Adding Adsense to Google Sites is very easy and if you have a site on Google Sites then you probably already know how to do this. But for those who are curious I have explained how to add Adsense to a Google Site below.

Save your page, and then next to the Create Page and Edit page buttons you will see More Actions button. Clicking on it opens a menu, now select Manage Site.

In the left sidebar of the Site Manage page click on Monetize.

Now click on Montize this site button.

You will be asked whether you would like to create a new adsense account or Use an existing adsense account. If you do not have an adsense account you can create one now.

If you already have an adsense account provide your adsense account email address and pin/postal code or last five digits of the phone number that you have on your adsense account. Press next and you are done. now your adsense account will be used to display ads on your Google Sites pages. But first you will have to put the ads on.

Back to the Monetize page, you can select to display Adsense ads in the sidebar of all your pages. Doing this Adsense ads will appear in your sidebar after all your existing widgets like navigational links and recent activity. You can then edit your sidebar and move the Adsense to the top or between widgets.

You can also place your Adsense ads on individual pages by editing them and choosing AdSense from the Insert menu.

Google Sites will now ask you to choose the format and style of your ad and then you are done. Google Sites Help has a section on using Adsense on Google Sites, refer to it for information or use the comment form below to ask me I am not an expert but I will try to help.

There are several ways for a webmaster to notify the users about updates on their website. There are even free tools available that can publish an RSS feed for a static webpage (I haven’t used any of these and have no idea if they work with Google Sites or not). But since on this blog we rely heavily on the free tools provided by Google, so I will talk about using Google Groups as the solution.

Go to Google Groups and press the Create a group… button. On the Create a group page fill in the information about your site doing so your group and site will have same title and description. Under the option Choose an Access level, select Announcement-only and press the Create my group button. You will be then asked to verify by writing the letters shown in an image to prevent spam. Again press Create my group button. You will be then asked to add a few members to your new group. If you have the email addresses of people who would like to subscribe your group then paste them here or Skip this step.

Now you will be taken to your new group’s homepage. Copy the link from the address bar of your browser. Now go back to your Google Site. At the bottom of your sidebar you will see a link Edit sidebar, click it. On the next page click on Add a sidebar item. A popup will appear showing a few types of items you can add to your sidebar. Select Text and press ADD button. Now you will see a Text Box in your sidebar. Click on the edit link. In the popup window, Give it a title like “Newsletter” or “Subscribe” or “Mailing list”. Below provide the link to your newly created Google group with text informing visitors about your group.

The picture on your left shows how we have used the textbox on our sample website Bashir’s pet shop and notice how we have provided the link to the newsletter. Running a newsletter is no big deal, you can keep your subscribers updated about the recent changers you made to your web site, you can tell them about new products, share something useful with them and they will love you. See this page for some general email newsletter writing tips.

Google sites is simple but full of features to meet all your needs. You can add almost anything to your website by using it with other Google web applications. All these great features are available to you under the Insert menu when you edit a page.

Add Pictures
There is a handy button to upload your pictures. But you can also add pictures from Picassa web albums. This feature is particularly good if you want to publish albums of your products, your business, events, and so on. Using albums will provide your visitors a reason to stay, browse, and would eventually compell to take action and contact you.

Add Videos
You can upload your videos to Google Video or YouTube and then embedd them on any page on your website. If a picture is worth a thousand words than a video is better than thousand pictures. You can use your handycam to make video and upload them to Youtube. Just make sure that your videos are not too lengthy. Make short clips and make sure that they are good. You can always edit your videos with Windows Movie Maker. Add music to them, add subtitles, slides, or logos.

Add Documents, Spreadsheets, Presentations
You can embedd your documents from Google Docs to your website. Even if you use MS Word or Open Office, you can always upload your documents to Google docs just for the sharing purposes. I specially love the presentations feature. I think it is a great idea to create promotional material in slides and add them to your pages or offer them as downloads so that visitors can learn more about your business by viewing a colorful presentation.

Add Forms
People are lazy, and with the wealth of information available on the web it is difficult for them to memorize your site and your business details. They are lazy to pick up the phone and dial your number. So it is a good idea that you add forms to your site so that they can leave their contact information and you can tell them more about your business, products and services. You can create a contact page with a form on Google Sites. First create a form in Google Docs then add it to your page. It is hassle free and you don’t need to know any programing, scripting or html to do that. You can place an order /query form, run a poll on your website and ask visitors questions. Run surveys and display the data on your pages.

