My Journey to Google AdSense Approval
Google AdSense is a dream for almost every blogger to earn income from their blogs. In fact, the initial goal for many bloggers entering the blogging world is to earn money through Google AdSense.
Seeing numerous articles on how to get approved by Google AdSense, I became interested in contributing to this topic. By chance, I finally got accepted by Google AdSense after about 8 months of developing this blog.
Introduction
In terms of experience, this was my first time seriously developing a blog using paid hosting and my first time being accepted by Google AdSense. So, this article comes purely from the perspective of a newbie, and its content may be somewhat different from the articles that have been circulating.
Table of Contents:
- Reasons for Using Paid Hosting
- First AdSense Application
- Second AdSense Application
- Third AdSense Application
- Conclusion
Reasons for Using Paid Hosting
To discuss tips on getting approved by Google AdSense, I’ll try to narrate it chronologically from the three times I applied for this affiliate program. Hopefully, this different approach will help readers understand better and improve their chances of being accepted into the AdSense program.
Beginning of Blog Creation - November 11, 2016
I decided to create a blog with a focus on technology and travel (although in reality, the articles often deviated from the original theme). I boldly opted for paid hosting and bought a domain to take my blog more seriously.
- Posting an article once a week
- Writing articles in both Indonesian and English
- Adding a touch of humor in the writing (although I ultimately didn’t use it)
- Creating a Facebook fan page
- Daily blog walking to other blogs and promoting in blogger groups on Facebook (although I only started doing this regularly at the end of December 2016)
Before launching the blog, I prepared its basic structure, such as tags to separate Indonesian and English blogs, categories for articles and projects, and pages about us and must-reads containing a collection of worthwhile articles.
And finally, the blog was launched on that date.
First AdSense Application - January 12, 2017
Blog status at that time:
- The blog was 2 months old.
- Number of articles: 25 posts
- Total page views: 954 views, which means an average of 16 views per day
With these conditions, I confidently applied for Google AdSense, hoping to fulfill my dream. I filled out some forms, including the website address and the email address of the website owner. Finally, I successfully completed the first stage of the AdSense application.
Don’t forget to install your ad code by clicking on ad units to be verified by the Google team
Without any notification, I somehow managed to access the main dashboard of Google AdSense. After reading some articles, I realized that at this stage, we needed to insert the ad code provided by AdSense into the blog we registered by clicking on ad units (remember to complete this step, as it’s the second stage of Google AdSense registration, where the Google team will evaluate the performance of the website you applied with).
After a few days, the long-awaited email arrived, and it contained:
A rejection letter from Google AdSense.
I suspected that there might have been some articles that were only 100 words long, which may have violated Google’s rules.
Second AdSense Application - March 17, 2017
At this point, I had stopped blog walking because, from my perspective, most of the viewers on techraveller.com were the same people whose blogs I had visited during my blog walking activities. For some reason, the networking and view-boosting goals I had in mind while blog walking did not seem to work well. There might have been something wrong with my blog walking technique, so I decided to stop it.
Traffic conditions on the website during the second AdSense application
And I tried some new techniques, such as focusing on attracting viewers through Google search engine and improving SEO using the YOAST SEO plugin.
After reading several articles on how to get approved by AdSense, I added some features during the period from January 12 to March 17, 2017, such as:
- Adding a Contact Us page
- Registering for Google Analytics
- Creating a sitemap for the blog
- Registering for Google Webmaster to check whether the sitemap had been crawled by Google or not
With these upgrades, the blog’s status at that time was:
- The blog was 4 months and 6 days old.
- Number of articles: 32 posts
- Total page views: 1800 views, which means an average of 15 views per day
After a few days, the eagerly awaited email arrived, and it contained:
Another rejection letter from Google AdSense.
Even though the average length of my new articles was 500 to 800 words, I didn’t believe that the quality of the articles was the main issue for my AdSense rejection.
Third AdSense Application - July 11, 2017
A few days before this, I noticed that the website traffic had significantly increased, with an average of 50 page views per day. On a whim, I applied for Google AdSense for the third time.
After reading several articles online, I found one very comprehensive and detailed article on the topic of AdSense at allbloggingtips.com (thanks for the advice, dude).
Traffic conditions on the website during the third AdSense application
The technique I used, focusing on attracting viewers through the Google search engine and enhancing SEO using the YOAST SEO plugin, seemed to work. Some of my articles appeared on the first page of Google for certain keywords. This resulted in almost 75% of my traffic coming from the Google search engine.
For this third application, I made some upgrades:
- Adding a privacy policy page
- Using the YOAST SEO plugin
The blog’s status at that time was:
- The blog was 7 months old.
- Number of articles: 39 posts
- Total page views: 4863 views, which means an average of 23 views per day
After waiting for a week, the awaited announcement finally arrived:
After 1 week, the long-awaited news finally arrived.
Conclusion
From this experience, there are several lessons I learned to increase your chances of being accepted by Google AdSense (please note that these are just my views as a layperson, based on my experiences):
- Create essential pages like About Us, Contact Us, and Privacy Policy.
- Produce high-quality articles to generate traffic from the Google search engine.
- Wait until your blog is at least 6 months old.
- Aim for more than 40 posts on your blog.
However, these conditions can change over time because the quality of each person’s blog differs from one another. So, there is no one-size-fits-all answer to getting accepted by Google AdSense.
I hope that with this article, readers can benefit and gain a better understanding of how to apply for Google AdSense based on my experiences.
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