How To Make Money With Google AdSense - Can You Still Do It in 2022? (2024)

It’s 2022 now, and people are still wondering if you can make money with Google AdSense.

Well, yes, you can still do it…but it’s not so easy anymore, and in this article, I will share with you a few things that are important to know if you want to learn how to make money with AdSense.

What is Google AdSense

Now before we begin, I want to explain what AdSense is to the people that don’t know about it, so if you already know about AdSense you should probably skip a few steps.

AdSense is an advertising program that is developed and owned by Google, where basically publishers (people who own websites and blogs) will put up ads that are sponsored by Google on their website and get paid every time someone clicks on those ads.

Now AdSense is a very important part of Google and its revenue because Google is getting pretty much all its money from ads.

Google made $24 billion from ads in 2018. THAT’s a lot of money, just from their ads programs.

So advertisers are using Google Ads which is another program made by Google that basically allows everyone and every company on earth to advertise their business in Google’s search engine and also on YouTube and all their other websites.

But these advertisers can also advertise on millions of other websites that are not owned by Google, via the AdSense program.

To put it in simple terms, AdSense is kind of a middle man between you and an advertiser, without you having to do the hard work in having to go and find multiple advertisers to pay for a spot on your website.

So Google AdSense does that for you automatically, populating your whole website with a multitude of different ads from different advertisers all the time, and these advertisers are always in competition.

How Does AdSense Work

Like I said above, advertisers will get the chance when their advertising in Google to also advertise on other websites, this is where AdSense comes in.

Now, if your website is approved by Google AdSense, you will have the option to put these AdSense ads on your website, inside the articles, at the top (over the fold), in the sidebar, etc…

You only need to copy/paste an ad code from AdSense into your website, and Google does everything else automatically for you, almost like magic.

They will find the best ads and advertisers that are related to your niche and to the keywords you’re using on the site.

So when a lot of advertisers are “fighting” for a spot, they usually will get pushed by Google to pay more for a click, and that means more profits for you.

Google will pay you for every click you send their advertisers from the ads you have on your website. So when you have visitors reading your article and someone clicks on an AdSense ad, you will earn an amount of money for that click, it’s usually something between $0.15 and $1 per click. But the CPC (cost per click) always depends on a factor of things, that I will discuss in more detail below.

Now, keep in mind that Google will always keep a cut of that money, you will receive 68% of the total value of a click (that the advertiser paid for), and Google will keep the rest of 32%.

Example: You have an ad on your website about car insurance, that car insurance company just paid Google $1 for a click (a visitor that clicked on the ad from your website), you will then receive $0.68 and Google will get $0.32.

Sounds good? It is, because the more clicks (traffic) you send via Google AdSense ads, the more you will earn.

DON’T GET THIS WRONG THOUGH:

You can’t simply click on your own ads, or make your family and friends click on the ads on your website for you, Google will BAN and suspend your account in a short time, it’s not 2005 anymore, they have many algorithms and clever ways to figure out if a click is legit or not.

Trust me you will get your account suspended, and guess what, you can’t create another one, at least not on your own name and address so don’t try to gamble the system, they are not stupid.

How to Make Money with Google AdSense in 2022

1. Create a High-Quality Website

First of all, in order to get the chance to make money with Google AdSense, you will first need to have a high-quality website or a blog in order to apply to their program and get approved.

It’s not so easy anymore to get your website approved by Adsense as it was years ago.

The Google team now looks for many details when it comes to new websites joining their program. But mainly your website should be great and not simply created just to make money with adsense.

Yes, there are people out there that are creating made-for adsense websites, which Google is pretty much against, and you pretty much won’t get accepted if you try to sneak in with a website like that.

What does a “Made for Adsense” website mean?

Well, it means all the sites that have skim content, or just a few articles that are not that great with grammatical errors, or sites that are only a bunch of useless and boring articles put together in a highly competitive niche that pays a lot and they don’t have anything else besides adsense ads on their websites.

So yeah, the first step of getting into google adsense and start earning money is to have a high-quality website ready before you apply.

