How pay-per-click works

As Chris Anderson points out in Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business, "Thanks to Google, we now have a handy way to convert from reputation (PageRank) to attention (traffic) to money (ads). Anything you can consistently convert to cash is a form of currency itself, and Google plays the role of central banker for these new economies."

Google Adsense places commercial notices on your site – ideally ones tailored to your content, hence the label "targeted ads". You receive micropayments for readers (CPM – cost per thousand impressions: the "M" is the Roman numeral) and more if they take action (CPC – cost per click).

Sometimes Google gets it all wrong. Road Remedies', for example, veers off on alopecia cures every time I blog about beehives or hair, due to title ambiguity. When I've shifted the subject from Seattle to Palau, the front-page ads don't quite caught up and still advertise Seattle Singles, Condo/Lofts and Puppy Housebreaking for a few days. Recently I clocked a creepy ad for "Dr Oz Resveratrol". Should that turn out to be BS snake oil, I'll blacklist the site. AdSense allows publishers can block certain URLs, set content filters and chose default ads.

Note that I didn't follow-through my own Google Ad there ... I could be liable for click fraud, if I did. So I cut and paste possibly offensive addresses, then decide how grumpy I am about them.

Searching on"ResV" reveals it claims anti-aging, weight-loss and antioxidant abilities (yup: snake oil – nailed that in one). I'm dubious and reckon most of my readers would be too, if they gave a fig about such things. But unless something's actively aggravating – like adverts from the local cult church that suppresses women – I generally won't A. notice or B. take action. Life's too short to crack-down on every cellulite-burning scam...

Politics aside, Adsense let's you rock the fashion with custom color scheme and freedom to decide where adverts go (so liberating for "dead tree" media types!): banner, sidebar, even live-linked into your text. Google has an excellent tutorial on placement, which I won't attempt to nutshell: just read it.

The amount you earn varies, based on how much advertisers are bidding for certain keywords (check out Google AdWords, if you're curious about this process). Certain types of blogs see the best results, like those focused on products, hobbies or niches. Take another look at the best paid blogger list: most are tech, marketing and self-help gurus, except for Sharon Maguire's site. Cleanly integrated ads led dogbreedinfo.com to earn $650 per day. She talks technique here.

A journal-style blog, like RR, that meanders over many topics won't quickly rake in major cash (in fact, Google makes you wait until the $100 mark before cutting the first check, annoyingly). But with enough promotion and dedication, even a diarist can turn a profit.