If you want to make money online by writing content or making a niche website, it is imperative that you focus on keywords that pay well for each ad click from Google Adsense. Granted this is only the first step in many, but it is one that if you don’t get right will prevent you from earning much of anything on the web. You can have massive amounts of traffic but still not earn anything, or you can have relatively modest levels of traffic and still make hundreds or even thousands of dollars per month. So, what do I do to find high CPC keywords?

The first thing I do is go to the search engine Google. There I type in the search term “high CPC keywords”. This leads to several articles and blog posts which lists high paying CPC keywords. Click on each one and see what information you can gather and glean from the posts. Some of the articles are fairly old (including one from 1990!?). But, looking over the information, I think you can develop a few general themes and patterns.

Note: Be sure to check out my newest Hub which lists 7 high CPC keyword categories.

If you look over the high CPC keywords, you will notice many related to professional services such as legal advice, financial services, or internet services.  Why is this?  These are products and service that can lead to ongoing relationships or huge profits.  It only takes one client with the right lawsuit to make millions in a legal settlement for a law firm.  It is worth it to the law firm to pay $20 per click to find that one client with the multi-million dollar complaint.  The same goes for financial services like home mortgages.  The amount of money that the financial firm will make over the term of the loan is vastly greater than the cost to acquire the client.  So, to find those high CPC keywords, think of products and services that cost a fair amount of money or will lead to high profits for the provider.

Sometimes people want information about certain subjects that mean a lot to them.  This typically includes making money and health related topics.  These are very important subjects to many, many people and advertisers know this.  The advertisers usually have an associated product to sell so they are looking for searchers of information who might have a problem that can be solved with this particular product.  You can use this information to review that particular topic or some of the products themselves with an article or at your own niche website.  Those ads will then appear by your content.

Once you think you have several ideas for high paying keywords, go to the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, insert the keyword or keyword phrase and verify your suspicions.  You will want to make sure to include the “show estimated avg. CPC” in the drop down menu so that you can see what advertisers are willing to pay for each ad click next to your valuable content.  Also, be sure to look down to the bottom of the search results for “additional keywords to consider.”  I can’t tell you how many times I have gotten a great idea for a keyword by looking in that area.  Then you can type that into the box and get keyword ideas for that word leading to additional words and on and on.  Before you know it, you will have more words than you will have available time to write.