Google Adsense

I just applied to be accepted into the Google Adsense program. This is a program from Google to put targeted ads on your web pages. While there are a lot of ad providers out there, I liked to non-intrusive, super targeted nature of the Adsense ads. They are text based ads, so no annoying flash animations or even eye-popping graphics. You fully control the color scheme of your ads. And Google uses their Search Engine power to provide super targeted ads. Write about Dance Dance Revolution, you will get ads about Japanese Music and DDR pads. In short, they don’t annoy the users and may actually be very useful.

But the first rule of Adsense is “Don’t talk about Adsense”. Try and find some information on how much money you can make using Adsense. You can’t. Their TOS has a gag rule in it that keeps you from talking about specifics about how the program works. For me, that means I just have to try it and see. But on the high end, WebLogsInc claims to have made $1M in year, and have peeked at $2,335 in one day. Of course, they employ 103 bloggers so they have a lot of content to serve ad impressions on. And also some the most popular blogs out there (Engadget, Autoblog, etc.). So that number is probably the pinnacle of what you can get. Reading some of the comments on that post, it seems that for a smaller blog like mine more reasonable numbers may be $0.20 a month.

So (if accepted into their program), I’m going to give it a try. But if it takes me a year to make enough money for them to actually cut a check, I don’t think I’ll be staying with them for long. We will see…

Start Blogging in 5 Minutes…

So you’ve read the many many fine blogs out there and have decided that you have something to say. But how to get started? Well, here is my 5 minutes guide to getting started blogging.

  1. Go to www.blogger.com and create an account. Don’t worry, it is just google, they won’t spam you.
  2. From the blogger dashboard, create a new blog (you may get pushed into this screen after you sign up for an account).
  3. Pick a name for your blog and pick a something.blogspot.com Address.
  4. Choose a default blog template to make your new blog look nice.
  5. Start Blogging by adding a new post!

That’s it! Just 5 simple steps, and you’ve come to the hardest part of starting a blog, finding your voice and finding the time to do it…