If you are interested in blogging you are without a doubt aware of and maybe even know a little bit about Google AdSense. If not, then here is a chance to find out. Google Adsense is the most widely used advertising method on the internet and a virtual “cash cow” for the Google empire. Advertisers pay Google to publish ads on sites of Adsense members that have topics related to the product or service they themselves are offering. Google gets a majority of the profit, bloggers get a relatively small percentage. It is kind of a take-it-or-leave-it deal. But if you are already a member of one of Google´s many services like Google Mail or Blogger, you might as well take advantage of it and make some money on the side. You have no control over which ads will appear because Google automatically determines and publishes an ad related to the topic of your blog. If you do not like a particular ad, the most you can do is to exclude the URL of the ad from appearing on your site through an option in your Google Adsense account.
How do you get paid for displaying AdSense?
It is very simple. As soon as a visitor clicks on one of the Google ads that are published on your blog you will get some money. Usually just a tiny fraction of what Google is paid by the advertiser. How great your chances are that those ads will be clicked depends on the amount of traffic your blog gets. In short: The higher the number of visitors to your blog, the greater your chances of getting paid.
Is it easy to make money using AdSense?
Yes and No. A resounding yes - if you have very high traffic. Because the more traffic you get the higher the probability that visitors of your blog will click on one of your ads, especially if your blog's topic happens to be one of the high-paying Adwords keywords (* will be explained below). No, if your blog is the exact opposite of what I just mentioned.
Do's and Don't in using AdSense
The major no-no when using AdSense is clicking your own ad. Or having someone clicking the ads for you. It is what they call click fraud. Google has some mysterious high-tech way of determining if you made those clicks yourself or if you had somebody click it for you. Here is a little example: A good friend of mine, who used to have a successful blog, one day received an email from Google informing him that he has just been banned and all his earnings – more than $350 – have been forfeited because Google found the clicks made on his ads to have been made with fraudulent ident. What happend was this: his ex-girlfriend was pissed off and clicked on the ads from her computer which he had previously used on occasion to access his blog. There was no chance of proving to the people at Google that he was in fact innocent.
There are a lot of Google ads tips out there. One trustworthy Google AdSense “guru” is Joel Comm of joelcomm.com. He offers great video tutorials (that can also be found on Youtube) on starting a blog as well as his Google expertise.
On the positioning of ads: the "heat zone" (please read this article as well)
There is an area of the page SEO (search engine optimization) experts call the heat zone. It is the area statistics show to be the most likely visitors to your blog will focus their eyes on. Since this area is where they frequently focus their eyes on, it is only wise to place the items that are most important to you and of the greatest interest for the reader right there. If the attention of your readers is focused on a spot of your page, it is almost for sure that they will click on whatever happens to be in that area. If you are the type of blogger who would want to maximize the earning potential of your blog (and who wouldn´t), what you need to do is position the ads in the "heat zone", the area your visitors will be interested in and look at first, in order to increase the chances that they will click on the ads. Still a mystery? Want to know what this "heat zone" looks like? And where it is?. Okay. The heat zone is shaped like a capital F. 
What does this mean? It means if you are interested in maximizing your Adsense earnings, you need to position the ads on your blog in the shape of an F. For example, one big leaderboard ad on the top of your homepage either above or below your banner (below is better, so the visitor won´t take your blog for just a page full of ads). Second, one 160x600 vertical banner ad on the left side of your content. And finally, one ad in between you posts or, if you know how to, you can integrate a Google ad within your post. (An instruction on how to do this can be found here.)
Of course, you will need to decide if if this works with the layout of your blog and your content. Remember, this advice is just based on statistical data and everyone is free to decide if they want to monetize their blog or strictly focus on blogging only. If you are interested in monetizing make sure to monitor the performance of your ad. Do not be afraid to experiment a little with the positioning of your ads (all ads, not just Google Adsense) to see what gets you the best results.
Placing anything and everything you want people to notice more inside the capital F-shaped heat zone is always a good choice, be it widgets, links, ads...
The simple rule is: Place your most important stuff in the heat zone because it will get noticed first and more often than any other areas of your blog.
A few additional tips:
1. With Google AdSense, it will take 2 clicks from a visitor to earn you some money. For you to actually earn, whoever clicks your Google ads will have to be interested enough to click on something on the page he was taken to. If he or she does thus, it should make you an amount of around $0.50 or more depending on the cost per click of the specific ad.
2. Following is a list of high-paying keywords or ads that will pay big bucks if clicked on. There are some bloggers out there who blog about these topics for purely monetary reasons. Most combinations of these terms with common words also tend to pay well. If you choose to blog about these topics you are guaranteed to make more money than with other themes, simply because advertisers pay higher prices for ads with a connection to these keywords which in turn means higher pay for publisher and bloggers.
Insurance, mortgages, money, health (also terms like cancer, obesity, etc.)
Other godd topics to blog about are (in no special order): relationships, self-improvement, gossip and/or scandal (especially if you can povide pictures), sports, cars, technical gadgets, fashion, beauty, healthcare.
One tiny problem: many, many people are already blogging about these topics.
Good writing about a not so popular theme might get you more visitors than a badly written blog about a top theme.
3. Blend the colors of your Google ads with the colors of the area where you want to place them. It will look more natural to your visitors and thereby increase the likelihood of them clicking on the ads. Wonder how it should look like? Just take a look at the ads on this page.
Please read the Google AdSense terms and conditions page and program policies to get detailed information.
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