Copyright has been breached. 

As you progress as a Partner you will be offered more features and options ranging from live broadcast to pre-uploaded videos that are published at a specific time. YouTube is great for content creators as it has many broad tools for free that are user friendly. 

YouTube videos need to be over 30 seconds long to allow for 'in play' advertisement, AKA the ads that most of us skip. However, these ads are the best for gaining a good income. 

Well I hope this guide helps you, and I wish you luck in your adventures. If you liked this, found it useful, or love kittens then please do share and subscribe.

As always the comments are open for questions and feedback

<3 guys