AdSense Sign Up – Don’t Overcomplicate It

Recently I have read some posts about applying for Google AdSense in which people have left comments saying how they are struggling to get AdSense approval for their blog or website. This in turn brought up many suggestions and ideas of what people should do to get their Google AdSense application approved.

I understand that people mean well and only offer advice that they believe to be helpful, however, after reading many of the suggestions and taking into account my personal experience of applying for AdSense, I’m afraid a lot of these suggestions don’t stack up.

For example, someone advised that unless a blog had at least seventy posts it was not a good idea to apply for AdSense. Another person was convinced that a blog needed to be getting one thousand unique visitors a day before an AdSense application would be considered. As my AdSense application was approved when my site had few posts and basically no traffic, this advice is incorrect.

What is worrying is that some people were so fed up with not being approved, they were asking if anyone knew of an AdSense approval trick to beat the system.

As a result of all this confusion I decided to write this post to explain what stage my blog was at, and what updates I made before applying for AdSense. The blog I used for my AdSense application is the one you are viewing now: dave-lucas.com

Google AdSense Sign Up – Pre Check

Before I applied for AdSense I checked out the sign up information available in the AdSense Help Center. Although I found most of the sign up requirements to be straightforward, I did find a couple of important pages that you need to be made aware of.

The first page, which you can view by clicking here, outlined what content I had to include in the privacy policy of the site I was submitting for AdSense approval. To help me with this I used this free tool: Policy Generator for Google AdSense. By using this tool, and taking on board the AdSense privacy policy requirements, I generated the required content and merged it in to my existing privacy policy.

The second page that caught my attention stated “In order to be approved, your website must be launched and contain enough textual content for our specialists to evaluate.” You can read this page in full by clicking on this link.

What’s interesting about this statement is that it does not say how many posts your site should have, it just says “enough textual content”. To me this means any written content on your site whether it is your posts/pages/policies/category titles/website title etc. So whatever textual content you have on your site, no matter where it is, make sure it reads well and contains no spelling mistakes.

My AdSense Application

Below is a summary of my blog at the time of application.

1. It was nearly four months old.

Note: I do know that if you are applying from certain locations you are required to have owned your site for at least 6 months.

2. It had four posts. In between submitting my AdSense application and waiting for the outcome I published my fifth post.

3. It had the following five pages: About, Contact, Privacy Policy (updated to include the AdSense required content), Terms of Use and Disclosure.

4. It had one category.

5. I checked my site worked. Here is quote from the AdSense Help Center “Websites that are under construction, don’t load, or have non-functioning links, will not be approved.”

As you can see I didn’t have to make any major changes to my blog – or write a lot of content – to attain Google AdSense approval. To be honest, all I did was modify my privacy policy.

I hope that my experience has provided you with some tips and guidance. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.