There are quite a few ways a blogger or webmaster can make money from a website, the most popular being AdSense. This is because of ease of implementation and its effectiveness as a revenue source. This article will look at what AdSense is and a few important features.

What is AdSense?

This is a program that puts relevant advertisements on a webpage by inserting HTML code into the site. A webmaster has to sign up for the program in order to get the code, the ads and the revenue. When a webmaster signs up, they become a part of Google's display network where advertisers can run ads from AdWords. For instance, if the website is about pet food, an advertiser can choose to run ads about pet food on the display network in the AdWords platform and they will automatically appear in all blogs and websites that talk about pet food. Google shares the revenue from advertisers with the webmasters registered in it.

The higher the traffic a website has, the more clicks the AdSense ads will get and therefore the higher the revenues. This means that webmasters have to look for ways to maximize traffic. Some common methods for this include:

Search engine optimization - Where a webmaster increases a site's SERP ranking for related keywords in order to get more targeted organic traffic.

Buying traffic from high traffic sites e.g. search engines, social media sites etc.

Developing high quality content in order to attract visitors to the site. This content can be written, video, audio etc.

Link building - Where a webmaster looks for links from high traffic sites so as to get more referred traffic etc.

AdSense is a very good way for beginners to start generating revenue on the internet because they can only concentrate on the most important aspects i.e. getting high quality traffic.

Types

Some of the types of AdSense that a webmaster can integrate into websites include:

Feeds - This is where a webmaster can put ads to RSS feeds. A webmaster has to have at least 100 unique subscribers and the content must be completely unique.

Mobile - This is where ads are run on mobile websites. The ads, code and landing pages are optimized for the mobile web in order to maximize earnings.

Video - This are the ads seen in video content e.g. on YouTube. This allows a video advertiser to generate income from content created. A video advertiser has to have a minimum number of views per video in order to qualify for this type of AdSense.

Domains - This is where a webmaster can place ads on domains being developed or not being used. This type is a good substitute for 'page not found' error messages. Only domains that follow Google's advertising policies are eligible for this type of AdSense.

Search - This type allows webmasters to generate revenue from Google custom search boxes on websites.

In a nutshell, a webmaster looking for the easiest ways to monetize a website should go for AdSense before trying more complicated methods.