GETTING STARTED WITH ADSENSE (4) ADSENSE BASICS GOOGLE ADSENSE FOR DUMMIES

 

GOOGLE ADSENSE FOR DUMMIES PART 1. ADSENSE BASICS CHAPTER 2. GETTING STARTED WITH ADSENSE (4)

 

Creating Your First Set of Ads You created your account, waited, and were approved. Now AdSense is active. Now you can fill that blank space on your Web site with money-generating ads. But first you have to set up your ads. Log in to your new AdSense account by using the username and password that you set up during the registration process. The page that appears at login is the Reports tab (AdSense always opens to this), which features a quick overview of your earnings and the reports that are available for AdSense. Because you don’t have any data to be reported yet, you’ll have a big, fat zero on that page, much like the one shown in Figure 2-6. If you want to change that big fat zero into something a bit more lucrative, you need to set up a few ad blocks. Here’s how: 1. If you haven’t already done so, log in to your AdSense account. 2. Click the AdSense Setup tab, immediately to the right of the Reports tab. A page like the one in Figure 2-7 appears. 3. On this page, select the type of ad block you want to set up. The page that appears is the first step in the Ad Wizard, which walks you through setting up your ad. If you prefer a single-page form instead of using the wizard, click the wizard’s Single Page link. The information you’re asked to enter is the same, but on the single-page form, you just scroll down the page instead of clicking a Continue button. 4. Choose your ad type and click Continue. Your choices here are • Ad Units: A graphical text box (as shown in Figure 2-8) inside of which linked ads are displayed. • Link Units: A set of linked keywords (as shown in Figure 2-9) that lead to advertisers’ pages. Just to keep it simple for now, select Ad Unit. 5. In the new page that appears, choose the size of ad you want to have appear on your Web site. 6. On the same page, choose a color scheme for your ad. 7. Still on the same page, choose Slightly Rounded Corners from the Corner Styles drop-down list. The other options available here are Squared Corners or Very Rounded Corners. Visually, each has a different appeal to people in different situations and on different Web sites. 8. For the last option on the page, choose Show Public Service Ads from the drop-down list and click Continue. What’s this about public service ads? Well, Google shows public service ads when your site is so new that it can’t be properly populated with paid ads and when your site content doesn’t match ad content. You can choose to have these ads displayed, to have ads from another service displayed, or to have a solid color displayed as a placeholder if either of these situations applies. 9. In the new page that appears, click Continue. 10. In the new (and final) page that appears, enter a name for your ad unit in the appropriate field and then click the Save and Get Code button. 11. Copy the code provided by AdSense and paste it into the HTML code of your Web site. Creating the ad for your Web site is an easy process. Getting it to appear on the right spot on your Web site might be a little bit like landing a jumbo jet in the median of the New Jersey Turnpike. It’ll take a little practice, and in the beginning, it could get a little hairy.