Of course you can’t make money online!  What’s wrong with you?  Did Amazon.com ever make money online?  Did Overstock.com ever make money online?  Has anyone ever made money on eBay?  Or –

Oh, wait.  All of those sites make money.  Maybe you can make money online.  In fact, maybe it’s relatively common.  But surely my cooking blog doesn’t count, right?  I mean, who would really pay me money to read about the spatula I accidentally melted in the oven?  And it’s not like I’m being paid for every recipe I post.  Why would anyone pay for my failed avocado cream pie attempt?

Fortunately, I know how to make money with Google.  No, I’m not selling them recipes or spatulas or avocado cream pies.  Somehow, I doubt that Google would want them.  What I’m selling them is advertising space.

You see, those side bars on my blog hold invaluable empty space – space that can be used to sell someone else’s products or services.  And Google allows me the chance to earn money every time one of my foodies clicks on an advertisement for a new, melt-proof spatula.

Here’s how it works: Google has clients who pay them for advertising.  Every time that ad gets a click or appears on a web page, Google gets paid for it.  The advertisers are happy to pay for the publicity, because it increases their sales revenues.  Google is more than happy to oblige, since it doesn’t cost them anything to put the advertisement on the side of their page.

But if Google can put the ad on the side of my page, that means the ad gets more traffic.  More traffic means more clicks, and more clicks means Google gets more money from their advertisers.  So, Google is more than willing to give me a small cut of the profits in exchange for my cooking blog’s cooperation.  So even if my pie was a little greenish, I could still make a little money off of the blog post.

Want to try for yourself?  Check out Google’s Adsense program!