How To Make Your First $100 With Google Adsense

You’ve had Google Ads on your blog for what seems like forever and you made little to no money. You’ve only been able to earn a penny or two every few days and it looks like it’ll take you decades before you’ll reach the $100 payout. It’s so frustrating! Is there anything you can do about it?

I’ve been there. I was so excited when I became eligible for Google Adsense and got accepted. I knew I wasn’t going to get rich from it or make a lot of money quickly but I didn’t think it would take me over 2 years to get my first payout!

After I got my first check from Google Adsense I made it my business to try and find ways to get to my next payout a lot quicker. This led me to try some new things with my blog and experiment a bit with the Adsense platform.

(This information is not meant to be advice and is just for educational purposes. I am not a financial or content expert. This post includes affiliate links. If you click an affiliate link and make a purchase, I will receive a small commission.)

All of these things have helped me make a lot more than a penny a day and get multiple payouts a year. Now, I still know that Google Adsense isn’t going to make me rich or provide a stable income but because I’m making more each year it is helping to pay for several of the blogging tools I use so I don’t have to dip into my personal income.

Related read: How To Start Making Money With Your Blog

 

Before we jump into my tips for making more with Google Adsense let’s level set and talk a bit about what Google Adsense is and how it works because that’s an important part of implementing any of the tips I’m going to share.

What is Google Adsense

Simply put it’s an ad network owned by Google. Site owners and Bloggers like you and me allow Google to run ads from advertisers on their site and in return earn some money.

The money we can earn is based on how many people are served the ads (called impressions) and how many people legitimately click on the ads. That means you’re family and friends can’t click on the ads to “help you out.” You’ll get flagged by Google and your account may get disapproved.

Related read: 6 Tips To Get Monetized On YouTube

How Google Adsense works

To allow these ads to run on your blog you need to sign up for Google Adsense. To help your chances of approval you need to make sure your blog

• Follows the Google Adsense Program Policies noted here.
• Has a good amount of content on your blog. Having a couple of blog posts isn’t going to be enough.
• Has been around for a little while. A blog that is a few months old won’t get approved. I think I had to wait until my blog was 6 months old before I could apply.
• Includes About, Contact, and Privacy Policy pages.

Once you’re approved you’ll need to follow the instructions to create the code for your ads and place them on your blog. Now you can start earning money!

While many proponents of Google Adsense talk about it being a set-it-and-forget-it way of making a little extra money via your blog (including me in the past) it’s really not. You have to watch how it’s doing and optimize or make changes that can help you make more. That’s what we’re going to talk about next.

How to make more with Google Adsense

Now that you have the Google Adsense code on your blog and the ads are showing up how you can get to your first payout as quickly as possible? I mean Google isn’t going to pay you until you’ve made $100. That doesn’t seem like a lot but like I said earlier, it took me over 2 years to reach that amount!

Here are my 6 tips for earning more with Google Adsense.

1. Get a new blog theme

The blog theme I had at the time wasn’t very attractive and the layout didn’t work well for ads.

So I went out and got a new blog theme that had spaces where display ads could be placed without interfering with my content. The theme was modern, attractive, and user-friendly so more people visited my blog and stayed on it longer. Additionally, my blog theme was mobile optimized so it looked good on mobile devices as well as laptops.

Related read: How You Know It’s Time To Change Your Blog Theme

2. Increase blog traffic

This is kinda of a no-brainer but is pretty important. You don’t have to have thousands of people visiting your blog every day. As of the writing of this post, I’m only averaging a few hundred visitors per day but I’ve seen that I’m making more than blogs that have 5x or more daily visitors.

The key to getting more traffic is to have it be what’s called qualified traffic. You want people who are interested in reading the type of content you create so they stay longer on your blog and would be more interested in the ads being shown.

Some good ways to get qualified traffic are

• Be active on Pinterest including in group boards. I’ve got several posts that you can check out with tips for getting the most out of Pinterest
• Get your SEO on point
• Build an email list and share your content with your subscribers
• Guest post

3. Experiment with ad placement

Because a good portion of your earnings are tied to the traffic your blog gets it makes sense to place your ads where you get the most traffic.

Where those places are will vary blog by blog. So you have to experiment and try putting ads in different places.

I tried several different placements throughout my blog and some worked better than others. And every time I changed my blog theme I would do more experiments to see if I could find better placements.

Currently, I’ve found the placements that work for me are in my header, sidebar, and within my most popular blog posts.

In addition to finding the best placements for ads, I also learned it’s important to not have too many ads visible on each page. I’ve found over time that less is more. The fewer ads on the page the quicker the page loads creating a better experience for your visitors. It also makes the page look less cluttered and more attractive to readers.

Related read: 7 Of The Best Affiliate Programs For Beauty Bloggers

4. Try different ad types

In addition to experimenting with ad placements, it’s also good to try out different ad types. Google Adsense has the following ad options

• Text and Display Ads: Typical display ads that are either just text or image-based.
• Matched Content: These ads promote or recommend your site content.
• In-Feed Ads: They’re placed within a feed on your blog such as a list of your posts. These ads can be customized to look like they are part of your blog.
• In-Article Ads: Also called native ads they are placed between paragraphs within your blog posts and are meant to look better than typical display ads.

5. Block some ad categories

There are dozens of ad categories within Google Adsense. But not every category is right for your blog. When I first started I had ads from every category running on my blog but that didn’t make sense based on my content topics and the interests of my readers.

So I blocked several of the categories that seemed a bit risqué, controversial, or didn’t seem to mesh with the topics I talk about. This has helped to make the ads served on my blog that much more relevant and interesting for my readers.

I’ve also blocked some ad categories that received low impression numbers and were therefore not earning me any money.

6. Create custom channels

When I first started with Google Adsense I’d never heard of custom channels but wish I’d heard of them sooner because once I started using them I saw a little bump in my Page RPM.

RPM stands for Revenue Per 1,000 impressions. This is the estimated earnings you accrue for every 1,000 impressions and is used to calculate your earnings. In case you want to learn more about this including how it’s calculated you can visit this page.

Custom channels allow you to group your individual ads together and you can easily track how groups of ads are performing. They also help advertisers determine if the placement on your blog is best fitted for them. So advertisers that see your blog as a fit for them will be willing to pay more to place an ad on your blog. Thus you can make more.

I’ve grouped my ads by topic and placement. There are four key topics that I talk about on my blog - hair, beauty, personal finance, and blogging tips. Additionally, I have some ads on my homepage and others within my blog posts.

So I have custom channels built around those topics and placements. For example, I have a beauty homepage custom channel and a beauty in-article custom channel. Both tend to be in my top 5 channels every month because the ads in them earn the most every month.