AdSense Account Setup

AdSense Account Setup – Part 1 (Enrolment Form)
As the benefits from Google AdSense program start getting clear to you, you (as
a website owner) would be inquisitive as to how you can setup your Google
AdSense account and whether it takes a lot of time to set up an AdSense
account. Let’s take a look at how you can setup your Google AdSense account:
So, you have decided to go ahead and use Google AdSense for generating
revenue from your website. Google AdSense doesn’t need you to sell any
products or services. With Google AdSense, you are just selling advertising
space on your website. And the best part is that Google doesn’t discriminate
between websites; so, any website owner can enroll with Google AdSense
program (as long as it adheres to the Google AdSense program policies).
Moreover, setting up a Google AdSense account is so easy that you can literally
start generating revenue within 15 minutes.
F or en r o l l in g to th e Goog le AdS en s e p r o g r am, g o to
https://www.google.com/AdSense and click on the ‘Click here to Apply’ button. You
will be presented with an enrolment form where you need to fill-in some details
like your website information (URL and website language), the Google AdSense
products that you wish to use (i.e. AdSense for Content or AdSense for Search),
your contact information, your email address and your preferences. You will also
need to select an account type (business/individual) for your AdSense Account
and agree to the various policies, terms and conditions of Google AdSense
program. The account type will not affect your revenues in any way; it is there
just to determine if the payment is to be made in the name of a company or an
individual. The email address and the password that you provide during the
enrolment process will be required by you for logging into your account later on.
Note that you will be referred to as publisher by the Google AdSense program;
so when you return back to the Google AdSense website, you will be asked to
enter your login details as an ‘Existing Publisher’. That’s it. You can now submit your application form for Google to evaluate and
get back to you.
AdSense Account Setup – Part 2 (Essential Customizations)
The second step in setting up your Google AdSense Account is to do
customization (some essential customizations). Let’s check when you can start
with the second step of setup and what you need to do as part of essential
customizations:
Once you are done with setting up your Google AdSense account and once
Google has approved your application, you are ready to use Google AdSense for
earning revenue from your website. Just login into your account using your email
address and password, click ‘AdSense Setup’ in the top menu and select the
product type (i.e. ‘AdSense for Content’ or ‘AdSense for Search’). You will be
presented with various options for customization of your AdSense Ads. Here we
will take a look at setting up ‘AdSense for Content’ only (however, the setup for
‘AdSense for Search’ is quite similar and equally easy).
The first thing that you need to choose is the Ad type (Ad unit or link unit). Based
on the Ad type you choose, you will need to specify the type of ad (text, image,
etc for Ad unit) or number of links per link unit too. Google AdSense program
allows you to use a maximum of three ad units and 1 link unit per web page (and
you must use both, in order to maximize your AdSense revenue).
The next thing is to choose the Ad layout. There are various layouts available but
large rectangle (336x280) and wide skyscraper (160x600) are preferred over
others (since they help get more impressions for you and hence help you make
more money). Customizing the colors of various parts of your AdSense ad is the next thing you
need to do. Even though customizing colors is optional (as far as the Google
AdSense program is concerned), it’s strongly recommended for making your Ads
attractive and more effective. Your choice of colors must be governed by the look
and feel of your website so that the Ad doesn’t look out of place.
These are the essential customizations that you surely need to do before you can
start using Google AdSense Ads on your website.
AdSense Account Setup– Part 3 (Additional Customizations)
Besides the essential customizations like selecting the Ad type, Ad layout and
colors, there are some other customizations that you can apply to your AdSense
account. In fact, some of these can quite easily be treated as essential
customizations (based on the context of your website) e.g. ‘filters’ is one such
customization that is quite important. Let’s take a look at what these additional
customizations are:
Filters: Google allows you to set-up custom ad filters for your website (note that
this is in addition to the screening of ad content that Google does by default). By
setting up filters you can block competitive Ads and other Ads that you don’t want
to display on your website. In fact, filters are a must if your website sells a
product or a service (unless you want to promote your competitors through your
website).
Alternate Ads: This is something that can help you in preventing underutilization
of the ad space on your website. Alternate Ads are the Ads that you would want
to show up on your website in case sufficient content-relevant Ads are not
available. If you don’t specify alternate Ads and if there are insufficient contentrelated
Ads available, Google AdSense program will serve charitable Ads to your
website (Ads which don’t earn revenue for you).
Reporting And Performance Tracking: You can even customize the reporting
and performance tracking options for your AdSense account. One important tool
in this regard is the use of channels to study the performance of AdSense Ads
from various perspectives. However, you might decide to take this up later down
the line (maybe 1 month after setting up your AdSense account.
AdSense Account Setup – Part 4 (AdSense Code)
This is the final step in the setting up of Google AdSense account. In this step,
you will get the AdSense code that you need to use on your website in order to
start earning revenue from Google AdSense program. Let’s go ahead and work
on this final step:
Once you are done with all the customizations, your AdSense code is generated
in the AdSense Code box. You just need to copy this code (which is in the form
of a programming script) from the AdSense Code box and paste it in your
website as per the guidelines from Google. Since Google allows only three ad
units per page, you can add the code at more than one place in your html code.
The next step is to save your web page to the designated web server (as per the
instructions from your web hosting service provider). Please note that Google
AdSense program does not require you to send over your website’s html code to
them; neither does it ask to load it onto their servers or do anything else with it.
The addition of AdSense code to your website’s code is the only thing that you
need to do. Separate procedures are available with Google for people who want
to use AdSense Ads with their blogs (you can check these on Google’s website
for AdSense program).
Now that everything is done and dusted, you need to wait for a few hours (might
be lesser than that) before Google’s web crawlers find your web page or blog
that has AdSense code on it and you start seeing AdSense Ads on your web
page or blog. You might see some PSA (charitable Ads) initially (almost
immediately) but these will soon get replaced with the AdSense Ads that will earn
revenue for you. If the content on your website violates the AdSense program’s
policies, you might keep seeing PSAs even after few hours. In all such cases (or
if you find objectionable Ads that don’t go even after you have applied
appropriate filters), you will need to contact Google who will sort out the problems
for you.