How do Advertisers Find My Web Pages
under the Google Adsense Program? This
is a question I'm trying to answer for
myself this morning.
It seems that the two words that answer
this question are ad placement.
A place where an advertiser can place
an ad is known as an ad placement.
Here's how Google describes an
ad placement:
What's an ad placement?
The above article reveals a lot. First,
it makes it clear that Google will create
and ad placement if you don't know how to
create one for yourself. Second, it also
shows you how to create one yourself.
I'll be writing more as I learn more.
Ed Abbott
Friday, January 28, 2011
Allowing All Ad Networks on Google Adsense
I just learned that you can block ads
from certain ad networks. Apparently,
Google will runs ads for others ad
networks.
Since I don't mind other ad networks
having access to my site, I thought
I'd make sure that all possible ad
networks are enabled. Here's the
steps I used to make sure that Google
has enabled all possible ad networks
on my site:
It's always nice to know where you stand.
I didn't think I was blocking any ad networks.
However, I thought I'd check just to be
absolutely sure.
It's often a good thing to differentiate between
the things you know for sure and the things you
think you know. When I take the trouble to find
out for sure, my thinking becomes so much clearer.
Ed Abbott
from certain ad networks. Apparently,
Google will runs ads for others ad
networks.
Since I don't mind other ad networks
having access to my site, I thought
I'd make sure that all possible ad
networks are enabled. Here's the
steps I used to make sure that Google
has enabled all possible ad networks
on my site:
- Login to Google Adsense
- Look for the Adsense Setup tab
at the top of the page - Click on Adsense Setup
- Once inside of Adsense Setup,
start looking for the Ad Review Center - The Ad Review Center is so
far to the right that if you have a
narrow monitor like mine, you may have
to scroll to the right to see it - Bring the Ad Review Center
into view by scrolling right, if necessary - Click on the Ad Review Center
- Once inside the Ad Review Center, you
will probably find that nothing is check-marked. - If nothing is check-marked, no ad networks are
being blocked
It's always nice to know where you stand.
I didn't think I was blocking any ad networks.
However, I thought I'd check just to be
absolutely sure.
It's often a good thing to differentiate between
the things you know for sure and the things you
think you know. When I take the trouble to find
out for sure, my thinking becomes so much clearer.
Ed Abbott
Friday, January 7, 2011
How Do You Make An Adsense Ad Active?
My Adsense Ad appears with a status
of new. This is frustrating. How
do you go from New to Active?
Obviously there must be a way to do this.
I've done it before. I must have made
the ad I'm currently running active in
some way because it now has a status
of active.
It seems to me that there is an approval
process but I've forgotten what it is.
I've been waiting over an hour for my ad
to be approved. It is now 5:37 PM on
a Friday and I first created my ad around
4 PM.
Here's someone with the same problem:
ad status does not change
from new to active
OK. It is now 6:24 PM. I think I may
have my answer. It has to do with
medium rectangle versus large rectangle.
I choose the large rectangle because I
thought it would be a better choice.
However, I then did some research to
see what Google itself has chosen for
by Blogger Blog.
It turns out Google has chosen a medium
rectangle even though it would seem that
there is plenty of room for a large
rectangle. Why would they do this?
Must be because medium rectangles are
more effective.
Admittedly, I'm going on very little
evidence here. However, the fact that
Google itself has made this choice of
a medium rectangle instead of a large
rectangle means something to me.
Here's more evidence. I just visited
this page:
Adsense Sandbox
Wow! What a revelation! The sandbox
indicates that the large rectangle is
all grayed out. The medium rectangle
has an ad to display. Does this mean
that large rectangles will not work
on my page given the keywords there?
Possibly. The more I think about it,
the more I think this may be true.
Since my page is only relevant for a
very target-specific keyword, maybe
there are no large rectangle ads that
are ready-to-run and good-to-go. This
is what the above Adsense Sandbox would
seem to indicate.
Here's an opinion to add to the mix.
This guy seems to think that large
rectangles are better. Large rectangles
are 336 by 280:
Best Performing Adsense Ad Size
The above article-writer seems to like
large rectangles best but the guy who
posts a comment below the article seems
to like medium rectangles (300 X 250)
best.
The more I learn, the more inclined I
am to try the medium rectangle. I still
haven't been able to get the large
rectangle to go to an active status.