To do that, your website should focus on the following:

• Unique, rich, and engaging content – Such as tutorials, how-to guides, articles, videos
• Authority & Expertise – If health-related the advice should be from qualified authors etc
• Responsive Design – Make sure your website looks good on every device (desktop, mobile, tablet, tv, etc)
• Good User Experience – Your website should be easy to navigate and use by your users, don’t make it complicated
• Website Speed– Your site should load fast, make sure to optimize it properly with plugins and tools
• Social Media Presence – add social media links to your website (Create a Facebook Page, Twitter account, etc for your site)
• Legal Pages – add the necessary legal pages to your site such as Privacy Policy, Terms of Use, Contact Page, About Us.

But yeah, by far one of the most important aspects of creating a high-quality website is the content.

You can’t just submit a fresh new website that has only 5 articles that are all 300-500 words to Google AdSense and expect to be approved.

It doesn’t work like that anymore, so yeah make sure you have enough content on your site that is unique, easy to read and to understand, and also a bit longer than 500 words each. Check out 7 tips on how to write good content.

I would suggest you submit your website to be approved by AdSense only after you have about 25-30 unique high-quality articles on your site, with a minimum of 600-800 words each.

Read my tutorial on How to build a blog.

2. WordPress Themes For AdSense

I’m not going to spend a lot of time writing about themes here, but I will quickly suggest a few themes that I think are perfect for AdSense. These themes are lightweight, are SEO optimized, and pretty much all of them are packed with features.

In no particular order, here are some good premium WordPress themes for AdSense:

~ Ad-Sense Theme ~ Get Ad-Sense Theme Here

~ SociallyViral ~ Get SociallyViral Here

~ AHEAD ~

Get AHEAD Here

I mostly use MyThemeShop themes as you can see on all my arbitrage sites, because I like their pricing plans and support is amazing, also the themes are very good and optimized. My favorites are SociallyViral and Schema. I use these 2 themes a lot.

There are of course other premium themes that are just as good, but since I’m not experienced with them I can’t comment if they are good for arbitrage or not, so you can do your own research if you want to have more options.

By the way, I don’t recommend you to search and download premium themes for free from nulled websites, because they are more than likely filled with malware and viruses, leaving your website open to attacks and malicious codes that can then be implemented from a backdoor.

So yeah just don’t do it, always buy themes and plugins because not only you don’t risk the chance of having your website hacked, but you also get awesome support and help from the theme developers as well as future updates.

Also, these are premium / paid themes, I didn’t add any free themes here just because I use paid themes more these days and haven’t touched a free theme in years, so I don’t know which one of them are good or not (especially for arbitrage).

I guess you could browse a good-rated theme in the WordPress repository and be happy with it, but they won’t have enough features and be as good as the premium ones.

3. Do Niche & Keywords Research

Here’s the thing, Adsense can make you more money or less money depending on the niche you’re in and of course the keywords on your site and inside the article.

So basically if you have a financial website like a “how to save money” blog you will make more money via adsense than a website that focuses on “Celebrity news and gossip”.

Not only the niche is important, but you also need to do your research and target the right kind of keywords for every article that you publish.

Use a tool like Semrush or Ubbersuggest to see what your competition and other websites are doing and also to find out hot related keywords that can earn you more money with adsense.

So let’s look at this example:

If you’re having a blog about saving money, the keywords for each article you’re writing are also very important. Here’s why:

For the keyword: “How To Save Money”, the CPC is $2.61, but if you wrote an article about “How to save money on car insurance” the CPC for that is $30.34.

Now let’s keep things real, you won’t really get $30.34 per click each time someone clicks on your AdSense ads just because you have that keyword inside your article.

It doesn’t work like that, in fact, that’s the average CPC that advertisers are paying to appear in Google’s top search engine results, not on publisher websites like yours.

But, that does mean that even if you’re not getting $30 a click using long-tail keywords like that can and will increase your average CPC that you’re getting from your AdSense ads.

So the higher the CPC is for search engine ads, the more valuable and expensive the clicks will also be on AdSense ads on publisher websites, makes sense?

Instead of $0.2-$0.3 clicks you might instead get $0.7-$2 per click, depending on keywords and of course the location of your users.

So yeah, make sure to always do your keywords research before you write and publish an article on your site if you want higher AdSense earnings.

Check out my blog post on How To Find Your Niche if you need a clear guide on how to do it.

4. Follow the rules

Keep in mind that to join the Adsense program your website needs to comply with their policies and guidelines check out more details here.

Never use copyrighted content on your website (such as images, text, or videos). Always create your content from scratch or pay someone else to do it for you.

