How to Join AdSense

In late 2008, Google tightened up their acceptance policies. According to an email I received from someone who was trying to join the program, you now must meet the following criteria before you are accepted...

- Your website must be your own top-level domain (www.domain.com and not domain.com/mysite). That means you can't just sign up with a free blogger or free web hosting account and get approved for AdSense.

- Your domain name must have been registered and active for at least 6 months before you apply

- The registration information that you provide during the AdSense registration must match your domain name registration information

- Your website must contain a substantial amount of original content

Once you meet the above criteria, go to http://adsense.google.com to apply.

When you are accepted, simply copy and paste the provided HTML code into any page that you'd like to show the ads. If you've done a good job of defining the content on your web pages, the ads that show should be relevant to the content of your page...increasing the chances of click-thrus by your visitors.

You can either display the ads vertically along side the page like Google does or in a banner-like formation horizontally across your pages. The placement is up to you. You can even customize the colors to match your site's theme.