If ever you felt you need more money to augment your current income, Google Adsense is your answer. To be sure, simply displaying Google Adsense ads in your website will not fetch you cash. Of course you need a website, preferably one that concerns a fair amount of populace, but that is just the beginning. It is important that you strive hard to bring sizable traffic to your site.

What is Google Adsense?

Briefly, Google Adsense is all about display of Adwords ads on content sites that are part of Google network. In effect, two things happen in conjunction with one another. First, PPC (pay per click) advertisers using Adwords ad campaign have to opt for placement of their ads in content sites (the other option is search sites). Second, individual website owners must enroll with Google to qualify for displaying Adwords ads.

Google Adsense is thus an interface whereby enrolled web publishers agree to place Google Adwords ads on their websites in return for revenue that results when those ads are clicked on. In other words, the money so collected by Google from Adwords advertisers is shared between Google itself and website owners where the clicks have occurred. Google Adsense is therefore a win-win situation for both parties at no additional cost to website owners.

Let us now explore how you can maximize your earning through Google Adsense.

How to present your Google Adsense ads

For an answer, we will turn to Google Adsense help center [https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/static.py?page=tips.html#17954]. There is a pictorial presentation, called 'heat map', that elucidates ideal places for locating Google Adsense ads. In short, here are main points to consider:

- Ads appearing above the fold tend to perform better.

- Place ads directly above (the hottest place) and below content.

- Place ads as close to content and navigational pane, left side being more preferable.

- Place Google Adsense ads on content pages, if not on all pages of your website.

- Combine multiple ad units on every content page, focusing specially on rectangular boxes and skyscrapers and even link units, the latter in case of space constraint.

- A big advantage with Google Adsense ads is that you can use any color combination to display the ads. Experts suggest it is better to merge ad background with background color of your webpage.

Further, consider using same color for text and link as that of your webpage.

Maximize gain with Google Adsense ads

Like any money-making venture, you have to work incessantly to maximize your earnings from Google Adsense ads. After you have ensured proper appearance of Google Adsense ads on your webpage, the next thing to consider is organizing the ads in such a way that viewers are enticed to click on them. The main issue here is theme (or shall we say 'niche') of your content page and that of Google Adsense ads must coincide. For example, if the content page relates to the niche 'traveling in Himalayas', the Google Adsense ads shown need to center around this niche.

But all niches may not be popular. Therefore the trick is to discover those niche keywords that people frequently search for. There are many free and paid tools in the market that let you unravel popular search terms. None is more elaborate and helpful than the Adwords Keyword Tool. When you use the tool, try to dig out your niche keywords and build keyword-enriched content pages. Google Adsense ads appearing in those content pages are likely to be more successful in terms of visitors' inclination to click on them.

Adsense - Google's bounty

There are many tales that do the rounds as to how much Google Adsense will fetch you. A recent story (Google's hidden payroll, USAToday.com, March 28, 2006) cites quite a few examples of more than thousand dollars income per month through Google Adsense. Google itself flaunts success stories

[https://www.google.com/adsense/success] aimed at new publishers. Be that as it may, there is no doubt that web publishers can indeed reap rich bonanza with Google Adsense.