Google Adsense is a wonderful way to generate extra income for your church or ministry. The income that it generates will help not only to cover the costs to maintain your website, but it will also provide your readers with a huge variety of targeted resources.

It's very easy to set up Google Adsense. You must first create an account and select a username and password. You will be required to enter your tax exempt numbers and other personal information, so have them ready.

Once your account is set up you then decide what type of ads you want on your site, generate the code, and then copy and paste the code into your web page. Once the code is on your site, Google begins to generate relevant ads based upon your site's content. I have been amazed at the accuracy of their choices. After that, when someone clicks on one of the ads, you make money!

Here are a few things that I have learned that will help you get the most out of Google Adsense:

Ad Placement. Where you place your ads is very important. Through trial and error we have found the best performer for us is a 160x600 vertical banner. We place it on the left side right below our navigation links. The second best performer is a 468x15 horizontal keyword ad. We place it at the top of the page right under our logo.

Ad Format. The type of ad you choose will make a big difference in your performance. I use only text ads. I have tried image ads but they do very poorly on our site. You should experiment with different ad types because each site is different. For some sites using a combination of text and image ads works well. Google has a feature that allows you to create custom channels for each ad so you can track its performance.

Ad Color. I have found that making the ads blend into our site as much as possible produces the best results. Google makes it easy to select colors for your ads. I use a white background with a white border and the title and URL are the same color as my navigation links. They don't really look like ads, but additional links on our site.

Ad Density. You are only allowed to have up to three ad units per page. We have two on every page and use an additional one on some pages. Often Google will only show one or two of the ad units at a time. You have the option of choosing either public service ads, or an alternate URL which will show the page (or banner, etc.) of your choice during those times when the Google ads are not available.

Program Performance. Google makes it easy to keep track of your site's performance by showing how many clicks you have received and how many page impressions (or ads) have been shown. In the beginning a CTR (click-thru-ratio) over 3% is considered good. The amount of money you make is directly related to the number of visitors you have and how often they click.

Adsense for Search. This is a great feature that allows your visitors to search for content either on your site, on the web, or a combination of the two. The landing page that is produced as a result of their search is full of relevant ads that will generate income if your visitor clicks on them.

Adsense Referrals. This is a relatively new feature which allows you to place ads on your site from advertisers that you select. The difference is you do not make money by getting clicks, you make money when someone performs an action such as buying a product or signing up for something. It's very similar to programs such as Commission Junction.

Google Adsense is an easy way to generate income for your church or non-profit organization. Experiment with it. Try different things. If one type of ad doesn't perform well, replace it with another. Once you have Adsense in place, Google does all of the work for you! Give it a try. You really have nothing to loose and everything to gain.

This article was published on Associated Content as part of a ministry series. For the series version with reader's comments click here.