How to add AdSense to your WordPress website or blogger

How to add AdSense to your WordPress website or blogger

Google AdSense has long been a way to monetise your website.

In recent years you will find mixed reviews on whether it’s worth it or not but I’ve always found the best way to find out, is to do it yourself.

To try it yourself, you will obviously need to add an advert onto your website, so this article is going to guide you through the process of adding Google AdSense to the sidebar of your WordPress website.

Note: This will only work for self hosted WordPress sites, not wordpress.com.

#1 – Register with Google AdSense

As with any Google service, you have to sign up for it before you can use it.

You can either log in with your existing Google account, or register a new one directly on the AdSense website.

If you can’t log in with an existing Google account, it could because that account is a Google Apps email address. Try registering a new account with an @gmail.com email address

#2 – Agree to their terms and policies

The policies are pretty straight forward. They consist of rules such as:

• You must not trick people into clicking the ads
• You must not click the ads yourself
• You must have a privacy policy page
• Do not edit the code they provide you
• Do not display the ad within a popup

#3 – Build your advert

Once you are set up and activated on Google AdSense, you will be able to build the advert for your website.

To do this, log into AdSense, click ‘My ads’ then ‘+ New ad unit’.

This is the page where you can select the type of advert you wish to create, be it a banner ad for the top of your page, or a sidebar ad.

As we are building a sidebar advert, select the ‘300 x 250 – Medium Rectangle’ ad.

Feel free to play around with the remainder of the settings.

Once you are finished click ‘Save and get code’.

#4 – Add the code to your website

The ‘Save and get code’ above should have opened a popup that contains the code for your advert.

Adding this to your sidebar is pretty simple:

• Log into your WordPress website
• Go to Appearance > Widgets
• Click and drag a ‘Text widget’ into your sidebar
• Paste the AdSense code into the widget
• Click Save

That’s it! You should now have a Google AdSense ad running within the sidebar of your website.