how to get started in adsense?

Google AdSense is the first tool you should begin using if you're trying to make money online as a new website publisher. It allows you to easily monetize your websites with a few simple clicks. If used properly, it can generate a large and steady income from visitors to your web pages who click on ads. If used incorrectly, however, by not maximizing the income potential of your ads, you can leave a lot of money on the table

You can start making money with Google AdSense quickly and easily. And if your website is getting traffic, you'll be amazed at the results you'll be getting. Focusing on three basic steps to get started with AdSense will ensure that you maximize the income earning potential and your long term success.

Before you apply for an account with Google and begin putting Google AdSense ads on your site, you need to have some content. Content on the Internet is King! You'll need to create a few articles or web pages that are key word focused and combine those articles into a theme based website. Keyword focused is an important term that you'll want to understand because that's what will determine how much AdSense revenue your page or article will generate.

To start making money with Google AdSense, you will need to do three things: 1) Do some keyword research, 2) Write keyword focused articles or web pages, and 3) Create a theme-based content website.

Do Some Keyword Research

You should consider some popular subjects or topics that you my know a little about or are interested in. It's much easier to write articles and develop web content when the subject is something you're interested in or even better, passionate about. Make a list of three subject area or topics that you are interested in, know something about, and will be able to write about.

Then for each subject, make a list of a few of the potential keywords or phrases you think people will use to find information about that subject in the search engines. You see, Google searches for web pages and displays the results based on the words or phrases that people use for their search. Advertisers pay for their ads to appear on pages that include content for the same keywords or search phrases.

Let's look at an example. Suppose I have an interest in woodworking and old woodworking tools (which I do), and I know a little about those subjects and would enjoy writing some articles and creating a theme-based web site about old woodworking tools.

I want to make some money with my website so I make a list of potential keywords and phrases that people might use to find my site. I can think of hundreds i.e. router, band saw, table saw, jointer, etc. Then I do some research to see how much demand there is for each of those keywords and also for how many web pages exist for each of those keywords. Take "table saw" for example. I used the Google Keyword Tool to find out that there were 165,000 searches using that keyword phrase in the United States in the past month. That's a lot. I also looked at some other similar phrases. I looked at "contractor's table saw." There were 1,300 searches for that phrase.

Now that's not all of the information I need, but it gives me a good idea of the relative popularity of those two search terms. Then I used the Google Keyword Tool to look at the estimated "Cost per Click" that advertisers were willing to pay for that keyword phrase. For the phrase "table saws" the advertisers were paying $1.37 per click. But for the phrase "contractors table saws" they were paying $3.51 per click. In the Google Keyword tool, the Estimated Average Cost Per Click (CPC) is the predicted average cost each time a user clicks your ad for that keyword. You should know also that that cost varies with the position of the ad on the page.

By doing a little research I know that clicks on ads for "contractors table saws" pay much better than for "table saws." I also know that there a whole lot more searches every month for the term "table saws" than there is for the phrase "contractors table saw." But I don't know anything yet about the supply of pages for those terms. Looking at both supply and demand will give me an indication of how much competition I will be facing in order to get to the top two pages of Google search results. Your goal is to get there so you'll get a lot of organic traffic to your website so that people will click on your ads.

We'll talk more about keyword research in another article, but for now, I'm going to write my keyword focused article about "contractors table saws" because there appears to be less competition and it pays more. Because there is less competition, I will have a better chance of getting to the top two pages of search results and I'll get more traffic. Now I have to write my article and place my ads.

Write Keyword Focused Articles or Web Pages

Start writing your keyword focused articles for each of the keywords or phrases you discovered in your research. You should know that great content is what the search engines are looking to find. Google loves good content and you should always keep that in mind as you write your article. If someone searches in Google for "contractors table saws" in order to keep their customer happy and coming back to Google, Google wants to find some quality pages about contractors table saws and return those pages in the listing of search results.

It is a win-win situation for everyone when this happens. The visitor to your website is happy because Google found for them your high value content web page about contractor's table saws. Google is happy because their customer is happy with the search results and found what they were looking for. I'm happy because a visitor to my website who was already looking for information about contractor's table saws found my site and might click on one of my Google AdSense ads which will make money for me. What a great system for making money and keeping everyone involved happy!

Create a High Quality Theme-Based Website

Finally, you need to have a high quality theme based website to place your keyword focused web page or article. By writing more and more articles and creating more and more high value keyword focused content pages, you'll eventually have a high quality theme based website. That's what Google is looking for and that's how your pages will move up in the search engine rankings and attract more traffic.

The reality is that until you have at least thirty articles or pages Google may not show you in the top search results and there is a lot more to know about optimizing your pages for the search engines. But as you continue to add keyword focused content that fits the theme of your website, you'll begin to generate traffic and the more high quality content you have, the more traffic you'll receive. As your website generates more and more traffic, your ads will get more and more clicks and your ad revenue will begin to grow.

Ben Anderson is an educator and Internet marketing and web development expert and has been building and marketing online businesses since 1999. He is the owner of http://www.Create-a-Great-Website.com, a site dedicated to helping mom and pop and other average people make money online.