Monday, July 16, 2007  

AdSense is a service from Google that pays you for advertisements clicked on your site. Advertisers pay Google every time someone clicks their ad, and Google gives you a cut for hosting the ad on your site. Google offers three ways to monetize your site:

• AdSense for Content displays text ads that are relevant to content on your site, like the ones you see in Google search results.

• AdSense for Search displays a search form on your site. You get a cut of AdSense clicks on Google for users who search from your site.

Enter your search terms Submit search form

• Referrals display links to various Google products via links or buttons on your site. You get paid for referring new customers from your site.

As you can see from the examples above, you can include multiple ads on a single page.

Getting Started 

To get started, go to https://www.google.com/adsense and sign up if you haven't already. Once you've registered and logged in, click the AdSense Setup tab at the top of the screen and select one of the three ad types:

Depending on which you choose, Google AdSense will step you through several screens of options. You can always keep the defaults by clicking the Continue link at the bottom.

When you're done, you'll be presented with a box containing some HTML and JavaScript code like this: 

Simply click in the box and copy its content to the clipboard using the Edit->Copy command in your browser.

Creating a Google Ad Include Page On Your Site

Now you're ready to go to your EditMe site:

1. Log into your EditMe site as a user that can create new pages.
2. Click the New link under the Page section of the Tools menu.
    
3. Give your page a name, such as GoogleAds, and select the HTML Source Editor option.
    
4. Paste the code you copied from Google AdSense into the editor.
    
5. Click Page Properties and check the Hide this page from the Index, Recent Changes, and Search box. This page will be used as an include, so we don't want it listed as a normal page on our site.
    
6. Click Save. You now have a page that displays your Google Ad.

You can repeat this process to create as many AdSense variations on your site as you like. 

Displaying Your Ads 

You can include this page into any other page on your site using the [[include:GoogleAds]] include syntax. Put this in your Menu page content and your Google Ad will display on every page of your site!

If you want to include the ad on every page of your site, but don't want it in your Menu area, you can insert the Google Ad include page into your site's Layout. This requires some knowledge of HTML, however. Here's how:

1. Logged in as an Administrator user, click the Settings link in your site's toolbar.
2. Select Layouts from the Look & Feel drop down menu at the top of Site Settings.
3. Select Edit from the drop down for the Layout labeled "Current Default".
4. Locate the area in your Layout where you want the Google ad to appear and add the following code:

Save your layout and view your site's home page. If all went well, you should see the Google Ads displayed in the location you specified in the layout.