Adsense has always been my go-to monetization for any sites that I'm building. It's easy to add to any site, and it doesn't have any real requirements to get started. That means you can start earning even if you have the smallest amount of traffic.
In this post, I'll show you the quickest and easiest way to get any site approved for Adsense.
How Much Can You Earn?
I won't sugarcoat it, Adsense is one of the lowest-paying ad networks you can put on your site. There are much better ad networks to strive for, but they have typically come with minimum traffic requirements, which is hard to achieve for new sites.
That being said, Adsense is still a lucrative ad network to partner with. The amount you get paid relies heavily on the niche you're in, the keywords you're ranking for, and the quality of traffic coming to your site.
Earnings are calculated per 1,000 visitors to your site. This is called RPM, or Revenue Per Mille (Mille meaning thousand). Below, you can see how how RPM can effect a site's earnings based on a handful of page views.
A video game niche site may earn $1 to $3 for every 1,000 visitors. This is because the advertisers aren't spending much money to show ads to gamers. There isn't much money to be made.
A kitchenware niche may earn $5 to $10 for every 1,000 visitors. This is because kitchenware is a sizeable market with lots of products and brands. They are willing to pay for the exposure and a chance at promoting their products.
Niches that bring visitors from high-value markets can see $10 to $50 per 1,000 visitors. This includes anything from travel, finance, law, etc. You get the idea. If the niche you choose has a market, there is more money to be made.
Approval Process
First and foremost, you need to understand how the approval process works. Here is a quick glance at how it looks:
- You submit your site to Adsense.
- A human being visits your site and quickly checks a few things (we'll cover them in a sec).
- That human being will approve or decline your application.
If they approve it, you can go ahead and start putting ads on your site. To get started quickly, just turn on Auto ads and set the dial for how much ads you want to show on your site.
If you are denied, you'll see a notice that says "Needs attention", with a short and detailed description of what the reviewer found wrong with your site.
The most common reasons people encounter (and I've encountered) are:
- Low content quality
- Site unreachable
These are easily fixed, but the descriptions are pretty vague. We'll go over these problems in the troubleshooting section.
Adsense Minimum Requirements
When it comes to meeting Adsense requirements, there are a few things you should keep in mind. Lots of people believe that you need to have a lot of traffic for Google to even consider your site, but that's not true. Let's go over what the basic requirements actually are.
Traffic
There is no real minimum traffic requirement for you to monetize your site with Adsense. Google understands that websites can grow their traffic over time, so this isn't an issue. They are more concerned about the quality of your website rather than how much traffic it currently has.
Content Quality
There are lots of ways your content can be considered low quality.
Here is a list of questions you should ask yourself:
- Was this content copied from another website?
- Is this content computer-generated?
- Does the content make sense? Was it written poorly?
- Does the content match the title of the page?
- Is the content actually helpful or is it just a bunch of fluff?
When you look at your content and ask these questions, you need to be honest with yourself. Understand that another human being will be inspecting your content and asking the same questions. The difference is that the other person gets to decide whether your site gets to show ads or not.
Contact Information
Publishing ads is a business, and businesses don't like working with anonymous entities. You don't need to make yourself known to the public, but there has to be a way to reach you. Without some kind of personal information, you may not get approved.
- Include an "about-us" page that has information about who is running this website and why.
- Include a "contact-us" page that either has a form or an email address published in the page.
Make sure these two pages are visible in the site's navigation and can be found within the first two seconds of visiting your site. This is what the manual reviewer is looking for.
Once You’re Approved
After you've gone through the process of cleaning your site, applying for review, and finally getting the approval, you're ready to show ads! Hooray! Now your site can start earning money.
Before you get too excited, there are a few steps you need to take before you can start earning:
- Turning on ads
- Putting the ads script on your site
- Adding an ads.txt file to your site's root folder
Turn On Ads
On the left sidebar, click on ads. Then under your list of sites, click on the pencil icon to Edit your ad settings. Under Auto ads, you can toggle the switch to turn it on. One of the other settings you can choose is Ad load, which is just a dial for how aggressive you want your ad placements to be.
Inserting Ad Code To Your Site
You'll also be required to add the Adsense script to your site. This is placed in the <head> tag on every page you want to show ads on. Most site builders will have an option for adding scripts to the sitewide header, which will apply it to every page automatically. This is the same process for adding Google Analytics for traffic monitoring.
If you're on WordPress, you have some options, but first, lets grab the code.
Method 1: Editing header.php
Next, we'll go into our WordPress dashboard. We'll need to navigate to our theme's file and add the code into your header file. This can be found by going to Appearance > Theme File Editor and selecting header.php.
You may get a warning message about accessing these files. This is because these files directly control how your site works, and any mistakes can break your site, so if you're not sure about this step, then back away or ask for help.
Paste the copied code snippet between the <head> opening tag and the </head> closing tag. The final product should look like the image below.
Method 2: Using elements from GeneratePress
If you're using GeneratePress, as many people do, then there is an easier option that doesn't involve going into your site's theme files. This method involves using Elements, which is a built-in feature of GeneratePress.
In your WordPress dashboard, select Appearance > Elements > Add New Element, then select Hook and click Create.
Name your hook element whatever you like. For consistency, I named mine Google Ads. Paste your script into the text box. Under the Settings > Hook, select wp_head. This will present your hook in the header of the pages you've selected.
