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So you have a blog with some great content, and you’re finally starting to get a consistent readership that comes to your site daily. If that’s your story, then congratulations, because you’ve made it past the toughest part of starting a new blog. Now, let’s see if we can’t help you make some money off of your hard work with Google AdSense.

First, if you don’t know what AdSense is, or if you have any questions, check out our previous post, Using Google AdSense. But you might find that some of the stuff in there doesn’t make sense with the current website because we have changed themes since that post was written.

Formatting AdSense

Implementing AdSense onto your site is very easy. It’s HOW you do it that will make or break you in terms of how much money you make. To be successful, you need to have the ads in positions on your site where the reader tends to focus the most. Most research that I’ve seen shows that the best place for ads is within the content of your site, and above the fold (what the reader sees on your website without scrolling down at all).

Also, I think the best thing to do is try to blend the ads into your site as much as you can. So, when you’re formatting your ads, use the link colors and text colors that you use for your site. If you need help finding your link and text colors, it’s very easy. Just open up your CSS in whatever you use to edit your files. Like in WordPress, in your admin section, go to the “Presentation” tab, and then click on “Theme Editor.” The file you want to edit is your Stylesheet or style.css. Scroll down until you see “a:link”. Under that you’ll see the word color with a 6-digit combination of letters and numbers. That’s what you put into AdSense for your link color. Same goes for text, which you’ll probably find in the “Content” section of your CSS.

I hate to say this, but you almost want to trick your reader into thinking that the ads are actually part of your content. So, make the google ads look just like all the other links within your content. You can see an example of what I’m talking about on this page.

The fact is, most people who know what ads look like don’t click on them, for whatever reason. But if you can get people to think they are a part of your content, you’ll have better luck.

Is AdSense right for your site?

AdSense won’t work for all sites, in my opinion. For example, a site like this one won’t make a whole lot of money with AdSense. The reason for this is what I mentioned before…most people who come to this site are bloggers who are trying to make their site better. Bloggers know about AdSense, so they don’t click on many of the ads. That’s just the way it is, and I’m alright with that.

But blogs about specific niche topics outside of technology, like the Grouchy Golf Blog, might have more success with AdSense. That’s because golfers go to that site to read about golf. It’s more likely that the readership of that blog will click on an AdSense ad that’s advertising discount golf balls or golf swing videos, because they’re actually interested in the product being sold. I know many tech blog readers that don’t click on ads just because they know that the owner of the blog will be paid for it.

So, when deciding if AdSense is right for you, think about the ads that your readers will be seeing. If you think your readers would benefit from the product or service being offered by google, go for it. But if you’re doing it just because you think it’s an easy way to make money, it probably won’t benefit your readers, and they probably won’t click on the ads. In our case, we did it so we’ll be able to help people implement AdSense onto their sites in what we feel is the most profitable way. We’re not expecting a whole lot from it.

A good plugin

Here at SAN.com, we use a great plugin to implement our AdSense. It’s the AdSense Manager plugin for WordPress by Martin Fitzpatrick. The plugin allows you to format as many AdSense ad units as you want, from the WordPress admin section of your blog. It’s incredibly easy to use, and it makes the ads very customizable. You should check it out if you use WordPress and you’re considering AdSense for your site.

Other Resources

There are tons of things that you can read about Google AdSense if you look around. Here are a few resources to get you started:

www.understandingadsense.com — Answers many questions you might have

Problogger.net’s AdSense tips for bloggers – As always, tons of good info

Joel Comm’s AdSense Secrets – GREAT ebook on AdSense

BTseo.com – Comprehensive AdSense site with lots of helpful articles

Wolf-howl.com – Excellent Article on AdSense tips, tricks, and secrets

These are just to get you started. If you have more good articles about AdSense, please send them my way and I’ll add them to the list. Thanks!

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On February 28, SAN.com celebrated its 2-month anniversary. I know that the post date says March 4^th, but hey, so we’re a little late. It’s been a busy week for us here, with many things requiring our attention outside of SAN headquarters.

The biggest thing that I can say at this point is that Kevin and I are learning…A LOT…about blogging. Coming into this endeavor, I have to admit we were very naïve about a lot of things. We kind of thought that we would just write stuff and people would just read it.

We. Were. Wrong.

It makes sense, and I can’t believe we were really that stupid coming into this. I mean, why would people want to read our stuff? Who are we? We don’t even know what we’re doing.

So that’s mainly what this Progress Report is all about. At this point, we’re pretty much past developing the look of the site and changing things visually. Now it’s all about getting people to read whatever it is that we’re blathering about. We have been seeing an increase in traffic, well above the one visitor that we had in our last Progress Report, so I think we’re on the right track. But, it’s still way below where we would like to be. So, tell your friends about us!