Add Google Gadget
Click on the More button under the Insert menu and you can choose from hundereds of gadgets to add interactivity and usefulness to your website. You can add translate tools, you can add calendars, add an online chat gadget to talk to your site’s visitors. Browse the gadgets and you will be surprised to see how many tools are there to make your site interesting. But a word of caution, don’t use too many gadgets and don’t use them at all if you don’t need them. They are available to add interactivity and external functionality to your website. Using them un-neccarily would be annoying for your site’s user experience.

There is nothing to worry about if you ever run into any problem while working on your website at Google Sites. They have support available for you. You can browse their help pages, join their forum and post your questions, or you can subscribe to their Google sites blog. They often feature websites that are taken advantage Google Sites, so drop them an email and they might even feature you on their blog.

There are thousands of small business owners who don’t know how they can benefit from the web. They do not have the skills, and their budget does not allow them to hire professionals for the job. In this post we will discuss how small businesses can take advantage of the web by creating simple small website with all the functionality of big websites. We will be using Google Sites, which is a part of the web based application suit called “Google Apps”. With Google sites you can create professional looking websites witout any knowledge of HTML.

1. Sign up for Google Sites and press the Create site button.
2. Now you will be shown a form where you can provide information about your new website.
3. In the site name field you can use your business name example “Bashir’s Pet Shop”.
4. In the description field describe your business example “We supply pet food, accessories for your dogs, cats, birds and fish”.
5. Make sure that the Mature Content box is unchecked.
6. Share with: “Every one in the world can view this site”.
7. Select a theme for your website. You can change it later if you want to.
8. Type the code shown and press the Create site button.

Now Google will create a site for you with a page called Home and you will be taken to an interface where you can create new pages and edit old pages. Press the Edit Page button to edit your Home page and fill it with information about your site. Using this interface is like using a Word processor. You can insert pictures, create tables, link to other pages, and write as much as you want. This is your site’s main page so it would be better if you describe the services and products your business offers in simple words. You can create new pages for each service or product afterwards. Press the Save button.

Congratulations! You have created yourself a website with a home page. But there should be other pages in this website, or else it would look boring. So you add a new page by pressing “Create new page” button. There are different kind of pages you can create. A simple web page good for text that you don’t need to change very often, for e.g. a “Contact” page with information about your business’s location, phone number and email address. Google Sites also has a feature called “Announcements”. Using it you can create a page where you can post latest updates and news about your small business. You can also create a “List” page or a file cabinet page.

Once you have created a few pages that effeciently describe your business. Click on “Edit Sidebar” under your sidebar on bottom left corner. Here you can change your sidebar, we recommend that you change your Navigation so that it shows all your pages.

We have created a Sample site for you. Look how we have changed the sidebar. We have added pages to navigation. One of these pages “Recently” contains announcements, “Price List” page has a list of prices of items sold, we have added a contact page too.

Using Google Sites you can create an almost perfect looking website. However there is a problem. Your site’s URL would be something like this: http://sites.google.com/site/yoursitename This is not a very professional looking address for a good and reliable business like yours. But don’t worry, You can use Google sites with your own domain name. For that you first need a domain name. You can register a domain name from popular sites such as GoDaddy or NetworkSolutions. You don’t need to buy hosting since your site is already hosted on Google servers. After you have registered your domain name, go back to your Google Sites control panel open your site and on top right you will see Site Settings link. Click on it and go to Web Address tab. Now under the Add a web address write down your domain name e.g. www.example.com. Now remember that you must own the domain and have access to change the CNAME records. Read this page from Google Sites support for information on how to set your domain name to work with Google sites.

If this sounds difficult to you, then you can try Dream Host, which offers webhosting and domain name registration services for as low as $6.99 per month. They also offer you to enable Google Apps by default when signing up for their service. Using Google Apps with your own domain. This way you can not only create a wonderful website using Google Sites, you can also use gmail, Google Docs, and many other wonderful google applications with your own domain name. It also gives you the power to add new users who can work on pages, this way you can add your staff and colleagues to update website. We recommend Dreamhost because this website is hosted on Dream host too and we think that they are very reliable webhost for newbies.

After you have created your wonderful website for your soon-going-to-be-big small business, there are other things that you can do with your website. Things that will make visitors come again and again to your website. For example you can create a mailing list for your website using Google Groups, and then add a subscribe option on your sidebar. This way you can send newsletter to your sites visitors and customers. You can track visitors using Google Analytics, Promote your website using Google Adwords, Add videos to your website from Youtube, Add contact forms, survey and polls using Google Docs Forms, The sky is the limit when it comes to what you can do with your small website.
Please let us know if you found this guide useful and tell us about the sites you have created using Google Sites.