This month, I finally hit the $100 threshold on Google AdSense! Keep reading to see the steps on how I made my first $100 with Google AdSense.
For about a year, I have gone back and forth about using Google AdSense to monetize my blog. At first, I hated the way that the ads looked with my layout. But then when I realized I could change the format to “image-only” ads instead of “text-based” ads, I was more okay with it.
Everything changed when I saw that some money was actually coming in from these Google Ads. Here’s how I did it.
Set up Google AdSense Plugin
If you have WordPress, the first thing I suggest is to install the Google AdSense Plugin. When you install this plugin, you can click and place the ads where you want them on your blog.
Bonus – with one click you can enable mobile-based ads on your blog!
Ad Placement on your Blog
I didn’t want to overwhelm my readers and put ads everywhere on my blog. I found out with some testing, that ads placed “above the fold” will do better than ones put further down the blog page.
This means, if you took a quick screenshot of your blog’s homepage, you would want to put your largest ads there. Not when you have to scroll down the page to read more.
Tip: place large rectangular ads on your sidebar and long horizontal ads across the top of your blog posts.
Add Google AdSense to your YouTube Channel
If you have a YouTube channel, I highly recommend adding monetization to your videos. On my YouTube channel, I just added a monetization option.
Back in 2012, I uploaded a video of my surprise proposal at Disneyland for my friends and family. I had no idea that this would actually be a popular video topic on YouTube, but now the video has over 50,000 views! You betcha, I added the monetization feature to that video.
Here’s how you can add the monetization feature to your channel.
Set and Forget
After setting up ads on your blog, I suggest giving it a month before changing ads or their placement. On the Google AdSense homepage, you can see the traffic of the ads on your blog.
I found out that more than half of my ad traffic comes from mobile devices. It definitely “pays” to enable mobile ads on your blog!
Finally, this month I hit the $100 threshold and Google emailed me to say that they were depositing money in my checking account.
That felt awesome – that money is going to help me pay off my credit card debt. You can read more about my money goals in 2017 here.
If you want to learn more about monetization and growing your blog, find more posts in the Blogging 101 section.
14 responses
I’m having issues with the WordPress plugin for Adsense for my new blog. I’ve always had an Adsense account when I was on blogger but now I am trying to use that same account for WordPress and the plugin says I have a “host-only” Adsense account. I followed the directions to get my new site approved which it did but ads aren’t showing up. Did you have these issues? The help forums aren’t helpful sometimes.
Hey! What’s the website you are using on WordPress?
http://www.ngocis.com
If you have been approved, an article said the turn around time is between a few days to a week. I would suggest using either the plugin OR the Google AdSense for your ad placement. So for me, I deleted all ad placements on the google website and only used placement from the plugin. I hope that helped!
Great to see you making money with adsense. Keep tit up!
That’s great to see that your more making money. Have just added adsense to my YouTube channel so hopefully one day soon I’ll make my first $100
I hear a lot about Google Adsense and the amount of success people have. I’m not there in my blogging career, but good to know!
I’ve been thinking about using Google Adsense, but I had the same reservations as you did about how they would look on my site. But I see you implemented yours really well. Can you choose which categories are shown? I’m still looking into this. Fantastic that you’re seeing a result with earnings. Another quick question for you – I noticed that you are using Disqus for your comments. Have you had any problems with using them? Does it slow down your site (like I’ve heard)? How did you remove their ads? I love the way Disqus looks, but I’ve heard different things about them. Great post, by the way. Thanks for sharing!
Hi Ana, I use a plugin that allows me to place the ads where I think they would look best on my blog and preform well. You can choose categories of ads shown through Adsense, but what is displayed depends on the viewer.
I have not heard of ads on Disqus, so nothing was modified on my end. I hope that helps you!
I have the Google Adsense plugin for WordPress but haven’t full utilized it. Theses are some good tips though. I think I’ll give it a go!
[…] Read: How I made my first $100 with Google AdSense […]
Great post, by the way. Thanks for sharing!
Agree with you, when google ads change the looks of our website.
Hi Lauren,
Unfortunately, the Google Publisher Plugin is deprecated and has been closed and removed from wordpress.org. Google AdSense recommends using the free plugin Advanced Ads instead. If you are going to update this post, you may consider this change. Here, you can find this plugin: https://wordpress.org/plugins/advanced-ads