Second easiest way to make money with Google

screenshot Of reader LensWhen people ask me what’s the easiest way to make money with Google, I point them to this graph of the Google stock price (Nasdaq: GOOG). If you were lucky or astute enough to buy the stock at its IPO price, you’d have almost tripled your investment. And just imagine the gains you would have seen if you were an insider or an early investor!

Google stock ownership aside — and the stratospheric growth in the stock price seems to have stalled recently — the second easiest way to make money with Google is with the AdSense program. Putting up a website or a blog and devoting some of its prime real estate to displaying contextually-targeted advertisements (chosen automatically for you by Google) is an easy way to make some extra money. That’s why my book is called Make Easy Money with Google, because it really is easy once you understand how AdSense works — it takes more time than anything. And yes, if you work harder, you can even make a lot of money doing it — there are people making thousands of dollars per month from AdSense (though I think most sites and blogs average between $50 and $250 a month, so don’t do this expecting to get rich overnight).

But you have to be willing to give up something to get that money. A recent posting by the Graywolf called AdSense: Why Bloggers Don’t Get It points out that many bloggers (and this also applies to website owners) don’t treat their blogs as advertising vehicles. If you don’t optimize your content and your layout for advertisement, you shouldn’t complain about not making enough money from AdSense.

And you know what, AdSense isn’t right for every situation either — see my recent article When AdSense Makes No Sense. No one’s obligating you to make advertising a prominent feature of your site or blog, but don’t complain about your AdSense earnings if you’re not putting some effort into the process.

There’s a reason why I didn’t title my book Make Money with Google with No Effort — it may be easy, but it’s not effortless, and you have to be willing to play the game.