Use royalty-free images, if you don’t want to pay for them, there are a few sites that can provide you with amazing photos that are free to use on your website and Google won’t have a problem with those. Check out Pixabay and Pexels for royalty-free images.

Google Adsense is pretty strict about their rules, and if you violate some of their rules and guidelines you will receive a warning and if it’s a severe violation you will even get your whole AdSense account suspended.

And guess what…

You can’t create another AdSense account if you get suspended/banned the first time.

Because Google only allows you to have 1 account, and if that one gets banned, well… you can’t open another one. You will need a new name, new address, new payment system, a new website, etc… and even if you manage to open a new account they will catch you sooner or later and ban you again.

So make sure to always follow their rules and stay clear of any AdSense violations.

Also, you can check out my other article that shows you the top 22 Best Google AdSense Alternatives if you do get banned or if your site doesn’t get approved.

5. Get Traffic to Your AdSense Website

Perhaps this is the hardest step of them all, after creating a high-quality website, you will need traffic in order to make any money from AdSense.

Without traffic (website visitors) to your website, no one will click on ads, and if no one clicks on ads you don’t make money, simple as that.

There are many ways to get traffic to a website, you can get it for free and you can even pay for it (yes, it’s not illegal to pay for traffic if you have adsense on a site, more on that later down below).

The majority of people who are creating AdSense websites are focusing on free traffic methods such as SEO (Search engine optimization) and Social Media.

I would say maybe 95% of the AdSense site owners are getting free traffic, the other 5% might choose to pay for it… (These are not exact figures, but that’s just my approximation).

Most people prefer doing SEO, and ranking articles in Google and other search engines, and then receive free traffic to their websites and earn from AdSense that way.

Others are focusing on social media traffic such as Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, which is also free… and a few of us are even paying for traffic (me included).

All traffic methods are good and they all work. It just depends on how you prefer to do things.

If you’re a newbie though and you don’t have funds to invest and you also don’t want to risk your AdSense account, you should focus on SEO, social media, and other free traffic methods. Learn how to get traffic to your blog.

Paying for traffic for a website that has AdSense ads on it, while it’s not against Google’s rules, it’s a bit more tricky and difficult because you risk losing money when buying the traffic and also potentially lose your AdSense account if you’re buying junk traffic. You can read more about this later in the article.

How to Use Google Adsense Correctly

Even though Adsense removed the number of ads that are limited to be displayed on a page, you still shouldn’t have more than 3-5 ads on any single page.

Of course, this depends on how long your content is so for example if you have an article with 5000-10000 words, then yeah, you can have more ads than 5 and Google wouldn’t mind, otherwise, you should keep your number of ads relative to the amount of content you have on that page.

But in general, though, I would keep it on the low side, like 3 to 5 ads per page (depending on the article length).

So here’s what I recommend, one ad above the fold under the title, one ad in the sidebar, another ad at the middle of the content/article, another ad at the bottom of the article, and you can also have one more ad in the footer of the site if there are other things between the bottom of the article and the footer like a “related stories/articles” section or comments, etc…

This is pretty much my setup on all the adsense sites that I own. Funny enough I found out that having fewer ads on a page gives me more revenue, because the user experience is nicer, and the people tend to stay on the page longer and get engaged, and then the adsense click is worth more.

Also, it’s a good idea to never use more than 1 or 2 ad networks on a site, especially if one of them is Adsense.

So if you plan on having pop up ads, or even having malware ads from using some shady ads company, I suggest you only stick with Adsense, it’s better in the long term for your relationship with Google, plus there is a chance you will earn more with just Adsense anyway.

If you do want to use more than Adsense on your website, you could try and sign up for a native ads company such as Taboola or Outbrain, and you can maybe earn a little bit more revenue alongside Adsense.

But you need a high-traffic website to join those networks.

There are other native advertising companies such as Revcontent, Content.ad, Adnow, etc, they can also work, but they pay less than the first two, and also they tend to have a bit more “naughty” ads, that are on the scammy side, making your site look unprofessional.

Google AdSense Earnings

I know that you’re curious about how much can you make with google adsense but in reality it all depends on a few things:

• The niche of your website
• The kind of content you have
• The GEO location of your users
• The time spent on site
• The keywords inside the article
• The number of ads you have on a page
• What type of ads you’re using
• The time of year (generally people earn more in the holiday season than at the start of the year)

So as you can see, when it comes to google adsense earnings, no one can tell you for sure how much money you can make with your website because in reality there are a lot of things that can affect that.