I think I'll try running both ads on the
same page, one on top of the other. If
the medium-sized rectangle becomes active
but the large-sized rectangle stays inactive,
this will confirm my theory that one of them
has ads to serve and the other does not.
OK. I'm back. It is 8:04 PM. I'm convinced
that the large rectangle ads are not going
to show up.
I've looked at the choices of ads again. I
think I'll forget about rectangles and go
with the square. Why? Because the 250 X 250
square seems to offer the most relevant ad.
I'm learning something new here: Use the
Adsense Sandbox shown above to figure out
which adsize gives the most relevant ads
in terms of the keywords on my page. Will
this translate into higher revenue? I hope
so.
It is now 8:24 PM. I've chosen a new ad
format. I'm going with the square. Let's
see if ads show up for the square.
An odd thing has happened. The square shows
up as an empty square whereas the large rectangle
never showed up with the proper dimensions. Did I
copy the code wrong? I'm not sure. This makes
no sense to me.
How do I know the square is a square? Because I
placed a border around it. The large rectangle
also showed up with the border I placed around it
but the content was collapsed and was not the
correct height but squashed to zero-height content
instead.
OK. It is 8:37 PM. The square ad (250 X 250)
has shown up almost immediately. Not sure if I
did something wrong or if it was the choice of
ad format. In any case, the switch to the square
ad has made it start working almost immediately.
Ed Abbott
Friday, February 19, 2010
Google Adsense:
When Do I Get Paid?
Just finished the process
of establishing my bank account
with Google. To do this, you
enter the information from
the bottom of one of your checks.
This is a pretty common practice
when it comes to electronic money
transfers. Google sends you the
money electronically.
To do this, Google needs your bank
routing number (the number of the
bank itself) and the checking account
number (your bank account number).
Both numbers are found at the bottom
of any one of your checks.
By the way. You want to be careful
who you give this information to.
Otherwise, you could have problems.
Keep in mind that electronic transfer
can occur in either direction. An
unscrupulous bank can transfer money
away from you or towards you.
In other words, an unscrupulous bank
could take all the money out of your
checking account if it wanted to.
You might think that banking is so
well-regulated that this could never
happen. Maybe a United States bank
would never do this to you.
Unfortunately, though, there are scam
banks in other parts of the world
that will. Here's a Snopes article
on this subject:
Nigerian Scam
The article seems to suggest that it
is individuals who are perpetrating
this crime and that bank involvement
is incidental.
I find this hard to believe. How do
you tranfer funds electronically towards
yourself without a wink and a nod
from the bank that is receiving
the funds for you?
This part of the scam I don't understand.
In any case, I would think the first
line of defense is to take care when
giving out the numbers at the bottom
of your checks.
If some scam artist wants you writing
your own personal checks but filling
in their name, this should serve
as a warning that something is up.
Do you know the person or corporation
that you are sending your check to?
You should.
So keep this in mind. Whenever you
send someone a check in the mail, you
are also sending them your bank routing
information.
For this reason, I safeguard this information
as best I can and only send the numbers at
the bottom of my checks to organizations and
individuals I trust.
Enough said.
Back to the original question. When do I
get paid? When does Google pay me?
According to Google, you get paid at the end
of the following month for the previous month.
Here's Google's adsense help web page that
describes this:
When will I get paid?
Note that you have to hit the payment threshold
in the previous month in order to get paid
at the end of this month.
Currently, the payment threshold is 100 dollars.
If at the end of February Google owes me 100
dollars or more, I get the money at the end
of March. That's how I read what is written.
Money owed at the end of February gets paid at
the end of March. That's it in a nutshell.
Of course if you have not accumulated 100 dollars
in earnings by the end of February, your earnings
are not lost. Rather, your earnings roll over
into the next month.
Therefore it could take a year or more to
reach the payment threshold of 100 dollars.
if you don't have many people clicking on
your ads, you'll have to wait to get paid.
That is to say, it could conceivably take
you a year or more to get paid.
Note that you can be paid electronically or by
check. Personally, I prefer to get paid
electronically for these reasons:
One of the great things
about Google adsense is
that it is passive income.
You write articles and you
let Google place ads in and
around those articles.
Beyond this, the receiving
of money is more or less
automatic.
I'm oversimplifying here
quite a bit. Website promotion
is not an easy thing. You
have to have a website that
people visit before you have
a website where people read
articles and click on ads.
However, website promotion is
beyond the scope of this post.
One more thing before I go.
You have to verify your bank
account first before Google
will send money to that account.
