Advertising revenue and Google Adsense go hand-in-hand, but AdSense isn't like it was ten years ago with easy five-figure monthly checks. However, you can still monetize your site or your blog with AdSense and make a decent living through writing.

Google has an advertising program, involving four parties:

1. Google
2. Customers paying for the ads – through the AdWords program
3. Visitors clicking on the ads – on search engine results pages and websites
4. Website owners running the ads on their websites – through the AdSense program. These are the people making money from ad revenue.

Google has developed technology that automatically senses what the theme of the page is and then displays ads that are suited to the theme. This way the visitor will see advertisements likely to be of interest.

The AdWords customer (the advertiser trying to sell a product or service etc using these ads) is billed every time a visitor clicks. The amount depends on the cost of the ad, which is basically determined by advertising demand.

Revenue from that billing is split between Google and the owner of the website where the visitor clicked. If the ad costs the advertiser 50 cents per click, Google gets a share and the website owner running the ads gets share. The exact split is not disclosed and according to Google, it is a sliding scale based on earnings.

Google AdSense is not the only program you can use to place ads on your site. There are other similar programs but AdSense is where the money is and we have never not received a payment from Google, whereas some other programs we've been stiffed.

There are a few key elements to successfully earning revenue from Google Adsense:

• Create website pages to rank well in the search engines. No visitors, no clicks, no revenue
• Strategically position your AdSense ads to attract the most clicks
• Target keywords that have a high click price, thereby earning more per click
• Make sure the words you target have enough searches per month to be worth the effort of creating a webpage
• Make your site a valuable resource so visitors return.

Some more advanced strategies include:

• Create a valuable newsletter that visitors want to receive. Publish each issue on a webpage with Adsense and notify subscribers by mail with a link to the page (this method also minimizes risk of your email being filtered)
• Target less competitive keywords for your search engine rankings but direct the traffic (legitimately) to pages with more competitive keywords because the Adsense ads will pay more per click
• When choosing Adsense ad design (you can choose color and format) avoid designs that are obviously ads. The less they look like ads the better.