Lots of people tell you to look for keywords that pay a high cost per click so that you make the most money each time someone clicks on your ads. Seems like a logical strategy… Apart from the fact that it DOESN'T WORK!

The words that have the high cost per click are the super competitive words that you should know by now are not the markets you want to be entering because they are exactly… TOO COMPETITIVE. They pay a high CPC because so many people advertise under them, so you will be unable to get good traffic and unable to make any money.

So what do you do instead of looking for high paying keywords? As we have mentioned previously, you look for keywords that have low competition (search results) and high demand (searches per month). You find NICHE markets.

But for an adsense publisher to be successful there are some other keys to finding good markets besides the competitiveness of the market.

The first thing you need to make sure is that there are actually people advertising under these terms so that Adsense is going to be able to find relevant advertisements to show on your sites. You can do this just by putting the word in google and see if you can see sponsored links. If there are sponsored links, people are advertising.

As a general rule, if you can see 5 or more advertisements in the sponsored links section that DON'T INCLUDE Ebay ads (pay only a few cents a click) then your niche market is suitable. Remember that your adsense block on your site is a block of usually 4 ads so if there aren't more than 5 your site will be effected.

Also, although you don't want to focus on the cost per click of the keyword, it is helpful to know the value of keywords in this niche market. You can do this by finding the overture bid tool online and typing in your word to see the value people are paying to advertise.

Suppose you find 2 niches that have relatively the same ratio of supply and demand, it might be helpful to select the one with the higher bid price to work on first…

As a last note, it is always more helpful to select a market that is less tech savvy and more family, young people, less tech savvy people group. Simply because tech savvy know what are ads and what aren't and are usually more reluctant to click on your adsense ads!

Andrew Hansen