Precautions before applying for Google AdSense

If you don’t already have an AdSense account, you can apply for one at:

http://www.google.com/adsense/

Just click the big “Click here to Apply” button and you’ll be taken through an application process. You will need to already have a decent looking website to get an account.

Yes, that’s right. If you don’t have a website, don’t apply for an account yet. Or if your website is a personal home page or doesn’t look very professional, don’t apply yet–you’ll probably be rejected. There is a way to almost always get an AdSense account on the first try, and it’s easy to do. Here are the steps:

Step 1: Setup a blog at Blogger.com

Google doesn’t usually accept free websites into their AdSense program. The exception to that rule are Blogger.com blogs. So if you don’t have a website yet or have one that isn’t very professional, but you want to get an AdSense account and get started, go to Blogger and create a blog on the topic you want to make money with. Choosing the best money-making topics is covered in a later section, so you might want to hold off on doing this until you’ve read that section.

Step 2: Make some well thought-out posts on your new blog

Twice a day for three days go to your new blog and write a good, informative post. If your blog is about model airplanes, you might discuss some of the best tools for building the airplanes, or which companies create the best quality models, etc.

If your blog is about health insurance you might make posts about how to get the best insurance rates, the pros and icons of HMOs, or whatever other topics you can think of on the subject. Get a good five or six posts on the blog over a period of three or four days, and then go apply for an AdSense account using your new blog url as the website you submit on the application.

Google loves to hand out AdSense accounts for Blogger blogs, and they will almost always accept a decent blog publisher into the program. Here’s the beautiful part: Once you have an AdSense account, you can put your AdSense code on any of your websites without Google having to approve each one. The only exceptions are adult or gambling related sites.

Google doesn’t allow those into the program, so do not put your AdSense code on sites like that–it could get you kicked out of the program. Once you have an account, it’s time to start building sites and making money! But before we get into that, there’s a little vocabulary that you’ll need to know to understand what your AdSense reports are telling you. That’s covered in the next section.