With AdSense, you earn money by displaying small Google text ads on your website. Whenever one of visitors clicks on one, you earn a small fee.



You won't necessarily make scads of money with Google AdSense; however, once you're up and running, you can enjoy a steady extra stream of profits -- without doing any extra work!

Google AdSense is NOT for everyone, however.

Can YOU make money with Google AdSense?

AdSense may be right for you if...

You have a content-rich web site with lots of pages containing information on specific topics. Ads relating to your web page content will be displayed, so visitors searching for information that you offer should be interested in the products or services these ads offer.

That greatly increases the chances that people will click the ads — and make you some extra cash!

Your website contains content related to "big-ticket" items like holidays or electronic goods. These items attract higher bids from advertisers for the relevant keywords that generate the ads.

And, as the AdSense publisher, you receive a percentage of the bid amount — so the higher the better from your point of view!

You run a content-rich non-commercial blog. The search engines LOVE the fresh, relevant content that blogs produce. And the more people who can find your site, the greater number of click-throughs you'll receive.

Many blogs successfully make money with Google AdSense to cover their hosting fees and other overhead costs.

You don't want to spend time looking for advertisers. Finding paying advertisers can be difficult, time-consuming, and ultimately not very lucrative, unless you have a site with VERY high volumes of suitable traffic.

But if you want to test third-party advertising on your web site, AdSense takes away the need to try to find suitable advertisers — freeing you to work on other areas of your web business, like developing new products.

You may want to give Google AdSense affiliate programs a skip if...

You sell a product with a lot of competitors. Although AdSense allows you to block up to 200 of your competitors' URLs, you still run the risk of their ads showing up on your site.

Obviously, advertising competing sites on your own site is not the best business strategy, and it's crucial that you assess how much of a risk this would be for your business.

You sell products and services through your website, and you don't want potential customers to be distracted from your sales messages. AdSense ads could affect your sales, depending on their placement (on sales pages, order forms, etc).

You already have loyal advertisers. Displaying AdSense ads on your site can upset your current advertisers -- especially if their revenue is affected as a result.

So you need to consider the risk of upsetting them and possibly losing a steady stream of income.

That said, Google AdSense affiliate programs are relatively simple ways to create extra streams of income for little work.

One of the best places to look when it comes to choosing an affiliate program is an affiliate program directory.

An affiliate program directory is simply a website that features a list of affiliate programs for you to explore and potentially sign up for. And depending on the directory you use, you can find literally tens of thousands of programs to choose from.

In fact, AffiliatesDirectory.com, a very popular affiliate program directory, currently lists 7,429 affiliate programs!

Some other top affiliate directories include:

www.associateprograms.com

www.refer-it.com

www.affiliatetip.com

www.affiliatefirst.com

If you're wondering how to use an affiliate program directory, it's relatively straight forward...

Pinpoint your category.

Most directories will feature a list of categories,such as "computers" or "travel" for example, to help you narrow your search. Simply click on the link and follow it to review a list of affiliate programs that offer these types of products or services.

Use the search field (if there is one.

Alternatively, look for a search box that allows you to enter the name of a particular product or service, and search the directory this way.

Do your research.

Once you narrow your search down to several affiliate programs, take your time to look into each one to make sure it's a fit for you before you sign up. (Hint: Read all of the small print!)

Whichever way you search, the good news is there are affiliate programs for almost everything you can think of, so you should have no problem finding one for a product or service that will appeal to your target market.