What got you started with AdSense?

And has it changed the way you view or work your site(s)?

[ken_b]

In my case it was mostly someone I know in the real world who was using AdSense and encouraged me to try it. And after hearing how well it was working for some webmasters here I decided to jump in. Seems to have worked out pretty well for the last 6+ years.

Good bad or indifferent though, it has changed the way I work my site. First I decided to completely redesign the site visually because it was pretty bad and really needed updating which allowed a much better ad placement and made the site a lot more readable with better color choices etc.

The ad placement is still the same after all these years, just works well. I occasionally try a different layout or ad format, but I've always reverted to the early 2004 redesign layout it, just works well.

Thanks to the people here and at PubCon in Florida in 2004 for the tips/advice/etc.

Beyond that AdSense has allowed me to do what I want to do most with the site, build content.

I do sell a few ads directly, and may sell more in the future. But frankly I don't much like sales work.

But the income from AdSense is because of the content of the site, and the content is what interests me most.

So what's your story? :)

[explorador]

Curiosity

Honestly at first I didn't like Adsense (still not much) and always felt it gave a "cheap" look to my websites. I tried to see what happened and added AS to one of my websites. Earnings appeared right away but didn't tried on my other sites. I was slow to try it on the other sites.

I think it works great, specially on one abandoned site I have, in fact is my primary source of income. The site became very interesting for me just for curiosity trying to understand "the why" so I began experimenting but no luck figuring things out. So I reverted the site to the original version and the earnings work like a charm on that one. I just don't get it :)

[BillyS]

I started out as an advertiser. Adwords was (and still is) by far the best network on the web. It was a logical choice when I became a publisher.

I disagree with the statement about making a site look "cheap." When done correctly, it's just another resource to our visitors.

[Roseb44170]

I got started because quite honestly I was curious about the whole thing! I mean could you actually make money this way? When I actually started earning money I became quite obsessed with the whole program. I mean I even have a working from home blog and how appropriate a way to be able to earn money from home!

When I first started using Adsense and I actually started to earn money with it I started adding as much of it as I could to as many sites as I could! But now I've come to ease down a little. I concentrate more on providing good content because that benefits the kinds of ads I get and the more number of clicks that I get as well.

Yes I try other things like high-paying keywords but my main concern is providing the best content that I can.

And trying to figure out the whole of how Adsense calculates everything - especially earnings - just gives me a headache so I stopped trying!