For many people blogging is a way to express themselves online for the rest of the world to read. Usually it’s about a specific topic or if it’s a personal blog, then the blog posts could range from anything like your latest trip to Europe or how your dog just had puppies. Nevertheless, blogging is easy for anyone with a computer and internet access to use.

So for those who enjoy writing and spend lots of time doing it, why not make some extra money from it? It doesn’t cost you anything and only requires a little bit of time to setup but the return could be well worth it. That’s the beauty about online advertising programs — they work 24/7 even when you’re sleeping. Talk about a nice passive way to earn some extra money each day!

My first tip is probably the most popular method (and easiest) way to get started with making money from your blog. It’s a program called AdSense from a small company you’ve probably never heard of called Google. Knowingly or not, you’ve viewed hundreds of Google’s ads online and probably even clicked on a few since they were relevant to whatever topic or website you were reading at the time. That’s one of the great things about this program and I’ll talk more about it further down this post.

Use Google AdSense

Google adsense logo

Google’s advertising program is free to sign up and you can usually be online within an hour or so (assuming your application is approved quickly). Then adding AdSense to your blog is easy especially with Blogger’s new AdSense widget (it’s quite simple with WordPress as well but I’m going to assume WordPress users already know how to do this since it’s just cut and pasting html). Once your application is approved, just log into your account, customize your ad unit, and copy and paste a block of HTML code into your blog. I’ll give you a walkthru of this process.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Step #2 - Add the AdSense Page Element to Your Blog

The nice thing about the new Blogger is you can easily add Google AdSense to your blog using their built in page elements. Login to your Blogger account, navigate to “Template” => “Page Elements” and then within the layout area, click on “Add a Page Element”. From there you’ll see this screen where you want to select the “AdSense” Page Element and click on “Add to Blog”.

add-adsense-element.gif

Next you’ll see another screen where it will ask you to login (if it’s the first time you’ve tried to add this AdSense Page Element before). Just enter the email address and password you used when setting up your AdSense account. Once you successfully login, you’ll next see the ad configuration screen. This is where you select the ad format type (leaderboard, banner, text ad, etc) with many different sizes to choose from. Now remember to keep your site visitors in mind when selecting an ad format. You don’t want the ad to dominate your entire blog page which would annoy your readers. I’d recommend starting with a small rectangle or horizontal row format before going too crazy.

configure-adsense-element.gif

Don’t forget to also select a nice color scheme that matches your blog. Statistics show that the more blended in your blog ads are, the better change people will click on them. Remember to abide by the Google TOS though which I encourage you to read before breaking the rules by accident. Now once you’ve got the exact color scheme and ad format ready to go, click on the orange “Save Changes” button to add it to your blog.

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So go sign up for your AdSense account (Sign up) now and you’ll soon be able to start making money from your blog! If you’ve got any problems or questions while setting this up, please post a comment below. We will do our best to answer any questions you may have or at the least point you in the right direction.

Please make sure to click on the AdSense links provided in this article as the sign up referral helps support and offset our expenses for maintaining this site.