Google’s AdSense program is a great and easy way to make money online. The fundamental idea is very simple: insert relevant, text-based ads into your content and make money whenever visitors click one of those ads. It’s very easy.

Placing AdSense ads on your site is trivial — it’s cut-and-paste. You don’t even have to worry about choosing the right kinds of ads — AdSense scans the page and chooses the right ads automatically. Getting started with AdSense is exceedingly simple.

What’s hard with AdSense is what’s hard with any content monetization scheme: content and traffic. You need both to make money from AdSense. No visitors, no clicks. No content, no visitors. It’s not a complicated scenario!

Most successful AdSense publishers have more than one site. They’ve built a “network” of AdSense sites, each of which may only earn them a few dollars (or a few tens of dollars) per day in earnings. But get enough sites in your network and those dollars add up — 200 sites earning even an average of $1/day is $200/day in earnings, or about $6000 per month. That’s the equivalent of a full-time salary for a lot of people.

No one says building all those sites is easy, or that it happens overnight. You definitely need a lot of content — whether you write it yourself or purchase it from someone else. You need flat-rate web hosting and a large selection of domain names. You’ll also want a tool or two to help create and manage the sites.

But it doesn’t necessarily take as much effort as you think, there are tricks you can use to speed the creation of your AdSense network. First, don’t go overboard with content: use a small bit of content per niche. Second, encourage repeat visitors by offering a course or mailing list and referring people back to your site when they read your mails. Third, use affiliate links in the content. Fourth, make sure you link the content pages together and use good search engine optimization to get good search engine rankings.

Your AdSense content network needs a proper business plan in order to thrive. Start small by attacking a variety of niches using the tricks mentioned above. Build on what you have, and in a few months you’ll have a great AdSense business.