Money Making Key Words

Let's just get right to it, there are keywords that make money and keywords that don't. So if you decided to jack my sweet topic from the last Hublic Service Announcement, "Spaghetti Tacos" despite my warning, you will just be wasting time.  Despite how awesome you think spaghetti tacos are, it is just not a term that attracts heavy advertising dollars.  After all, advertisers are the reason we have high paying keywords to begin with.  

Remember the Google AdWords Tool from the last issue?  Before we go any further, we need a little background on AdWords.  We, as publishers, are all familiar with the AdSense program.  Well AdWords is the program for advertisers.  They bid on keywords and phrases and their ads will then show up on our sites as AdSense blocks.  That is a very basic explanation, but we do not need to go into more detail at this time.  Take a look again at the same screen shot of the tool using the term spaghetti taco.

See that column that says "Estimated Avg. CPC"? CPC stands for "cost per click" and the value below, in our case $0.05, is an estimate of how much it will cost the advertiser to achieve an estimated ad position of 1-3. Keep in mind it is an estimate, not an actual set in stone cost. There are other factors involved like landing page quality score as well as your AdWords account standing, topics for another day (or year). Our AdSense earnings are a percentage of what the advertiser pays Google to display their ads via AdWords. Nobody knows (outside of Google) what that percentage is, but I have been told to figure around %25, give or take a few percentages.

Now go back to your tool and type in "mesothelioma".  I hate using it as an example, but oh well.

WOW! Global search of 74k and a CPC of almost $24! Time to go write a Hub on it and get rich!

Not so fast. The more profit there is to be made, the more competition there is. If you are a rookie like myself and chose this as your first project, you would make as much as if you had stuck with spaghetti tacos. If you do not have the "SEO For FireFox" plugin, then download it and install it (please tell me you have made the switch to FireFox).

Now go over to Google and do a search for your term (i'm not typing it again, i don't want lawyer ads showing up on here). With your SEO plugin installed, just click the little "?" next to PR and it will tell you that sites Page Rank. Page one is loaded with PR 5 and 6 pages, too high for a newb like myself to mess with. For right now, all you need to know is the higher the PR, the harder it will be for you to overtake them in the SERPS. I'm sticking to PR 0-2 for right now, I want to get results from my work.

So far we have seen two extremes, a useless keyword and one with some pretty stiff competition.  Now it is up to you to find a happy medium.  Since I am still in the learning stage like most of you, I set my standards pretty low.  If a word or phrase has an estimated CPC of $1 and a minimum search of 1K, then I'll consider trying to rank for it.  The main reason for such low numbers is to see some results.  Even though I made just over $17 for September of 09, those are results.  Seeing concrete results that this can actually work is important to keep me going.

There are tons of niches out there that should not be hard to rank for. All my earnings came from one Hub last month, and as of this morning it is only rank 8 on page 1 of Google. Before you going running off to find your next million dollar keyword in the keyword tool, take a look at your current Hubs. Are there any of them that are already published that are potential money makers? Tweak the copy a bit if you have to, then work on getting them ranked.

If not, then start doing some research. Here are some ideas to help you find your next niche:

• what do you do for work
• where do you live
• hobbies (sports, crafts, scrap booking)
• TV, Movies, Books
• where have you gone on vacation
• what season is it
• "how to"s seem to be popular
  

In addition to that, just pay attention. What do you see being advertised on tv, in magazines, on the radio, on billboards. People advertise because it is profitable to do so.