Using Google Adsense to Generate Income for Your Church or Non-Profit Organization

Google Adsense is an amazing thing. Less than a year ago we decided to add it to our church planting site, www.ministrymaker.com. The income that it generates more than covers our costs to maintain the site.

It is very easy to use Google Adsense. You must first set up an account and select a username and password. You will be required to enter your tax exempt numbers (and other personal information) so have them ready.

Once your account is set up you then decide what type of ads you want on your site, generate the code, and then copy and paste the code into your web page. Once the code is on your site, Google begins to generate relevant ads based upon your site's content. I have been amazed at the accuracy of their choices. After that, when someone clicks on one of the ads, you make money!

Here are a few things that I have learned that will help you get the most out of Google Adsense:

Ad Placement. Where you place your ads is very important. Through trial and error we have found the best performer for us is a 160x600 vertical banner. We place it on the left side right below our navigation links. The second best performer is a 468x15 horizontal keyword ad. We place it at the top of the page right under our logo.

Ad Format. The type of ad you choose will make a big difference in your performance. I use only text ads. I have tried image ads but they do very poorly on our site. You should experiment with different ad types because each site is different. For some sites using a combination of text and image ads works well. Google has a feature that allows you to create custom channels for each ad so you can track its performance.

Ad Color. I have found that making the ads blend into our site as much as possible produces the best results for us. Google makes it easy to select colors for your ads. I use a white background with a white border and the title and URL are the same color as my navigation links. They don't really look like ads, but additional links on our site.