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
