- Google Adwords - You set up an account with Google, develop your pay-per-click strategies, keywords and ads, and you pay Google for clicks to your site when your ad is shown in Google searches or on sites that display Google ads relevant to their content.
- Google Adsense - You display Google ads on your site and share in the revenue when your site visitors click on them and an Adwords customer pays Google.
As you can see, they are related, but very different. You either are paying to advertise, or you're an advertiser. This brings me to my opinion, which is a strong one. You should be using Google Adwords if you need a boost in your site traffic on very focused key phrases likely to bring buyers and sellers to your site.
If you are a serious real estate professional, why do you want to become an advertiser, especially when the income you're likely to derive will be less than $5 to $20 a month or so for most sites? If an advertiser pays $0.50 for a click, you are likely to only receive a dime or so, and you would need a huge amount of traffic to generate enough clicks to make any real money. If you have that much site traffic, you should be way too busy doing real estate deals to worry about placing ads.
What does the ad display say to your possible clients visiting the site? Does it portray you as a real estate professional? Or, do you look like you're hawking products and services? It's also quite a pain to keep competitive ads out of the display with Adwords.
Another really big consideration for me is "screen real estate." That's the area that I have to work with on my site visitor's display. I have a huge amount of information to get out there. I really don't have the room to waste for a row of ads.
So, think seriously about Adwords, and forget about Adsense ... at least that's my opinion.
