What is Google AdSense

Google AdSense is an advertising program run by Google. Its working is quite simple, if you own any web property (e.g. Blog, Website, YouTube Channel), you can display ads on this. These ads are provided by Google. Whenever any visitor to your web property, clicks or in any manner interacts with these ads, Google will pay you certain amount of commission – this is your Google AdSense Earning.


To get access to these ads by Google, you need to have a Google AdSense account. And this account is absolutely free, you do not need to pay any money to create an AdSense account.
When working with AdSense you will come across two measures of payment to you, Cost per 1000 impressions, and Cost per click. I will discuss these terms in detail later on.


What’s the Limit of Earning from AdSense?  – There is NO LIMIT. I have shown you that I made Rs 2 lac per month from Google AdSense, depending on your efforts, you can make less than this, as much as this or much MORE than this from AdSense. With Google AdSense Sky is the Limit.

How to find segments you are passionate about

Now that you know what AdSense is and how it works, let’s get started with how you can earn money from AdSense.

First thing you need to do in order to earn money from AdSense is find a topic/niche/segment about/on which you will write. When choosing this topic/niche/segment you need to keep two important points in mind – Passion & Commercial Viability.

Passion:

• It can be anything, from Finance to Cooking, to some Hobby, or even you daily life. Whatever topic you choose, make sure you love writing, creating images or video’s about it.
• To earn money from AdSense you will need to share knowledge with others on this topic, help them with their problems, and answer their questions, so you need to love whatever topic you choose to work with.
• Once you love your topic, then you can add to your knowledge about the topic by reading more about it, this in turn will allow you to provide more valuable information to your viewers.

Commercial Viability:

• While Love is everything, money too figures in life right 🙂 So in order to make money from your topic, you also need to make sure your topic is commercially viable. A micro topic like ‘Punjabi Cooking’ will help you earn money, but limited amount, since your audience is limited, and also your writing potential on this topic is limited. Opt for a broader topic like ‘Indian Cooking’, this will bring in more viewers and much more writing material for you.
• Do people read about your topic online? While most topics do find online audience, there can be some which have more readers than others. There are 8,10,000 pages for ‘paratha recipe’; compare this to 6,66,000 pages about ‘kite flying tips’. While this is not absolute indication of people’s interest in the topic, such statistics will help you choose a topic about which people read online. More the readers, better for you.
• Even better is a scenario where people like discussing about your topic online. This will provide you with more writing material. ‘Paratha recipe forum’ has 1,60,000 pages, whereas ‘Kite flying tips forum’ has 16,80,000 pages. So choose a topic with higher commercial viability.

How to book a domain and website hosting

Domain
Domain name is an important influential element of your blog. Keep in mind the following pointers when choosing a domain name for your blog.

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• A nice, easy to spell and quick to remember domain name will attract more readers than something complicated to spell.
• Book a domain name which reflects your blog’s topic/niche/segment. Merely by reading your domain name people should be able to make out what this blog is about.
• Always go for a .com or .net domain, these fares better in longer run as readers are more comfortable with these extensions. If you can’t get these extensions then you can go for .in or .co.in domain extensions.

I use  Bigrock.com, for booking my domains. They are India’s #1 domain registration company and offer some really cool discounts on domain names.

Hosting

Having a good quality hosting for your blog  is crucial; it can make or break your blog. If your hosting is of poor quality and your blog is frequently down, you lose out on readers who are unable to access your site, thus losing out on AdSense income. Also frequent inaccessibility of your blog will impact its ranking on Google causing a drop and it turn  affect your blog traffic.

I use HostGator hosting for my Blog.  HostGator is a world leading provider of Website and blog Hosting. I have been using HostGator from last 5 years and never faced any issues with them, their service is excellent. HostGator also offers some neat discounts on its WordPress Hosting Package.

How to do keyword research / Title research for Blogging

Now that you have your blog topic, domain and hosting in place it is time to start working on your blog. You need to fill up your blog with right content. This content can be in form of article, videos or images. Right content makes the difference between success and failure. Your readers are looking for information about your topic. But what exactly do they want to know?

If you do not understand what your readers want, you are in for trouble. Your blog might have tons of useful information, but it may still not be what the readers want, or it might not be presented in the correct format, or you might be getting too technical or too generic. You articles might be over or under researched. There are numerous things that can go wrong with content. So tread with caution. Here are a few pointers on how you should choose keywords/titles for your blog articles.

Keyword/Title research for Blogging

• Track your competitor’s blog; this is the simplest and usually the safest way to find titles to write on. However make sure you always research your titles before you start writing.
• Use Google Alert and track your topic/niche/segment. This will ensure that you are updated with all the latest developments in your niche; and will also provide you with fresh ideas for your blog article.
• Ask your readers. Nothing beats this. Once you have enough people visiting your blog you can ask your readers what they would like to know more about. Title/Keyword suggestions from readers are gold mine. Because if you readers want you to write about something, they will love to read that and share it with others too. Thus helping you bring in more AdSense revenue.
• Follow Online Journals and news sites. Latest happenings in your niche are sure to be covered by journals and news sites. These happening can be good title for your blog articles.

After using any or all of the aforementioned methods you would surely have found a couple of good titles/keywords for your blog articles. However just as when choosing your blog niche you  checked for commercial viability, you need to do the same check here. Before you start writing your article, check on:

• What are the total monthly searches happening in Google for the main keyword and other long tail related keywords on which you are planning to write your article.
• How competitive is to rank that keyword in Google; this you can find by putting the keyword in Google and look for the sites which are currently coming, you can analyze if you can do a better job than the once which are already present on page one of Google.

How to write content for your blog

With title/keyword in hand now it’s time to start with the actual writing. Your writing style, presentation and flow will matter tremendously. So make sure you pay adequate attention to all the aspects of your article.

• Even if you feel you know everything there is to know about your chosen title, still undertake a sufficient research on it. This will help you improve the quality of your article.
• Researching should be followed up with thorough study and analysis of the data collected. This way you can be confident in your knowledge about your topic.
• When you feel you have enough knowledge on your chosen keyword, it’s time to plan your blog post. Remember I said presentation matters. A well researched article is of no use unless it’s written and presented in a simple easy to understand format.

Always remember that the more readers you get the more you can earn. And audience comes to those who offer quality. Your blog content needs to be worthy of your reader’s time and attention.

Things you need to check before you apply for AdSense

Now that your blog is in place, it is time to move on to monetizing it with the help of AdSense. After all you took all this effort in order to earn money, right. So let’s get started with AdSense. Here’s a list of things you will need to check before you apply for your AdSense Account.

• Are you 18+ years of age?
• When applying from India for an AdSense account, make sure that the blog/website with which you are applying for AdSense account is at least 6month+ old.
• Blog / Website complies with all Google AdSense policies
• Blog/Website has enough content before you apply for AdSense
• Your blog / website is getting decent amount of traffic
• Every Blog/Website needs to have About us, contact us, privacy policy and disclaimer page
• AdSense may reject your application if you have other ad network ads on your blog so make sure to remove other Ad networks from your blog/website before applying for AdSense.
• You are not using, PPC or any other type of paid traffic generation options. These are against Google AdSense guidelines and will lead to rejection of your AdSense application.