I have been working hard on the blog and while I realize I have a long way to go to get where I want to be I feel good about the progress so far. If you have been following along with your own blog you should feel pretty good by this point as well. I hope you are practicing your writing skills and working on some posts and not spending all your time just getting the mechanics of the blog down. The mechanics will eventually get done (there of course will always be changes but the big stuff will get finished) and then you need to write, write, write. The blog I have started from scratch is taking shape and so I am going to begin the Adsense process. One quick thing, if you don’t have a Google email address (Gmail) you might want to consider getting one. It’s free, works great, and will help keep all the stuff you do with Google in the future under one user name and password. Just go to Google and and sign up.

Signing up for Google Adsense

The first part of the process is to go to Google Adsense and join. You will see a screen that will say Join Adsense or Sign Up for Adsense:

Press the Join Adsense button and you should see:

Fill in the information and Google will ask you to check all your information again and then ask a couple of questions about how you will communicate. This is where it would be convenient to have a Gmail account already set up. When you answer the questions you will get this screen:

Now you have to wait for an email. It is going to take one or two days so you should probably work on something else for a while and then come back to this post after you have received your email from Google. See you in two days. Have fun! Be careful!

I got my email from Google, now what?

You need to go to Adsense Setup. Then go to Adsense for Content.

You will want to set up some Text ads so in the Ad unit window select Text ads only.

Choose what size you want for your blog. I like the 160 x 600 skyscraper.

You can also manipulate the color palette so that the ads match your site better. If there are no ads that fit well with your site you can choose to allow Public Service ads in those places, or you can choose to having nothing there and just fill the space with color.

You can choose channels to track the performance of the ad unit.

You can leave this blank as well and click continue.

Now you have a Adsense unit. Click on Submit and Get Code.

Highlight and copy this code. Go to the WordPress Dashboard, Presentations, and Widgets. Open up a text widget and paste in the adsense unit code. Wait for a few minutes and when you go to view your site you should see some Google ads! I want to encourage you to play with the different formats for ads. You are not allowed to edit the Adsense code, but they give you a lot of format options. Read the rules about how many ads you are allowed to have on your page. I think its important that you place the ads in a way that they don’t detract from your site. Go ahead. Take some time to experiment and have fun! Another How to Create a Blog question answered.