Naturally the reason for registering with AdSense in the first place is to make money. But how much revenue can you actually generate using this method? The answer, of course, depends on a multiplicity of factors.

These include the topic of your website; the number of visitors who view your pages every day; the number of visitors who click on the ads; and the price paid by the advertiser for each click.

Promote your website

The bottom line is that visitors = revenue. If you are just starting out, or if you have allowed your site to stagnate then, before you are likely to benefit from AdSense, if, indeed, your application is accepted in the first place, you have to work at promoting your website. One way to do this is by writing and publishing articles as an expert in your particular field. Another is through social networking.

Whatever method you choose, clearly you can’t expect to make a significant income unless you have a reasonable amount of traffic visiting your website every day. Remember that one click on an ad may only generate a cent or two, and very few of your visitors may even bother to click through on the ads. Despite this there are many people who are making an acceptable living, or, at the very least, a nice second income, using AdSense.

Choose the right topic

The general wisdom is to write about what you know, but, although that is undoubtedly the easiest method, it is not necessarily the way to get rich. If your particular niche happens to fall into the legal, insurance, mortgage or web marketing fields, you are off to a good start.

These categories attract a lot of visitors and therefore the pay per click is high – around $2. If however, your interest and expertise center on the raising of goats, for example, your content is less likely to earn you a fortune. My suggestion is that you write about goats for pleasure and mortgages for pay!

Since payment rates vary considerably one of the ways to ascertain whether or not your topic is a money spinner is by using the Adwords bid tool. This will provide you with a list of advertisers in your category and the amounts they are prepared to pay for each click on their ads.

Find the most effective keywords

Having decided on the topics you wish to pursue the next step is to find good keywords to include in the content. Although this is hardly a scientific endeavor, as keyword popularity can change from day to day, it is still a worthwhile undertaking.

Find your keywords by using a site like wordtracker or keyword discovery and entering a word associated with your topic. The site will respond with the most popular related keywords and the number of times per day that each one is used in a Google search.

Extend your boundaries

In addition to AdSense for Content, you can extend your AdSense account to include AdSense for Search. This allows you to provide a website search for visitors to your site. Ad units are displayed on the search page and visitors clicking through on these ads will provide you with an additional source of income.

Another offshoot from AdSense is AdSense Referrals. Anyone you refer to AdSense, who then goes on to generate an income of $100 will earn you a similar amount. Google also pays for referrals leading to the downloading and installation of Firefox.