Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Creating a Google AdSense Channel

In What are Google AdSense Channels? you learned that a channel will help you monitor which ads and which sites are making you money. By tracking your individual ads and their placement, you're able to increase your chances of blogging for money. I'm going to show you how to create an AdSense channel so you can start monitoring your progress today.
Creating Your First Customized AdSense Channel

Go ahead and log into your Google AdSense account. Once you're logged in, click on the AdSense Setup tab.

The AdSense setup tab will present several sub menus for selection. We're interested in the Channels today, so click on that now.
 We're going to create a customized channel and to do so you'll click on the Add new custom channels option.
 You should now be on the Add channel screen, which contains a single textbox labeled Name. This is where you're going to type the name of your channel for the ad that you will monitor. You want to make this as clear as possible so you know exactly which ad on which site you're tracking. So for example, let's say you're using a vertical ad unit that is 160 x 600, sits in your right navigational menu, and contains text only. A logical name for this channel might be something like “right menu vertical (txt)”. Later on when you check your report, you'll be able to easily identify which ad belongs to the channel. If you happen to have two sites with the same ad in the same position, simply differentiate the two by your site name - maybe something like: “emb rght vert (txt)”. If I had another site about baking cookies, this label tells me that the ad it's tracking is Earn Money to Blog (emb) not my other site Baking Cookies Blog (which doesn't exist by the way - sorry).

Assigning an ad to a Channel

At this point you've successfully create a customized channel. Let's stay with the earlier example and pretend you want to track a 160 x 600, text-only ad unit that sits on the right side of your navigational menu. In order to accomplish this, you need to create the ad unit and assign it to the channel. In Google AdSense for Search you learned how to create a custom ad and plug it into your Blogger blog. The steps for this are similar with the exception of the channel option - we skipped over that last time but today you're going to utilize it.

Head to Get Ads and choose AdSense for Content.

Keep the default Ad unit selected and choose Text ads only from the drop down list and hit continue
 Now we're at the familiar customization screen - Go ahead and select the 160 x 600 vertical ad, also known as a Wide Skyscrapper. Feel free to customize it how you wish, you can even choose a different format if you feel comfortable at this point. This is just a simple example.

Now that your ad unit is customized, click continue. The following page will list your customized channels (you can create as many as you want). If you've been following up to this point, you should have a channel called “right menu vertical (txt)”. Simply add that to the selected channel and continue.

 Ok, just give the AdSense unit a name (I tend to keep the default) and continue on to the next page. Simply copy your AdSense code and plug it into your Blogger blog...you're done! If you're not completely sure how to integrate this code into Blogger, please check out Google AdSense for Content (Images only). That article should get you up to speed.

(Please be aware that your new ad and channel will have a bit of a delay. In my experience it takes about 10 minutes or so for the ad to start displaying on my page.)

Creating a customized AdSense channel is very important to your success. If you want to make money online by blogging, you need to monitor your sites progress. AdSense channels will allow you to do just that.

In my next article I'll explain how you view your new customized channel. Creating your channel is half the battle, but you have to know how to read it so you can make the proper adjustments. And making those adjustments will help you blog for money.