Do I really need all the legal pages?

Privacy policy, yes — any analytics or ad provider requires it. Terms, contact, and a disclosure page are small work and Google's ad reviewers look for exactly these signals of a real site.

When should I apply for AdSense?

After the whole checklist is done and you have a set of posts you'd happily show a friend — in my experience 15–20 real ones is safer than 5. My site that was approved first time had all of this in place; the ones that weren't, didn't.

A small text file at your site root that lists which ad sellers may sell your inventory. AdSense gives you the exact line to put in it; without it, ads can be limited.

Why Bing Webmaster Tools?

Because for small new sites, Bing often sends traffic before Google does — one of my sites gets most of its search traffic from Bing. Adding it takes a minute if you import from Search Console.

Blog Launch Checklist (Saves Your Progress)

How to use it

Tick things off as you go; the progress bar is saved on this device. Print it if you prefer paper. Reset clears everything for the next site.

The items that are usually missed

The www redirect, the real 404 page, and ads.txt. None of them are hard; all of them are things I've found missing on sites that had been live for months.

Blog Launch Checklist (Saves Your Progress)

Before anyone sees it

So search engines can find it

Measuring and earning

Content

How to use it

The items that are usually missed

Questions I get asked

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