Why Doesn't My Blog Qualify for Adsense?

Yep, you got it. That's another often asked question that echoes through the Adsense forum lately. Some are posted in AdSense, and some are moved to the AdSense forum from the Blogger forum. But all of them nearly always have the same answer, BUT, there are several situations that apply here.

Situation #1 - Applying for a new AdSense Account

When you create a new blog on Blogger and want to apply for AdSense with it, you will probably find the "Earnings Tab" is not active, and you can't submit an application.

This is because the blog is either too new, or has too little content to be able to qualify for AdSense, so the ability to apply is on hold (by the Earnings Tab being temporarily disabled) until such time as the maturity of the blog (it's age) and the amount of contents on the blog deem it as being fit to apply with.

When the earnings tab is enabled, you'll be able to apply with your blog. This, however, does not mean your blog is approved yet, it just means that you can apply with it. Whether or not the blog is approved will not be decided until it goes through a 2-step approval process.

The first step allows you to login to an AdSense account and to place the code on your blog. Once you've placed the code on your blog, the second step will begin.

The second step is where AdSense will review your blog and all of it's contents to see if it's something suitable for them to monetize. During this time, you won't see any ads on your blog. You won't see any ads unless AdSense approves it during this second step. Once the review is complete (this review can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks) AdSense will send you another email, but you may notice ads showing before you actually get the email.

So, when does it become enabled?

Well, that's open for discussion really. Nobody knows because there is no information posted about what will cause it to become enabled. Having spent enough time in the AdSense forum you come to the conclusion that it can take several months before that happens. If one thinks about it logically, in a couple of months, how much content would you post? The average blogger probably posts twice a week at least, so two posts a week times 8 weeks equals about 16 posts, but most of the time, what we're seeing is the blogs need more than that in terms of content amounts, unless the posts are very long, so shoot for somewhere around 20 to 30 posts. The more content in each post, the more likely you'd be accepted with a lower number of posts. (Don't add words just for the sake of adding words. The posts have to be useful.)

If your blog is almost a few months old, or is a few months old and you have at least that much content, you should be getting pretty close to seeing your Earnings Tab enabled.  Unless ... well there is another requirement that Adsense has for just about all of the Asian countries, and that is the fact that sites should be six months old, so some of you may have to wait longer than a couple of months.

Situation #2 - Adding a Blogger Blog to a Fully Approved AdSense Account

This occurs when you already have an AdSense account that's approved to display ads on your own websites, or already approved to display ads on Blogger URLs (blogspot URL).

Even though your AdSense account is already approved for another blog, your new blog still has to qualify to display ads on it, so ... the earnings tab is disabled, the same as if you were applying for a new blog.

This makes sense because no advertiser wants their ads displaying on sites with one post, that's a few hours old. The idea is pretty much the same as in Situation #1 - when your blog is suitable (in terms of age and content amount) the Earnings tab will become active and you can link your blog to your already approved AdSense account.

You will not have to go through another review at that time. Your account is already approved, so the ads will begin to show once you can link it to your AdSense account.

Situation #3 - Your Blog uses a Custom Domain

In some cases, the Earnings tab may not be available when you want to apply because your blog is already using a Custom Domain. In this case, if your site is old enough, and has enough content you can apply at the AdSense homepage with your domain instead. Be aware that if your site is really new and hasn't much content, it's likely to be rejected, even if you can apply.

Your account will go through the same 2-step process as noted above in Situation #1. If it's approved and the ads begin displaying, the Earnings Tab should eventually become enabled, but even without the earnings tab, the ads will still work fine and still accrue earnings.

Situation #4 - You Already have an AdSense Account approved through YouTube or AdMob

You can't place AdSense ads on a blogspot URL if your account was approved through YouTube or AdMob. Not without upgrading that Host Account.  And to upgrade that Host account, you can't use a blogspot URL. Please see "Applying for a Host AdSense Account Upgrade" on this page for instructions on how to upgrade.

posted by J. Gracey Stinson

Editing Your Blogger Settings

NOTE: For information on editing and creating your blog using the Blogger in Draft, and the new Template Designer, please see this OTHER (newer) post!

Well, as it turns out this is rather late, and most of you will already have figured out where to go and how to change your templates after you got set up.

For those that haven't - following is some simple changes to help you personalize your blog.


SETTINGS TAB

When you select the settings tab, you are first presented with the Basic changes page. Along the top of the menu bar, just below the settings tab you will see a series of other links, like Basic (the page you will be on first), Publishing, Formatting, Comments, Archiving, Site Feed, Email & Mobile, Open ID, and Permissions.


Basic

When you login to your dashboard, select the settings tab to make changes to your blog's title and description, and whether or not your blog is displayed in blog listings, or if your blog can be found by search engines, whether or not your blog is family rated or contains adult materials, and you can also select which blog editor you wish to use - the "old" one or the updated one.

You can also enable trasliterations for your blog as well - the languages covered are Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu.

And finally, if you decide you want to delete your blog, you can do it here on this page as well. Another helpful option here is the ability to import another blogger blog into the one you are working in. In order to do that, you would first need to export the other blog using the export function, and then selecting the exported file to import into this blog.

Publishing

The publishing page allows you to select some options for the publishing of your blog by giving you an option to point your own custom domain name (which you would need to purchase) at your blog, changing it's URL from a blogspot address to a .com, .net, .org address instead, depending on what type of domain address you purchase.

WARNING: for those of you using adsense on your blogs, this DOES NOT mean that you will need to change your ad set up to AdSense for Domains. AdSense for Domains is ONLY for domains with no website or blog - it is for an empty domain. If you change the domain settings following AdSense for Domains instructions, then your blog will disappear. Simply leave your current AdSense for Content ads on your blog.

Formatting

This page allows you to set the number of posts that will display at one time on a page. I believe the default setting is 7, which is usually too many. Most readers will not want to be confronted with that much at one time. I generally set my own to 1, but an average display runs between 3 and 5.

If you are using adsense between your posts, a good number is 2 or 3 - any more than that can affect whether or not ads will display in your sidebar since AdSense only allows 3 ad units on a page. If you set your blog to display 5 posts on a page, you may get 3 ad units between the posts, and none on the sidebar, unless some of your ads are set to link units.

On this plage you can also set the formatting for your date and time, your time zone, your blog's language, whether or not you want the title fields displayed.

Lastly, at the bottom of this page is a box that will allow you to post a line or paragraph of text or code that you want to have displayed in every single post you make. See the little "add this" bookmarking button at the top of the posts in this blog? Well the code for that is what I entered into the post template. Now, whenever I create a new post, that little bookmarking button is already at the top of each post. (by the way, you can get that great little social bookmarking button from AddThis.com, free)

Comments

This section allows you choose whether or not comments are allowed or displayed, whether you want to moderate comments or not, and whether or not you want the back links to show.

Archiving

This page allows you to set your archiving options - monthly, daily, weekly or no archive. It also allows you to set post pages. Setting post pages allows each post your make to have it's own unique webpage, so it's a good idea to do this. Whether or not you are allowed to set post pages will depend on the way you have chosen to set your comments, so you may have to move back and forth between the post page and the comments page until they are set correctly.

Site Feed

Here you can set your preferences for your site feed, and if you use another method for burning feeds, then you set the redirect url here as well. If you have a message you want to place for each post feed, there is a message box at the bottom of this page that allows you to place codes for advertising or other messages.



Email & Mobile

If you want to post to your blog via your email, or by mobile you can set up those functions on this page.

Permissions

Allows you to set permissions for your blog - who can see it, who can post it, etc. Here you can invite other authors to participate in making posts to your blog.