Getting Started With Google AdSense
Google AdSense is a service that allows the owners of websites to publish adverts and get paid for each click that they get. Advertisers can buy advertising through Google’s AdWords program.
Once you have signed up and been approved by AdSense, you should have a look through the programme policies to make sure that you do not get removed from the programme.
Now you need to start getting adverts put up on your website(s) so that you can start generating revenue and clicks. So, log into your AdSense account and click the “AdSense Setup” tab at the top.
This should bring you to the setup page where you can choose what type of adverts that you want to display. Unless you want something else, then by standard you should want to use the “AdSense for Content” type of adverts. So, click on “AdSense for Content” and you should be bought to the next page.
You should select “Ad unit” and “Text and image ads (default)”. When you click Continue you will be allowed to choose the size and colour scheme for the ad. Take a look at Google’s Ad Formats page and choose what size of advert that you would like to display. Select that size and format in the drop-down box.
You should now be onto the colours part of the setup. You should select the colours so that your ads blend in well with your site, look like part of your site and don’t stand out too much. This is called blending, you can follow Rob Malon’s great & advanced guide on blending adsense ads, found here. However, you can just choose colours that look good together as advanced blending is not essential.
Once you have chosen your colours, I advise that you save them, so click “Save as new palette” and you will be able to use those colours later without having to choose them again.
Now just select the corner style that you want (I always use square) and choose what you want to do if for some reason ads aren’t available (I use public-service ads).
Click continue and you would be bought to the channels page. I advise that you create a channel and give it a name you will remember. When you display adsense on different sites, all your ads will be displayed together. If you use channels, you can put your ad blocks in different channels and see exactly what sites and ad blocks generate what revenue.
Click continue, give your ad block a name (just something relevant) and then click “Submit and get code”. When you get the code, paste it into your website’s HTML. When you visit your website the first time, the ads will not show. It can take 10 or so minutes for the ads to start showing on your site.
After a few days when you visit the AdSense reports section, you should see your channels and you will be able to see how much revenue they have generated. Remember to read the programme policies.
WiredTree Review
Recently I move this site, along with a few other sites including CompuTalk to a new VPS (virtual private server).
A VPS is almost exactly the same as a dedicated server, except that they are typically slightly smaller and cheaper. Using virtualization software, VPSes mean that you can have your own OS, root access and everything, without having to buy a big, expensive dedicated server.
I got my VPS courtesy of WiredTree. I am currently on their “VPS384″ plan, which costs $49/month ($34.10/month when using the coupon “10percentoff”). This is a medium priced VPS. It is their smallest plan and comes with 384 Mb of RAM and includes cPanel/WHM, 40 Gb of disk space, 600 Gb bandwidth and 4 dedicated IP addresses.
This is a fairly reasonable price, it isn’t dirt cheap, but it is 110% worth it. I decided to get my VPS after learning some Ruby on Rails things, and because my websites on my shared HostGator account were getting quite big. I asked the live chat some questions, many of them fairly complicated, and got fast replies. Unlike many hosts, the live chat was able to answer my questions without referring me to an email address.
I talked to the live chat for a while, and was very happy. I then placed my order through PayPal. WiredTree verify all their accounts by phone (this is a good idea, keeps out bad people that will overload servers). I talked to the live chat again and was told by the live chat rep that he would give me a call within 20 minutes. Sure enough, 18 minutes later, I got a call from that live chat rep. He basically just verified my phone number and said he would get my account set up.
About 20-30 minutes later, I got a welcome email containing server details and the login details to WiredTree’s “grove” system, it is essentially an amazing support system with other brilliant features including server statistics, server monitoring, service monitoring, bandwidth usage and loads of other stuff. It is easy to use and all the custom tools mean that you can monitor your server and do many other things from within one system.
WiredTree have a nice selection of PDF documents that explain how to do a large amount of things. I followed their guide to set up private nameservers (ns1.calumneilson.com & ns2.calumneilson.com). I wasn’t sure that I had done it quite right, so I opened a support ticket. About 16 minutes later I got a reply to say I had done everything right and it should be working once it has updated.
I also opened another ticket about Ruby on Rails setup. My FCGI install wasn’t working right. Again, within 20 minutes I got an advanced reply from someone who really new their stuff. They advised me to run RoR through Mongrel, instead of FCGI, because FCGI runs through lighttpd but cPanel needs Easy Apache.
He asked me to call if I needed help, because he would be able to help very well over phone.
Pro’s:
- Lighting fast support
- Fairly low prices
- Reliable & fast servers
- Very nice client support portal
- Server monitoring tools
- Helpful live chat
Con’s:
- None!
So, to cap it all off, I have an amazing & fast server with WHM/cPanel included. WiredTree have a brilliant customer support system where I can get replies in just 15 minutes, compared to 6 hours+ on other hosts. I can’t find any faults, everything was perfect.