What I can tell you is that there are countries that can bring you a much higher cost per click earnings such as the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland, United Kingdom, than the rest of the world.

So the location of your website’s users matters a lot in terms of how much money you can make from AdSense.

That’s because there are many advertisers that are competing inside Google Ads, to sell things in the countries I’ve mentioned above, and when things get crowded in the online advertising space, pretty much everything gets more expensive.

The cost per click that the advertiser will pay will be higher, and thus the revenue that you will get from AdSense if you have traffic from those countries will be much higher than if you had traffic from countries like Peru, Argentina, India, Pakistan, Brazil, etc…

I will publish an Adsense list of high CPC countries in the future, so subscribe to my newsletter if you want to be notified when it goes live.

So yeah, adsense earnings can vary a lot, and I can’t tell you for sure how much money you will make, it’s up to you to decide on the niche your website will be in, where you will get your traffic from, etc…

How to Get Paid from AdSense

You get paid every month usually around the 21st for the earnings you’ve made the previous month.

So let’s say you’ve made $500 in earnings for the month of January, you will get paid by Google at the end of the next month in February, usually around the 21st-26th.

Also keep in mind that in order to get paid the next month you will have to reach over the minimum payment threshold which is different for every country but it’s basically $100 or 70 Euros, so if you don’t make $100 this month, you won’t get paid the next month, instead you will get paid the month after your account earned over $100 or so.

You can get payments from Google Adsense via various methods such as Direct deposit to your bank account, Check, Western Union, wire transfer, and Rapida.

Can you live entirely off Google Adsense?

Yes and no. I mean you pretty much can do it, depending on the country/city you’re from and what costs you have. In general, people that have a fairly decent website with good traffic can make a living solely with adsense.

However…

You should never depend on one single source of income, especially not Adsense with how strict they are. I suggest you also take a look at affiliate marketing and try to have more ways than you can earn money online other than adsense.

Adsense Secrets

There are a few adsense secrets and tips that I use most of the time on my adsense websites, and I will share some of those with you.

1. Adsense Arbitrage

I’ve talked about adsense arbitrage earlier in the article when I’ve explained to you how to get traffic to your adsense website, where some people prefer to pay for their traffic.

But please keep in mind this is very different than having a “made for adsense” website, which Google absolutely hates and won’t even approve your application.

Sohere are some more details:

What is adsense arbitrage?

Well to put it simply, you need to have a high-quality adsense website like I’ve explained earlier, and when you have that, and you get approved into Adsense, instead of waiting for SEO to receive traffic to your website and start earning from adsense, you can instead buy the traffic from other places, at a cheaper rate than what Adsense is paying you.

So basically:

You buy low and sell high, in this case, you buy cheap website traffic and earn more from the adsense ads that you have on the site to cover the costs and also to make a profit.

Sounds illegal and scammy? Well, it’s not.

I’ve heard a lot of people and “gurus” saying that buying traffic for a website that has AdSense on it will get your account suspended… well guess what? That’s simply not true.

Google never specifies that you shouldn’t use paid advertising to promote your website, in fact, they even mention that if you do, you just need to be careful about the quality of traffic that you buy.

Don’t buy bot traffic that give you invalid clicks on your ads, etc… and that basically, you are responsible for the traffic your website is getting.

You can read Google’s own words on this issue here.

So if you buy your traffic from legit sources (with no bots and no invalid clicks), and you have a high-quality website, that users are engaging with and are happy to read and to browse, Google should not give you any problems.

Of course, nothing is guaranteed, and Google can pretty much ban and suspend any website or adsense account as they see fit and change their policies when they want, especially if you break the rules.

So yeah you should be careful with this, especially if you don’t know if a company that is selling traffic is legit.

I’ve done Adsense arbitrage for the past 5 or so years, and I haven’t had a problem so far with Google, but that’s because I have quality websites that are providing users with more than just ads.

My sites have great content, and I also promote other things as well such as affiliate products and my own services, newsletters, shops with merch, etc… so it doesn’t look like I’m doing it all just to earn from AdSense.

I also found out that when I have a website that is new without any rankings in Google, and I pay for my traffic, the SEO positions are also increasing, simply because Google is seeing that I have users reading my content, engaging with it, sharing it on social media, etc…

This, in turn, boosts my SEO efforts, which means that later I will be able to get free traffic from the search engines, and don’t have to rely so heavily on paid traffic.

