Sean's blog

Google AdSense on WordPress

I’m enjoying using WordPress – some things have just been designed very well. I searched for advice on getting AdSense advertisements on my blog, and ended up installing a couple of different AdSense plugins that were … okay, but seemed a bit overkill for what I want. It’s actually very easy to show Google ads, and there’s no need to install anything.

AdSense ads are Google’s context-sensitive ads that you see all over the Internet. It costs you nothing to put them on your page, and you can earn money from people clicking on them. The money comes from subscribers to Google’s AdWords advertising service, where advertisers can place adverts that are cued by keywords in your pages.

The simplest way to get started with Google AdSense on WordPress is to add a Text Widget to your sidebar. Go into the admin pages for your blog, and choose Widgets from the Design page. Just click on the ‘Add’ link next to the Text Widget in the list of available Widgets. You can change the order of the widgets in the sidebar by dragging them. Click on the Edit link of the Text Widget in the list of your sidebar’s Current Widgets. You’ll see a text box open up, and this is where you can put anything you want, including the code that pulls in the Google AdSense adverts.

Getting the code that displays the Google AdSense adverts is very easy. It’s actually a very simple piece of code, mostly a placeholder, but with an important identifier that is used to select who gets paid when a visitor to your blog clicks on an ad.

Don’t be misled by offers to put AdSense on your blog for you! Unless you go through the AdSense account setup process yourself, and get your own AdSense code, you could be missing out on revenue generated by your blog articles.

You can sign up for the Google AdSense program at http://www.google.com/adsense and just click on the big friendly, shiny ‘Sign up now’ button. Google just needs to know who you are and how you want your money.

Once your account is setup, look for the ‘AdSense setup’ link and then ‘AdSense for Content’, and just follow the helpful instructions. What you’ll be doing is choosing how you the ads will appear on your site. You’ll see previews of sample ads as you go along.

The final step is called ‘Save and Get Code’, and this is where you get the content for your WordPress Text Widget. You’ll see a box full of code on this page which you should just copy and paste into the Text Widget that you created on your blog.

That’s it! There are usually several minutes to wait before you’ll actually see any ads on your page. Google’s servers need to have a cup of coffee and a cigarette after generating your AdSense code. Rather than spoiling Google’s break by irritably refreshing your blog page three times a second for ten minutes, this would be a good time to brew a pot of tea and break out the Bakewell tarts.