Adsense Do's and Dont's for Dummies

So you’re new to the whole Adsense Experience, that’s okay, everyone was a newbie once. You’ve got to start somewhere. I was, and I still consider myself a newbie with almost 2 years experience with Adsense. I’m always open to suggestions, and I’m like a sponge with a thirst for knowledge. Here are a few tips and suggestions for people who are either about to embark on their Adsense adventure or who have just set sail.




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Don’t’s…
Don’t make a site about Adsense. You know very little. And in the process of trying to learn you are of course going to websites trying to find out more. In the search for your adsense knowledge how would you feel if you stumbled on a site like the one that YOU have made? By a rank amateur. Who is just regurgitating what everyone else has said. In the process of reguritating it it is also being watered down. Also the Adsense Newbie who makes a site about Adsense is probably gathering information from other sites made by Adsense Newbies. They have haven’t digested it properly and you are unable to discern what is worth reading and what is not.
Don’t strive to be an Adsense Expert for the sake of being an Adsense Expert. When you’re making enough money to live on comfortably to give you the lifestyle you believe you deserve, then you can be an expert who writes e-books, talks at seminaros or publishes their methods. Until then we’re all learning. But that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from each other.
Some people don’t see how funny it is that people ask “how do I get the code to work? How do I get the ads I want? How do I get traffic?” and their site is about… MAKING MONEY ON THE INTERNET!

Best case scenario it’s pure comedy. Worst case scenario it’s hypocrisy.

Don’t think that you can make a site, upload it, and then the traffic will magically arrive.
It’s not a case of “Build it and they will come”, it’s more like the old saying “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.” Realise this: you haven’t even yet lead the horse to water. You know what? You don’t even know where that horse is!

You want to make Adsense work for you? Then you’re going to do some more homework… SEO (Search Engine Optimization), learn some design skills (expose yourself to good examples of design, both online and offline, ie: magazine layouts, even the ads), get out of your comfort zone and learn HTML (you can still use a HTML editor (my preference is Dreamweaver), but look at what you’ve done and then look at the code, slowly but surely you will learn without really trying). Read books on marketing. Look at the way businesses (not just online ones) promote themselves.


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Don’t spam. Never ever. Whether it be email spam to a list of addresses of people you don’t know or a “drive by spamming” at a forum you’ve just signed up at.
Don’t cheat. Don’t try and cheat Google, they’ll catch you. If you think you can, then go ahead. The result will be one less Adsense Publisher for me to compete with to get hold of advertisers dollars.
Cheating is not a means towards passive income. It has no residual effect. Cheating only makes money (which you can end up losing) when you are actively cheating. Instead of wasting your time doing that use your creative if somewhat devious brain to come up with legitimate plans of increasing your revenue. As previously mentioned, educate yourself: SEO, marketing, promotion, etc, etc. Instead of using the local town library computer to fraudulently click on a couple of ads use that trip to pin a flyer for one of your websites on the community noticeboard.

Don’t make a site about a topic simply because it is a high paying keyword. Again, you will just be vomiting up someone elses words. I had a discussion ten years ago with a friend who had concerns with the state of the quality of the information that people were exposing themselves to. It’s even more apt in todays society which sees more of the worlds population multiplied by a thousandfold get online since then. He saw information as peanuts. We process this information, and pass it on in text books and it’s crunchy peanut butter. Then people use this information to write articles (he was thinking magazines) and it’s now smooth peanut butter, and where was it going from there? What was it being used for? And what was it ending up as?
Peanut JUICE!

Watered down and with very little of the crunchy goodness it originally had.

I’m still unaware if peanut juice is on the market, but the thought of it doesn’t make me want to go drink a glass of it. And that’s what people are doing nowadays, dispensing peanut juice from their made for adsense websites.

Unique content isn’t rearranging words in a paragraph. Unique is original. If you’re going to fill your site up with articles from an article site, then so be it. But write a half a dozen articles to do with the topic that you yourself have researched. It might feel like you’re going back to school to do an assignment. And it is. But you know now more than you knew then so it should be easier for you now than it ever was. If you’re not sure how to go about it there are books at the library on writing and researching. Your librarian will know exactly where they are! Despite the rumours circulating the internet, the library is not dead. Use it. If a publisher took a gamble on an author to write a book then it’s bound to contain better information than what you’re getting through a search from a quick lookup online.

Don’t tell your family about your Adsense websites. They may feel compelled to click on the ads to help you out. Which may lead to your account shutdown by Google because one of your family members were a little too generous with the clicks.
Don’t tell your friends about your Adsense websites. They may do what a family member does, or if you have a habit of having friends who for whatever reason would hate to see one of their friends get ahead in life they may try and cripple your residual earnings by clicking too much.
Don’t register your name as a dot com and fill it with Adsense ads. Avoid doing this unless you’re an artist, photographer, musician, author or have some other reason why your name would evoke some kind of recognition and response from an internet audience. By all means do register it, but for purposes other than making money from Adsense.
Don’t label your Ads with anything other than “sponsored links” or “advertisements”.
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Do’s…


Do make a website on a subject that you LOVE and enjoy. Because depending on your experience, net savvy and other determining factors it may take a while before 1) you get traffic, 2) people actually click on your links, 3) you’re making enough money to get a monthly check.
Adsense is a long term proposition. If you are new you will not making it big overnight.

Do look around and find a forum where they discuss Adsense. There’s a lot around, but be mindful that the information that the members are sharing islegit and not likely to get you banned. It’s good to have more than one opinion. I recommend AdsenseChat which was started by Adsense Expert and published author Joel Comm.
Do ask questions, even stupid ones. At the forum I frequent the only time I will mock someone is AFTER someone has been rude to me because I have pointed out that either 1) they’re a cheater or 2) the world doesn’t need a site about adsense and/or making money on the internet from someone who has little or no experience with both.
Do speculate. Wonder out loud (in forums) about why you think you’ve had a drop or a rise in your adsense earnings. Or even about your site traffic. Feel free to imagine how Google does things. Of course highlight the fact that it is mere speculation. Avoid it coming across as fact or gospel. Also be aware that sometimes things happen and you’ll never find out the reason for them. As frustrating as that is it does happen.
Do ask others to critique your site. And while someone may not directly respond about the ad block layout that you specifically asked for and they talk about some other feature or facet of your website then just go with the flow.
Do keep your site/s confidential if you so wish.
Do buy Joel’s book The Adsense Code. It’s only fifteen bucks! It’s an excellent start point and will bring you up to speed quickly.
Do read Google’s Programme Policies and their Terms and Conditions, aka ToS (Terms of Service). As a matter of fact bookmark them and read them every so often.
Do be patient. If you are a Complete Adsense Newb, and by that I mean you have absolutely no idea how to crop an image, upload a page, copy and paste html, etc, etc, then don’t jump in feet first to the first sales pitch for hosted sites or templates that comes your way. You will need to educate yourself first. Otherwise you will be approaching these offers from a position of ignorance.