Create your Custom Google Search Engine and Earn Money

I find new ways to earn money online every day and want to share my experiences with you. In past Hubpages, I've explained how you can create your own store in Amazon, how to set up your online shop with more than 30,000,000 articles from thousands of affiliates, how to have online garage sales and how to create your own online video rental store. Everything for FREE!

In this article I'm going to tell you how to create a custom search engine, tailored to your niche and earn money with it as well (also FREE!).

Google Co-op

As stated in their website, "Google Co-op is a platform that enables you to customize the web search experience for users of both Google and your own website. Harness the power of Google search technology to create a free Custom Search Engine that reflects your knowledge and interests - and make money from the resulting traffic."

That means you can create your FREE custom search engine, adapted to your own needs, display it on your website or blog and make money with AdSense for Search. You can also associate a channel with it to track your earnings for that particular resource. In this way you'll see the performance and income impact from it. The custom search engine can be included in one website, multiple websites, or specific web pages. You host the search box and results on your own website and customize the colors and branding to match your existing layout.

How to

You start defining your scope by specifying some basic information such as Search Engine Name, Keywords describing the subject of your search engine and so on.

Then you set up some preferences such as how to search included sites, Search Engine visibility, if you want to show ads on results pages and other options.

The next step is to customize the Look and Feel of your Search Box and Results Page including your own logo, font colors, etc.

The resulting pages can be hosted with Google (great if you do not have a Website or Blog), or you can grab the code and paste it into the page where you'd like the search box to appear.

Make Money

You can now make money with your Custom Search Engine by connecting it to a Google AdSense account. You earn income when users click on an ad they see in your search results. If you have more than one Custom Search Engine, all of your search engines will automatically be associated with the same AdSense account.

For more advanced options, you have the Business Edition starting at $100 per year, whith more choices such as ads-free results pages, XML feed of search results, Email support, payment with Google Checkout and so on.

You can visit my custom search engine tailored to Environmental Issues, Green Businesses, Investments Opportunities, Alternative Energy and everything Green. It is still work in progress so changes are being made to optimize its performance.