Google AdSense is an advertising program that is run by Google. It is a great way to make money with your site, probably one of the best. Unlike affiliate programs, which require people to sign up and pay money to that site for you to get paid, Google AdSense only requires users to click the ads for you to get money. Plus, the ads are relevant to each unique page, so there is a higher chance of people clicking on the ads. The account you get after you sign up for AdSense gives you the AdSense HTML code, as well as detailed reports on your AdSense status. For any new webmaster, it is the premier ad service to put on the website.
Of course, if Google provides an ad service, there has to be someone giving money on the other end of the line. That's where Google AdWords comes in. With Google AdWords, you decide how much you want to pay for each click to your site, and you know each click is valuable because the ads are displayed on relevant pages. Not only do you get your ads displayed on websites, but also on the right hand side of searches through the Google search engine. Google AdWords is a great way to advertise your newborn or already existing site, in order to get some extra, quality traffic.
AdSense is not the only ad program out there. The runner up would probably be Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN), which supposedly pays as much as AdSense per click, and is more lenient with its Terms of Service. YPN is usually the ad network people turn to if they get their AdSense accounts canceled, but it is still best to start out with AdSense.
Other ad networks include BidVertiser, AdBrite, and Clicksor. Those are the second-rate ad services that pay little per click and don't have quality features like AdSense. The only reason someone would have to use those is if AdSense and YPN falls through. Don't trouble yourself with those, unless you want to combine your site with lots of different ad services, but it's best wise to use one, or at most two (unless your site is huge, then you should start using affiliate programs).
