Google announced their AdSense API on their blog today. The API is in beta, but its free. So, what can you do with the Adsense API? Basically, the API allows visitors to your site to sign-up and manage Adsense accounts without ever leaving your web site. Why send your visitors to Google when you can keep them on your site? Great idea.

But there's more. If you act now, you also get a share of the revenue earned by publishers you sign up. In addition, you get a $100 bonus for each publisher who earns $100 within 180 days. I'm kidding about the "act now" part — couldn't resist.

So, what's the catch? Well, your site needs a minimum of 100,000 page views daily. Ouch! This will obviously weed out just above everyone except for the really big sites. It appears Google is targeting web hosts, blog hosts, Wiki hosts, forum hosts, and web publishers. Now the people behind a service like wordpress.com can make some money off of all those free accounts. I guess we can also expect more ISP's to offer free hosting if you sign up for Adsense on their site.