I think the reason for bank account
verification is fairly obvious.
Google does not want to send money
to your next door neighbor just
because he happens to bank at the
same bank as you do and just because
he happens to have a checking account
number that is almost the same
as yours.
In other words, bank account verification
is important because, otherwise, you
could mistype your checking account
number. This could be unfortunate if
you happen to type, by way of a mistype,
a legitimate checking account that is
not yours.
To guard against this, Google will send
you a random amount of money, say
29 cents and then ask you how
much money has appeared in your bank
account.
The right answer, in this hypothetical
example, is 29 cents. You get
the idea.
You only answer this question once. Ever
after, even years after, your bank account
remains a verified bank account.
At least, that's been my experience in the
past when I've verified my bank account
with large corporations other than Google.
Ed Abbott
of establishing my bank account
with Google. To do this, you
enter the information from
the bottom of one of your checks.
This is a pretty common practice
when it comes to electronic money
transfers. Google sends you the
money electronically.
To do this, Google needs your bank
routing number (the number of the
bank itself) and the checking account
number (your bank account number).
Both numbers are found at the bottom
of any one of your checks.
By the way. You want to be careful
who you give this information to.
Otherwise, you could have problems.
Keep in mind that electronic transfer
can occur in either direction. An
unscrupulous bank can transfer money
away from you or towards you.
In other words, an unscrupulous bank
could take all the money out of your
checking account if it wanted to.
You might think that banking is so
well-regulated that this could never
happen. Maybe a United States bank
would never do this to you.
Unfortunately, though, there are scam
banks in other parts of the world
that will. Here's a Snopes article
on this subject:
Nigerian Scam
The article seems to suggest that it
is individuals who are perpetrating
this crime and that bank involvement
is incidental.
I find this hard to believe. How do
you tranfer funds electronically towards
yourself without a wink and a nod
from the bank that is receiving
the funds for you?
This part of the scam I don't understand.
In any case, I would think the first
line of defense is to take care when
giving out the numbers at the bottom
of your checks.
If some scam artist wants you writing
your own personal checks but filling
in their name, this should serve
as a warning that something is up.
Do you know the person or corporation
that you are sending your check to?
You should.
So keep this in mind. Whenever you
send someone a check in the mail, you
are also sending them your bank routing
information.
For this reason, I safeguard this information
as best I can and only send the numbers at
the bottom of my checks to organizations and
individuals I trust.
Enough said.
Back to the original question. When do I
get paid? When does Google pay me?
According to Google, you get paid at the end
of the following month for the previous month.
Here's Google's adsense help web page that
describes this:
When will I get paid?
Note that you have to hit the payment threshold
in the previous month in order to get paid
at the end of this month.
Currently, the payment threshold is 100 dollars.
If at the end of February Google owes me 100
dollars or more, I get the money at the end
of March. That's how I read what is written.
Money owed at the end of February gets paid at
the end of March. That's it in a nutshell.
Of course if you have not accumulated 100 dollars
in earnings by the end of February, your earnings
are not lost. Rather, your earnings roll over
into the next month.
Therefore it could take a year or more to
reach the payment threshold of 100 dollars.
if you don't have many people clicking on
your ads, you'll have to wait to get paid.
That is to say, it could conceivably take
you a year or more to get paid.
Note that you can be paid electronically or by
check. Personally, I prefer to get paid
electronically for these reasons:
- Electronically, I need
do nothing further after
the initial setup. - Electronic payments
are automatic. - I don't have to
deposit a check at
the bank if I'm paid
electronically. - I don't have to
mail checks or hand
deliver them to my
bank - I pay no postage
and burn no gasoline
getting checks into
my bank account. - Electronic payments
say Google on my
bank statement making
it easy for me to tell
who paid me. - Electronic payments
are easier for me to track
for tax purposes - All the tax information
I need to record my Adsense
revenues is on my bank
statements that I receive
from the bank over the
course of a year.
One of the great things
about Google adsense is
that it is passive income.
You write articles and you
let Google place ads in and
around those articles.
Beyond this, the receiving
of money is more or less
automatic.
I'm oversimplifying here
quite a bit. Website promotion
is not an easy thing. You
have to have a website that
people visit before you have
a website where people read
articles and click on ads.
However, website promotion is
beyond the scope of this post.
One more thing before I go.
You have to verify your bank
account first before Google
will send money to that account.
