Everybody knows Google right? The search engine that has grown up over the last 12 years or so to completely dominate the internet search market, so much so that the word ‘Google’ is almost substituted for the word ‘search’ in many languages around the world.
Google recently reported quarterly profits of over $2 billion dollars….Have you ever wondered how they actually make money? You may have noticed that when you do a search on Google there is a bunch of Ads down the right hand side of the page that are contextually related to whatever you just searched on. (Ok go take a look if you need to…)
This is driven by a neat little advertising system called Google ‘Adwords.’ Essentially it allows businesses owners to write an Ad, bid for positioning of the Ad, so as to make it appear when a Google user conducts a search under a selected keyword search, and then if they happen to click on that Ad, the business pays Google per click thru.
Now because this is a bidding system, essentially the higher the value (or profit margin) of the product or service that is for sale at the end of that click thru is going to determine how much a business is prepared to pay for that click thru. i.e. A business selling mortgages might be prepared to bid $1-5 per click thru, whereas a business selling shoes might only be prepared to pay only 20 cents per click.
The good news is that Google has decided to take these Ads and make them available for display on other web sites and share the revenue from click thru’s with the web site owner. So if you create an account with Google Adsense and display Google Ads on your web site and a visitor clicks on them, then Google will pay you a portion of the money they make out of that Ad.
Now, the types of Google Ads that get displayed are directly related to the content on your web site. SO if you can have content that triggers the display of high value Ads and you get visitors clicking on them, then this can become a very lucrative source of income from that content.