Making extra profits by placing ads on your website from Google or Yahoo is a nice way to augment your website's revenue stream. For most websites, the goal is to market your wares to potential buyers, whether you are offering a product or service to the consumer. While we all wish that every visitor to our website make a purchase or fill out a lead form, the reality is that for most websites, the conversion rate is less than 10%.

Just as a magazine or newspaper make money with their subscription base as well as their advertizing revenue, maximizing your websites ability to make money based on your traffic flow is just smart business. This isn't to say that you want your website to look like the front fender of a NASCAR race car, but you can tastefully add paid ads to your website that will produce revenue.

Creating Google Paid Ads

The first step is to set up an account with the ad provider. While there is a plethora of choices out there, this article focuses on Google Adsense due to their dominance in the marketplace.

Once you have created an account, there is usually a small waiting period while your website is approved. Once approved, the Google Adsense management panel will take you step by step through the ad creation process.

It is helpful to have an idea of where you want to place your ad, and to have your tables or div tabs set up ahead of time.

It is also helpful to have your website open while creating your ads, so you can match the color scheme of the ad to your websites color scheme. Statistically, ads that blend in seemlessly with your website tend to perform better. Google provides a basic color chart for matching the ad colors to your website. In some cases, the base colors offered do not match the website color scheme, and you may have to check the source code (HTML code) of your website and find the six character alpha numeric hex codes that represent the colors on your website. Notice how the ads on this blog match the color scheme of the website.

Putting the Google Ads On Your Webpages

Once you have chosen your ad size, color and type, the Google Adsense manegment tool creates a Javascript code that you simply cut and paste to your website in the spot you want the ad to appear. It is important that you cut the entire javascript code and that you don't make any changes to it.

Once the code is in place you should preview your website to see how the ad looks, and make any adjustments necessary before publishing. If the ad that shows during your QA process doesn't make sence or comes up blank, don't worry. Focus on the formatting of your website with the ad inserted.

When you publish your website, Google's adbot will crawl your website and try to match the ads to the content on the webpage. Often times the initial ads that show will be revised to more exactly match your website content.

How You Make Money From Google Adsense Ads

When a visitor to your website clicks on one of the Google Adsense ads, you get credit for the to the sponsors website, and receive a percentage of the advertising revenue Google charged for that ad - usually around 30%. Depending on the type of content on your website, that percentage could be a few cents to several dollars.

As noted earlier, not ever visitor to your website will buy your product or service. The people who don't buy, will leave your website. If they leave by clicking on a Google ad that they think will lead them to what they are looking for, you still make money on that visit!