Can someone explain Google AdWords and AdSense? Is it worth the time & money?

Google Adsense is what website owners use to place ads on their websites. Google’s bots crawl through the text that’s on your site and use that to figure out what ads are best suited to your site. They try to make it as relevant to the content that you have, so that your site visitors are more likely to click on the ads and make you some money.

Google Adwords is the other side of the coin. People who want to place ads pick keywords and bid on them, meaning they indicate how much they’re willing to pay if someone clicks on their ad for that keyword.

It’s a lot more nuanced than that, but that’s the general idea. You’ll find more information at Google’s Adsense and Adwords sites.

Edited to add:
The Marketing Over Coffee podcast had a couple of recent episodes that talked about Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing and they briefly discuss Adsense in the SEO episode and Adwords in the SEM episode.

Thanks, I’ll definitely check that podcast out!

Needless to say, if you use Google (or any advertising) to drive traffic to your site, be sure that they enter to a page that is compelling, easy to understand, and that actually asks them to buy your product or service.

Unless you’re planning on having a website with thousands and thousands of hits, then IMHO, its not really worth it.

you must pay for adwords, but you don t have to pay for seo, learn somethng about seo. increase your traffic with seo first but use adwords too.