What Is Adsense?

If you've been unaware what those blocks of text are that appear all over the web (even on this site) and think they're just little 'helpers' to guide you to your next Internet destination... you'd be half right.

In fact they are paid for ads and when you click on them an advertiser gets charged and a publisher (in this case hubpages) gets paid.

Welcome to Google's Adsense program.

Back in 2004 when it all kicked off, Adsense was a revolution amongst marketers online. Folks hurried desperately to plaster their websites with Google ads and rake in the large amounts of cash.

And in those days... it was simple, quick and easy to make a killing.

This gave rise to page generator applications, pieces of software that would spew out page after page of (mostly) nonsense text that you could then monetize with adsense.

A lot of people made a lot of money very quickly... until Google wised up.

Almost overnight, those folks who were raking it in with their page generated sites watched in horror as their sites slid down the rankings.

The simple truth was that Google had seen how its advertising program was being 'abused' and now it was taking action... by throwing page generated sites into the slammer!

Of course... some escaped unharmed and still today people find some success with page generated or auto-blogging sites. Some people hide under The Big G's radar. But really... is it anyway to build a business?

A lot of Blackhatters (those guys who use - shall we say - unconventional means of generating traffic) have to throw up site after site to just to keep their income coming in.

I mean... that's no way to run a business is it? And it's not that hard to play by Google's rules AND make a fantastic income...

So how do you get on Google's good side and bring in piles of adsense moolah?

Simple... provide decent content and keep adding backlinks.

There's some disagreement about whether the duplicate content rule exists i.e. does a site get marked down if it uses the same content as another.

Some would swear by original content, others by the amount of backlinks a site has. IMHO the best way to succeed with adsense is to use original content and build up a number of backlinks with my favorite method... article marketing.

Whether the duplicate content penalty exists or not, one thing's for sure... Google DOES have human reviewers and should they happen upon a spammy looking site with useless content that's already all over the net... they would no doubt push it down the rankings.

Play it safe -- use good content and get a decent amount of backlinks. But of course link-building is the biggest pain in the behind...

If there's one aspect of making money on the internet that's seen many a wannabe marketer crash and burn... it's link-building.

It's boring, hard work and a pain in the butt. Or is it?

Here's how I build links... I use articles with one crucial difference...

I only write about the stuff I want to write about. Think about it... most folks believe that if you have a site in dog training, then you have to submit articles to the directories on the subject of 'dog training. All well and good but what if you find dogs really boring animals? What if you only chose this niche because there's a lot of money to be made?

Now you're stuck writing articles for lord knows how long...

UNLESS... you follow my little system for pumping out articles for valuable backlinks...

I simply write articles on subjects I enjoy - like wealth creation or movies - and then, in the resource box, write something like...

"Matt has sites on all kinds of subjects inlcuding (anchor text here) so go check them out by clicking here!"

You get the idea...

It doesn't matter what you write about as long as you get that valuable anchor text pointing to your adsense site. Make sense?