Google AdSense
Even if you don’t have a product to sell, you still have one valuable asset: the attention of your visitors. The good news is there are a huge number of companies ready to pay for those eyes.
Some of these companies pay you a minuscule fee every time someone visits a page that carries their ad, while others pay you only when a reader actually clicks an ad, or when a visitor both clicks an ad and buys something. Fortunately, you don’t need to waste hours checking out all these options, because Google has an advertising program called Google AdSense that handily beats just about every other system out there.
The AdSense program requires you to display small, text, image, or video advertisements on your pages. You sign up, set aside some space on one or more pages, and paste in some Google-supplied HTML (see Figure 14-2). Google takes care of the rest, filling in that space with one or more ads every time someone requests your page.
Figure 14-2. This website nestles a box of three Google AdSense ads alongside a scrumptious recipe. The ads blend into the scenery perfectly because they have a similar visual style (they have the same background color and font), and because the content matches the article. Google calls this grouping of ads an “ad unit.” You choose the ad layout and the number of ads you want per page, so it’s up to you whether you want to slip a few ads in quietly ...
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