…and so after 14 days of operation, Al did rise this morn to read the awaited reply from the realm of Google Adsense, to find out if he had indeed qualified for the glory of the monetisation experience. And the email of Adsense read ‘Sure, you can run ads now, go for it sunshine’ more or less.
And if you’re wondering yourself how to get Adsense approved for your blog, let me break down my steps to get there!
But before we begin, a small favour to ask.
And that is, if you’ve got an ad blocker installed and running on your browser, can I ask you to turn it off for this page or whitelist this page? I know not everyone is fond of the ad experience (god knows I’m not after a few years of working as a copywriter many moons ago) but the minimal ad experience I’m running on this page is going to paying off the bills, getting me out of debt and potentially getting further down the fun side of life than where I currently am at a much faster rate.
Right, now that my little One Man Many Plans community service announcement is done, let’s get on with it!
How to qualify for Google Adsense (or how I did it so you can copy these steps and go from there.)
Now some of these steps are going to be painfully obvious, but bare with me.
Get your page set up and looking nice before you start writing. I know this sounds self explanatory being a blog you want people to visit and enjoy and all but what you want to have up and running before you even think of applying for Google Adsense is a page that doesn’t look like it’s a half finished construction site…that just got invaded and trashed by the very angry sun burnt teen crowd from Woodstock 99. Get your layout organised to the point where you’re happy where everything sits, there’s clear direction and things aren’t all over the shop like a mad woman’s breakfast. Can you tell it’s a blog? Does it work on PC and mobile? Nail the framework and then we move onto an equally if not even more important part of the blogging experience.
Write. Write. And then write some more. Wait, you’ve got to put in some content before Google Adsense gives you the green light? Indeed you do. Reading around the dark corners of the internet suggests you need at least 10-20 (some suggested 25 and up) decent length articles before you even think about spotlighting your site for Google to consider a good idea to insert ads into.
And what constitutes a decent length? I’d shoot for 1000 words each post as a minimum but for the love of all things blogging, please don’t pad anything out just for a word count. There’s nothing worse than reading something obvious where words have been poured in to make the cut. I’d suggest if you can’t write at least 1000 words on a topic, maybe the topic isn’t strong enough, maybe your passion just isn’t there and maybe you should wipe the slate clean and start a new topic instead.
Give them all relevant titles and if you’re aiming for SEO, try a plugin such as Rank Math to help get you on the right path. Read them back to yourself – would you read them in full if you were searching for information on that topic or would you stop mid way through and go and do something else? If the latter, go back and fix them up. Link some of the articles to others than you’ve written as this will help with ranking ultimately as well.
I wrote 10 articles/blog posts initially all of 1000 words or more before I applied and kept writing while I waited for an answer. When I finally got a yes, there were 15 posts done – this is the 16th. If they knock you back, write five more and apply again. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Have an About Me, a privacy policy and a contact page. And put them where they’re easy to see so when Google comes along to check they can see them easily enough and tick them off the qualifying list. If you’re new to making a privacy policy so that people know how you deal with privacy and data collection, something like this policy generator will help a lot, just plug in your details and generate one ready to go. Your Contact Us page should take less than a minute to bolt together, given it’s just some links on how people can contact you if they feel the need (or if you want them too for whatever reason) while your About Us/About This Page info is explaining what the blog is all about and it gives us a little taste about what you’re all about too sometimes.
Yes you can have your about me/contact us page as one, I’ve just kept them separate just cos. Also please don’t copy someone else’s About Me page (especially mine) because that would be weird. Especially if you think you’re me..
Get your stuff out there before you apply. This isn’t mandatory, more a point of building a potential audience before you monetise because no audience = no one checking out the ads = no woman no cry. No wait, I mean no earning through Adsense. I tweet what I write as well as putting it out on Facebook but I never slam it in people’s faces or pollute their feed because that would annoy me if the shoe was on the other foot and I’d never click the link out sheer annoyance.
Use hashtags and a nice picture, don’t be spammy, people will check if out in their own time if they want to. If you can score a backlink or two from another site that certainly wouldn’t hurt your chances.
Apply and then go write some more while you wait. The Google Adsense approval system will tell you itself it may be a few days before it gets back to you, possibly even a couple of weeks. In that case just carry on doing what you’re doing, blogging what you’re blogging or off enjoying your life whatever your vices. Keep an eye out in your inbox and fingers crossed it’s some good news. If not, write a few more articles and then try again.
And if they say yes, you’ll need to include the ads.txt to your site. Since it’s been a while since I was last approved for Adsense (I haven’t had to apply for years) I completely forgot about the ads.txt file Google Adsense gives you once you get the all clear for ads. It’s a tiny file downloaded through the Adsense website and once you have it you can either get it up and running through a ads.txt plug in or upload it to your root directory.
Either way you put it in there, you can check how things are working by pointing your browser to
https://YOURSITE.NAME/ads.txt
So for this page it’s https://Onemanmanyplans.com.au/ads.txt
And after all that and all going well? Keep blogging, keep working on your audience, build your brand and have fun doing it. While the money might not be life changing (it hasn’t been for me yet but I’m always working at it!) it is nice watching people reading my stuff and enjoying it and watching my small pile of revenue grow.
All aboard and good luck!