Making money online has become such a sought-after venture nowadays. The truth is the prospects of making money online are limitless. Zimbabwe, despite some technological hurdles, is also getting a piece of the cake. You probably have noticed that blogging is becoming commonplace in Zimbabwe. The same goes for being a YouTuber, it is gaining traction. You might not realize or know this but people embarking on such are aiming at making money. The great thing is that it is not for a select few; anyone (you included) can get involved. You can start a blog or a YouTube channel and start making money. There are several means of monetization, one of which is Google AdSense. That is what I am discussing in this article.

What Is Google AdSense?

Google AdSense allows publishers (e.g. bloggers or YouTubers) to earn money from their online content. If you are a publisher you get to have ads placed on your platform. These will be ads that relate to the type of content you will be publishing. For example, you post a blog post on how one can start their blog. You can then have ads placed for things like web hosting services. Advertisers are the ones who pay to get their ads placed. Then Google gets its cut and you get your cut from that.

In essence, you make your platform available for ad placement. Google then facilitates the highest paying ads to appear on your platform, and then you get paid. Payments you get are premised on two broad ways which are impressions and clicks. Impressions refer to the number of views pages with ads on your platform get. Clicks refer to when visitors to your site or pages click on the displayed ads. The more the impressions or clicks, the more you stand to make. That tells you that the secret to making more money is to drive loads of traffic to your site.

In case you are wondering what or who determines which ads appear on your platform, it is via an auction system. Advertisers bid for their ads to be placed and the highest paying ones get displayed. That is why you notice that ad revenue varies. However, you will enjoy some control over which ads get to appear on your platform. For example, if you do not like an ad placed on your platform you can disallow or block it.

To get access to all that you need to open a Google AdSense account. You are not required to pay anything, you simply need to have a Gmail account and of course a website or YouTube channel.

Opening A Google AdSense Account

The prerequisites for opening a Google AdSense account are a Google Account and your original content. By the way, if you have a Gmail account, you have a Google Account.

You sign up by clicking here. You will proceed to click on Get Started followed by signing in to your Google Account. The next step will require you to enter the URL of your site i.e. the one where you want ads to be placed. Next, you will be presented with an option to get customized assistance and suggestions from Google. It would be ideal to opt-in though you can disregard; your choice. Then after that, you will pick your payment country or territory.

It is advised that you select a country or territory where you live. This will be important for receiving your PIN by mail. Without this PIN it will not be possible to get paid. Another thing, once you have selected your country or territory, you will not be allowed to change it later. When you are done you will go through and accept the terms and conditions. From there you can proceed to sign in.

You will still have to fill in some more details before you are really good to go. That will entail two things namely, entering your payment information and connecting your site to AdSense. Payment information will involve choosing account type, entering your name, postal address, and phone number, and then you submit. To enter your bank account information you will click on Payments. You will then add a payment method, choose Transfer to bank account and fill in the necessary bank account details.

Your site will be reviewed by Google for them to see if it complies with the applicable policies. Thus it can be a smart thing to go through them before opening an account to familiarize yourself.

Receiving Payments

In Zimbabwe, you can receive payments via Wire Transfer. Google will send your payments directly to your bank account. In Zimbabwe, given the currency issues, this means you must open a Nostro foreign currency  account. Google sends out payments once every month.

The revenue prospects vary. Earnings depend on the Page revenue per thousand impressions (Page RPM). The Page RPM depends on the source of traffic and keywords. Eg Traffic from the United States is worth more than traffic from Zimbabwe. Page RPM can be anything from US$0.5 to as high as US$20+. For example if your Page RPM is $5, and you get 100 000 page views on your website per month, that means your earnings are (100 000* $5 / 1000) = $500. To achieve those kinds of views,  you need to publish as much regular and engaging content. You can see the key is in driving traffic.

It is important to note that you must never click on your ads; that is reason enough for Google to penalize you. This also applies to recruiting say, your buddies to repeatedly click on your ads. That again will get you penalized. Google is an AI-based platform and can detect any malicious or fraudulent activity so never do that. Best wishes!