If you are
already familiar with AdSense and already have an account and a
website, you can probably skip this section. However, if you’ve
heard about this “Google AdSense thing” and aren’t sure exactly
how it works or how to make money with it, then this section is for
you.
Let me start
with a little history lesson. Don’t worry, it’s not too boring.
:) Before Google developed the AdSense program, a person or business
that owned a website had four basic ways they could make money with
the site:
1. They could
sell their own products on the site.
2. They could
sell other people’s products on the site.
3. They could
sell banner ads to other companies.
4. They could
show banner ads from one of the advertising networks.
The first method
made the most money, and is still a very common way of making money
online. But it was (and is) the most difficult way to make money on
the web. You had to create a good product that people will want to
buy, and you had to support that product either via email or on the
phone
(or both).
You had to be
able to handle refunds and affiliates (salespeople). You can’t make
everybody happy all of the time, either, so you had to grow a thick
skin and not get angry when you read the occasional “this guy and
his product sucks!” post on a forum somewhere. You had to advertise
your product and compete with other people who have similar products.
It’s doable (I know because I do it), and the rewards are great,
but it takes a lot of time and a lot of work.
Number two was
easier than number one because you were just an affiliate, or
salesperson. You sold the product but you didn’t handle the
refunds, you didn’t do the support, and you didn’t have to worry
about what people said about you (because who complains about the
salesperson?). There was still
a lot of work
involved though, because you had to pre-sell your visitors and learn
to write convincing “why you should buy this product” articles.
And you never knew if all of that work would flop because the product
just didn’t sell well, or worse–the company who created the
product went out of business (it happens)!
Number three,
selling banner ads on your site, required almost as much work as
number one, because you had to seek out advertisers and handle their
needs and setup scripts to track views and clicks and reporting and
it was just a big hassle.
Number four was
the easiest, because all you had to do was drop some code
from the
advertising network onto your website and the network would
select ads to
show and pay you for showing them. It was easy, but the pay
just stunk
unless you had a huge volume of traffic.
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