Then, under the Display Rules tab, you'll have the option for the location for where you'll display this hook. Select Entire Site, and click Publish. Now your site has ads on every page!
The Ads.txt File
This step can be considered optional, but you absolutely should do it as it affects your earnings. It's really easy to do, but you need access to the root folder of where your site's files are.
Creating the Ads.txt file
First, you need to create the Ads.txt file. This is a simple text file you can make in any text application your computer. This is what it looks like:
It consists of 4 fields that are separated by commas. The only field you need to change is your Publisher ID, which can be found in your account settings in your Adsense dashboard.
You can copy the following text and just replace your Publisher ID. Save the text file as Ads.txt and we'll move on to the next step. Sometimes, Adsense may give you a notification that you are missing your Ads.txt file and they'll just provide the file for you.
Ads.txt:
google.com, pub-YOUR_ID, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0
Uploading your Ads.txt File
This can be accessed with a few methods, in order of complexity:
- Using a file explorer plug-in - A plugin like this allows you to see all the files for your website. This exposes your site to extreme vulnerabilities, so I won't even recommend a plugin for doing it.
- Using the file manager through your hosting provider- This is the safest and easiest method. Login to your hosting provider account and navigate to your site's file manager. Upload the ads.txt file to the public_html folder.
- Connect using FTP - File Transfer Protocol is a way of connecting to a remote directory. You need a username, password, IP address, and a port. This lets you connect to your site's root directory and move files around.
To recap, here is what we've done so far:
- Prepared our site for Adsense approval
- Got approved
- Turned on auto ads
- Uploaded our ads.txt file
But what if you're having trouble getting approved? Let's move on to the troubleshooting section for those are having a hard time...
Adsense Approval Troubleshooting
There are lots of reasons why your site may not be approved. This process can get frustrating, especially after several attempts and no clear instructions about why it's not getting approved.
Low Value Content
This error message can mean a lot of things. First, you should check go over the questions posted at the start of this article and make sure your written content is good enough.
This error can also mean your site doesn't have contact information visible to the reviewer. Or if you did, it wasn't convincing enough. Treat your site like a business and present it as such.
Your site's navigation should make sense. A manual reviewer will click on all your navigation elements and see what's on the other end. If there are any surprises, your site will appear to be low effort and low quality.
Site Unreachable
This one is annoying to deal with. Your site is online and the webpages load just fine. Why are you being told that the site is unreachable?
"We found that your site was down or unavailable. We suggest that you check your application to see if there was a typo in the URL that you submitted. When your site is operational, you can resubmit your application. We'll be happy to take another look at your application."
Make Sure Your Robots.txt Isn’t Blocking Google
This is likely caused by your robots.txt file blocking Googlebot from visiting your site, which is a cause for greater concern than just Adsense approval. If you aren't sure about how to configure your robots.txt file, you can add the simplest version of one to the root folder of your website (same directory as your ads.txt file)
This is what that would look like:
User-agent: * Disallow: /wp-admin/
Now, you may ask, if a manual reviewer checks the site, why does a robots.txt file matter? Well, to help automate the process, Google will do an automated check before sending it a reviewer. This is just a quick way of speeding up the process for all other sites.
Check All Variations Of Your Domain Name
Even if you have self-declared canonicals redirecting search engines to view the correct version of your site, they're still checking the variations to see if they're loading properly.
By variations, I mean:
- https://domain.com
- https:// www.domain.com
- http://domain.com
- https://www.domain.com
Low Value Content
This error message can mean a lot of things. First, you should check go over the questions posted at the start of this article and make sure your written content is good enough.
This error can also mean your site doesn't have contact information visible to the reviewer. Or if you did, it wasn't convincing enough. Treat your site like a business and present it as such.
Your site's navigation should make sense. A manual reviewer will click on all your navigation elements and see what's on the other end. If there are any surprises, your site will appear to be low effort and low quality.
Site Unreachable
This one is annoying to deal with. Your site is online and the webpages load just fine. Why are you being told that the site is unreachable?
"We found that your site was down or unavailable. We suggest that you check your application to see if there was a typo in the URL that you submitted. When your site is operational, you can resubmit your application. We'll be happy to take another look at your application."
Make Sure Your Robots.txt Isn’t Blocking Google
This is likely caused by your robots.txt file blocking Googlebot from visiting your site, which is a cause for greater concern than just Adsense approval. If you aren't sure about how to configure your robots.txt file, you can add the simplest version of one to the root folder of your website (same directory as your ads.txt file)
This is what that would look like:
User-agent: * Disallow: /wp-admin/
Now, you may ask, if a manual reviewer checks the site, why does a robots.txt file matter? Well, to help automate the process, Google will do an automated check before sending it a reviewer. This is just a quick way of speeding up the process for all other sites.
Check All Variations Of Your Domain Name
Even if you have self-declared canonicals redirecting search engines to view the correct version of your site, they're still checking the variations to see if they're loading properly.
By variations, I mean:
- https://domain.com
- https:// www.domain.com
- http://domain.com
- https://www.domain.com
http version of the site failing live URL testing
Essentially, you're checking the www and non-www versions of your site as well as the http and https versions of your site. If any of those show an error, your site will be considered unreachable.
You do this by entering the version of your domain in Google Search Console's URL Inspection Tool and selecting Test Live URL.
Google’s Adsense Approval Series on YouTube
If you want to get even more information, Google has published a thorough video series on YouTube for Adsense approval, and I highly recommend checking it out.