However, I did want to mention one thing sort of related to the look of the site. We have (finally) figured out how to add pages to our site, which also helped me figure out that I am not very smart…at all. In fact, if I had another brain, it would be lonely. Adding pages is probably one of the easiest things you can do with WordPress, yet my room-temperature IQ had me perplexed for 2 months trying to figure out how to do it. The big secret is, you go to “Write,” click on “Write Page,” then you write what you want on the page and click “Publish.” That’s what I spent 2 months trying to figure out. So, this is proof positive that if I can be successful blogging, ANYONE can. Wow…embarrassed.

Anyway, we added a Sitemap and a Contact page. So, you can view our Sitemap or contact us whenever you would like. We’re pretty proud of those. We’d like to give a big shout out to Oliver Seidel at deliciousdays.com for his Contact Form Plugin, which you can download here, and also to Dagon Design for his Sitemap Generator that you can download here. Both plugins work great, and they’re very easy to download and implement onto your site.

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I’ve never been much of a golfer. I have participated in the activity many times, but that doesn’t make me a golfer. Shooting below 100 is cause for celebration, in my opinion. But it is fun to play, and there are a lot of things that you can learn about blogging from golf. I haven’t been blogging for very long, but this is what I’ve gathered so far about how they’re related:

1. All-Stars at the top of the game

Professional golf and professional blogging both have guys at the top of the game that are basically household names. Golf has Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson. Blogging has Darren Rowse of Problogger.net and John Chow of John Chow dot Com. These are the guys that everyone looks to and tries to emulate. They are all at the point in their careers where they making money just by being them. Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson make enough money from endorsements to live off of without even playing golf. Darren Rowse and John Chow have people paying them lots of money just to get the name of their site mentioned on Problogger or Johnchow.com. That’s basically the equivalent of endorsement money.

2. Easy to do, hard to be the best

All you need to golf is a set of clubs and enough money to pay greens fees. All you need to blog is some type of blogging software, which you can easily find for free at places like WordPress. That’s it. It’s extremely easy to do both. It’s extremely difficult to be the best at either, however. That’s why both golfing and blogging have so many more amateurs than professionals.

3. Most often, it doesn’t work out as planned

If you’ve ever golfed before, you know what I’m talking about. You tee the ball up, getting ready to drive. You swing the way you were told is the best way to drive the ball straight down the fairway. Next thing you know, your ball is going right like it’s merging onto the interstate. Or, you line the ball up perfectly for a putt, and it breaks just before the hole. Surprises like this happen in blogging, too. How often have you written a post thinking, “Man, people are going to love this stuff,” only to find out that no one reads it or cares about what you’re saying? Then, you write a random post, and out of the blue people love it and it makes the front page of Digg.

4. Both have big-hitters and masters of the short-game

Golf has guys that can drive the ball well over 350 yards whenever they feel like it, like John Daly (left). They make you sick because they drive the green on a long par 4, and you would be lucky to get there in 3 shots. The blogging equivalent to the John Daly’s of the world are people like Steve Pavlina at Stevepavlina.com. He can bang out 2,000 word posts that are full of good information. So good, that you read every word of his dissertations, and you’re a better person because of it. Then, you have masters of the short-game. Watching golfers like Fred Funk and Jim Furyk approach the green is a thing of beauty. In the blogging world, Mike Florio at profootballtalk.com has mastered the short-game, because he can pack tons of information into very short posts that he puts up multiple times a day. If you’re into football and have never visited Florio’s site, then welcome back from your coma. You should head on over there and check it out.

5. Hazards are in play

Golf and blogging both have hazards that are easy to fall into. Golf has physical things like sand traps and water hazards that impede your path to the green. If you don’t land in any hazards, then you’re well on your way to a successful round of golf. Blogging has its hazards, as well, especially for beginners. Here’s a funny article from CourtneyTuttle.com called 10 Easy Ways to Make Yourself look like a Blogging Newbie. There are lots of hazards to fall into, I know I’ve found tons of them and I know I’ll find tons more. But, in order to be successful in blogging or golf, you have to find ways to steer clear of them.

6. Journey to success

For most things in life, it takes a good amount of time to be successful. Blogging and golf are no exception…generally. There are some people who seem to skip the journey and shoot straight to success. People, like golfer Michelle Wie, sometimes find success very early on in their careers. Wie announced that she was turning pro a week before her 16^th birthday. You know what I was doing at 16…working at a grocery store, certainly not playing professional golf. A blogger that had considerable success very quickly is Tina at Thinksimplenow.com. She has a great blog that I often use for a little inspiration. If you’ve never been there, I suggest you go. It will change your life.

But the biggest thing I’ve learned in my couple months of blogging is that I need to give this time. I didn’t expect to be an overnight success, as Kevin and I laid out in our Expectations post. But I must admit that I did expect to see a little more success than we have, thus far. It takes time. We have to get better at blogging, just like gofers have to get better at golfing.

What do you think?

• Did I miss anything?

• Do you think blogging relates to golf in any other ways?

• How about other sports or other aspects of life?

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