I think the reason for bank account
verification is fairly obvious.
Google does not want to send money
to your next door neighbor just
because he happens to bank at the
same bank as you do and just because
he happens to have a checking account
number that is almost the same
as yours.
In other words, bank account verification
is important because, otherwise, you
could mistype your checking account
number. This could be unfortunate if
you happen to type, by way of a mistype,
a legitimate checking account that is
not yours.
To guard against this, Google will send
you a random amount of money, say
29 cents and then ask you how
much money has appeared in your bank
account.
The right answer, in this hypothetical
example, is 29 cents. You get
the idea.
You only answer this question once. Ever
after, even years after, your bank account
remains a verified bank account.
At least, that's been my experience in the
past when I've verified my bank account
with large corporations other than Google.
Ed Abbott
Monday, February 15, 2010
What Are Adsense Channels?
Here's a page on the Google
Adsense help site that tells
us what an Adsense Channel
is:
What are channels?
OK. So far I gather that channels
are layered on top of everything else.
That's my first impression.
On top of what? On top of ad units
and the web pages you choose to run
these ad units on.
Here are some assumptions I'm currently
making about Google Adsense:
My presentation of what an adsense
channel is is somewhat of an over-
simplification.
It's over-simplified because channels
are a very very flexible tool. Like
any flexible tool, it is hard to explain
because there are so many different ways
you can use it.
However, I think the most basic way to
view a channel is as follows:
Later, as I become more familiar with
adsense channels I will probably
view them more like this:
In other words, even though adsense
channels can be viewed as possibly
being an aggregation of web pages associated
with one ad, you might be better off starting
out by thinking in terms of one ad unit,
one webpage, one channel.
Later, you can scale up in your thinking
and start to see that a whole website could
in fact be a chennel.
I'm learning as I go so what I write here may
be far from 100 percent accurate. However,
I think I've got the basic idea.
I'll write more as I experiment more with
adsense channels
Ed Abbott
Adsense help site that tells
us what an Adsense Channel
is:
What are channels?
OK. So far I gather that channels
are layered on top of everything else.
That's my first impression.
On top of what? On top of ad units
and the web pages you choose to run
these ad units on.
Here are some assumptions I'm currently
making about Google Adsense:
- Ad units and web pages are,
by default, decoupled - Because ad units and web pages
are not associated together, you have
to associate them together if you want
to know how a specific ad is doing on
a specific web page - The assocation of a specific ad
with a specific web page is known as
a channel
My presentation of what an adsense
channel is is somewhat of an over-
simplification.
It's over-simplified because channels
are a very very flexible tool. Like
any flexible tool, it is hard to explain
because there are so many different ways
you can use it.
However, I think the most basic way to
view a channel is as follows:
- One web page
- One ad unit
Later, as I become more familiar with
adsense channels I will probably
view them more like this:
- One aggregation of
web pages - One ad unit
In other words, even though adsense
channels can be viewed as possibly
being an aggregation of web pages associated
with one ad, you might be better off starting
out by thinking in terms of one ad unit,
one webpage, one channel.
Later, you can scale up in your thinking
and start to see that a whole website could
in fact be a chennel.
I'm learning as I go so what I write here may
be far from 100 percent accurate. However,
I think I've got the basic idea.
I'll write more as I experiment more with
adsense channels
Ed Abbott
Sunday, February 14, 2010
What is Google AdSense?
OK. This is a new blog.
What is Google AdSense? It
is a program run by Google
that allows website owners
to run ads and make money.
That's it in a nutshell.
Run ads and make money.
Here is where Google AdSense
is found:
Google Adsense
Here are some things you should
know about Google Adsense:
That, in a nutshell, is Google
Adsense.
Ed Abbott
What is Google AdSense? It
is a program run by Google
that allows website owners
to run ads and make money.
That's it in a nutshell.
Run ads and make money.
Here is where Google AdSense
is found:
Google Adsense
Here are some things you should
know about Google Adsense:
- It costs nothing to get
started other than the fact
that you need to have a website - Google places the ads on
your website for you - All you need to do to
get started is to copy and
paste Google's html code
into one of your web pages - Google provides you
with the HTML that goes
on your webpage - Google's HTML becomes
an ad that your web visitors
can see - If one of your web visitors
clicks on an ad, you make money - As soon as you make your
first 100 dollars, Google
sends you the money
That, in a nutshell, is Google
Adsense.
Ed Abbott
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