Of course, it’s not so easy to just pay for traffic and get a website ranked, you DO need to have on-site and off-site SEO optimization is done to your website, but having traffic that is sharing and reading your content does help a little bit.

There are people that are doing hundreds and even thousands a day using this method, so yeah it can be done but you need to always follow the rules and be careful where you buy your traffic from.

And if you’re a newbie to internet marketing, websites, adsense, etc… just stick to free traffic methods such as SEO and social media, and later when you get a little more experience and money you might try and invest in paid traffic.

Check out my latest article if you’re interested in AdSense Arbitrage.

2. Don’t Use Auto Ads

This is when you let Google place ads on your website and they decide the size of the ads and the placements.

It sounds nice since it’s easy to implement your Adsense ads on your website this way, but in reality, from my experience and a few other marketers who wrote about this, using Auto Ads will decrease your revenue.

Basically, the Auto Ads A.I. (Artificial Intelligence system), will try and place adsense ads in weird positions on your site and just make the whole user experience bad.

Stick with the normal popular ad sizes and with above-the-fold ad placements, and you will earn more revenue with adsense this way.

3. Responsive Ads Might Lower Earnings

The same as with the above, with responsive ads, you let Google decide the size of the ad, and some ad sizes can pay less than others.

If you use a WordPress plugin like Ad Inserter, you can use regular-sized ads on the desktop version of the site, for example, a 728×90 banner, and then turn this ad off and replace it with another ad dimensions such as 300×250 when the same ad slot is viewed on mobile.

This way you maximize and increase the chances to earn higher revenue from Adsense by simply using the more popular ad sizes that are used by advertisers all the time.

Even if Adsense will give you more money for clicks on responsive ads, sometimes the ad sizes are very different in size than the more popular ones that the general public are used to, and that can make some people not click on the ad, and to avoid it, thus making you lose money.

However, always test this out, before you decide against responsive ads, as you know already, there are many things that can change the CPC (cost per click) you will get, so sometimes a site can earn more using responsive ads.

4. Test, Test, Test…

Like I just said above, you should test things out. Test responsive ads VS. fixed ads, test ad colors, test ad formats, test different ad placements on your website.

Test everything.

You never know how changing something even a little bit, can bring you extra revenue every month.

I once changed from blue links in my ads to red links, and I’ve seen an increase of 40% in ad revenue.

However I tried doing the same experiment on another site and I simply lost money, so I had to go back to blue links again for the other site. Basically, this means that what works for someone or for some website might not always work for you or your website, so that’s why you should always test things out for yourself and not blindly following people and guides.

Keep your tests for at least 2 weeks before you decide if something is performing better or worse than before.

If you do see that you’re losing a lot of ad revenue in the first few days though, you can just stop it and revert back, but if you’re not losing money that much you should probably just stick it up for 2 weeks.

5. Don’t limit the ad types

When you create an ad inside AdSense you will be asked what type of ad should it be, Text ad, Display ad (image banner), or both.

Always leave it on both: Text/Display ads, as it is on default.

This way you get to have advertisers compete for your ad space and the higher the bid, the more you will earn. Simply choosing text ads only, won’t necessarily mean that you will increase AdSense earnings, in fact, they decrease quite a lot from my tests.

Conclusion

So, can you still make money with adsense? I would say YES, AdSense is definitely a good way to earn money online even in 2022.

I still have a few sites that are monetized with AdSense (combined with a few affiliate products/services in addition to AdSense), they bring me regular revenue every month.

Would I recommend you try monetizing a website with AdSense? YES.

However…

You shouldn’t just rely on and focus on Google Adsense. You should try and make money online via multiple sources, not just with AdSense.

Why?

Well, as I said above, adsense is a great way to make money online, BUT you depend a lot on Google.

If they decide one day that your website is in violation of one of their policies and rules, they will suspend your AdSense account and your site will not earn that much money anymore, in fact, you might even lose all the money you earned for that month when your AdSense account got suspended.

Yes, there are many adsense alternatives out there that you can join, but none of them compare to Google Adsense in terms of how much you can earn and how reliable they are for receiving payments on time every month.

So overall AdSense is great but you should also have other ways to earn money online such as affiliate marketing or promoting your own products or services.

I hope this article about how to make money with google adsense has helped you out, and if you have any questions, leave me a comment below, also don’t forget to share it 🙂