Last week I talked about placing ads on other web sites to generate traffic to your own web site. In February, I talked about placing affiliate links on your site to generate revenue. (Affiliate links are links on your site to specific products, such as an Amazon book, and getting a portion of each sale made through that link.) Today I’m going to talk about placing Google Ads on your site.

Google sells ads to customers based on keyword terms. Those ads might run on the Google site or content partner sites. Google Adsense is the program for potential content partners. If you have a web site you can partner with Google to have them put ads on your site.

I have done this for two sites now; both were nonprofits. The whole process takes about 30 minutes. Signing up takes 10 minutes – but then you have to wait until your site is “approved”. This takes 1-2 days. Once you are approved if takes 10-20 minutes to paste the html that they supply (determined by a few choices you make on size, shape, and color of ads) onto the pages of your site where you want to place an ad.

Google has some restrictions on the type of site they will accept. They don’t want to be part of a site that is a compilation of ads. They also don’t want to be listed on pages that could be considered illegal. Other than that they are pretty open.

They ads that they will feed to you will be based on the text of your page. So if you have a site on how to grow flowers, they might push you ads about a Home and Garden show. You get paid when a visitor to your site clicks through one of the ads. The amount that you will earn varies depending on the amount that Google is charging for the ads and since ads are generally purchased through a bidding process the range can be great. Google will send you a check once you earn more than $100.

I’ve read the stories from people who make their fortune through Google ads. This hasn’t been my experience, but it does seem like a decent investment for 30 minutes of work IF you have a site that is content-rich and you don’t mind if people click away from your site. In other words if the goal of your site is to have visitors buy something from you then I would not suggest Google ads. If the goal of your site is to provide information and generating revenue would be a welcome surprise, they I’d say go for it.

I’m actually waiting for the approval to add the ads to the Byte page – just to see how they do on a commercial site. I’ll be sure to report back. Learn more about Google Adsense from their web site.