How to run Google ads on your blog

When people talk about Google Ads they really mean Google's Adsense program, which now includes video and image ads as well as the well-known classified ads.

It is fairly straight forward to add Google Adsense to your blog or website, but there are number of steps to be taken and also some potential problems to avoid:

1. Create your blog -you must do this first because you must have one when you
2. Apply for Google Adsense
3. Once you have been approved you will be given your code, which you can subsequently use on all your sites and even here at HubPages

Basically you are signing up to use your website in the same way as a newspaper runs a classified ads section. You get paid if one of your readers clicks on an ad. The ads that show on your site will vary depending on your content:. For example a site about gourmet cheeses may show ads like those in the photo to the right. Note one of the ads isn't about cheese, its a famous management book "Who Moved my Cheese" - even Google isn't perfect! The ads will vary by the visitors location too - someone in Australia will probably see different ads from someone in Los Angeles.

You don't directly control what ads are shown. You can however control what ads look like to some extent. You can change font and background colours, size of the ad unit (square, tall and skinny, banner etc) and whether or not there is a border.

Google has a strict Terms of Service (TOS) which you sign up to when you apply for their program. For once this is a document worth reading before you sign. There are some definite no-noes:

• content: no gambling, sex, guns, booze, tobacco or other drugs.

• don't encourage others to click ads on your pages and NEVER do it yourself - Google isn't stupid and they have some very good software to detect fraud because that is what this is.

• don't cheat :don't put lots of irrelevant keywords on your page, advertising should not be deceptive to the reader.

Getting banned by Google is for ever and for all your sites - its a nasty thing to happen if you have developed a nice little earner with Adsense.

These videos show you step-by-step how to add Adsense blocks to your blogger or WordPress blog. The process is the same - its part of the presentation of the blog where you determine where ads are located.

There is a sophisticated industry around placement of Adsense and other ads on your page - the most commonly agreed principals are :

• ads should blend i.e. be part of the background of the page and not jump out as a foreign object
• ads near the top and to the right of content work better than ads placed low on the page "below the fold".
• ads in the middle of a block of text can work well.

Alternatively there are themes for WordPress Blogs specfiically designed to optimise Adsense placement - see Further Reading below.

Lis Sowerbutts has been traveling since age 7, and has to date visited over 55 countries. She firmly believes that traveling is too good to be left to the young and you are never too late to start traveling A New Zealander, Lis currently lives in Perth, Australia.