How to target higher paying keywords for Adsense

I just thought to share something that has helped me to increase my adsense earnings over the past months. Again, this is just my experience so please feel free to add your comments.

This realisation came about because I linked my adsense and my analytics during late July. I wished I had done it sooner!

When looking at the data, one thing that really stuck me is the range of payout that I was getting. Some were really low such (0.5>3 dollar range). I began to analyse the data and realise there were root words that can trigger the higher paying ads. I began to use more of these root words and then magic! I began to get the higher ads.

An example:

Normally, I would target something like tummy tuck. The traffic is high and the payout is decent but it was not the highest paying keywords. I then realise by adding roots words such as price + location (imaginary example, NOT REAL), the higher paying ads begin to come. So something like:

tummy tuck cost in London

OR

cheap tummy tuck prices

I noted down all the different root word combination and analyse which combination can yield the highest paying ads. I then use these combinations in my post titles and find that not only do they trigger better paying ads but they are easier to rank as well. This is how my income jumped even though there was little movements in my main keywords.

Result: can you say USD12 click baby : )

http://bit.ly/cvZc6B

I find that this approach works for every niche. I tried it in my furniture niche as well and find that I can raise the average paying click from the typical 0.5-0.8 range to my current 1.2-1.5 range, just by targeting the right root words.

All these targeting will raise your eCPM and makes it easier for you to earn more money without having large amounts of traffic. For example, an eCPM of USD20 will mean that you need 5000 visitors per day to cross the USD100 mark. If your eCPM is USD50, then you will need 2000. What we are doing then is sacrificing more traffic with higher paying traffic.

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How to earn USD500 with Amazon

Another update on my money making or passive income journey. In my last post, I talked about how to find hot niches and have shown my eclipse clothing line. Since that time, my site is now ranked no 2 within a couple of weeks. Unfortunately, this is s dud keyword, meaning that there is little traffic to it. As a result, income from this site is minimal, about USD15 per month. Compared to my new moon site, this eclipse site earns much less and might a sign that the trend of twilight is dying down.

However, I do not regret doing that experiment as I have gained another site for linking in the future,

This couple of months, i am targeting Amazon and have set up a number of sniper Amazon sites. These are smaller site that are laser target to the keywords. I will show you one example, white melamine shelving. The aim is to get a couple of these sites up and you should see USD500 within 3-6 months of work.

The best way to find buying keyowrds for Amazon is to look at hot products in Amazon and then using Google keyword tool to dig deeper into what keywords should you consider. Using this approach, I have found a goldmine of keywords that has large number , and very little competition.

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How to target hot niches

This is an experiment to show you how I target hot niches that can generate you some money in the short run. These types of sites can be set up quickly and are meant to target some short term trends. The good thing about such trend niches is that they typically don't have existing authority sites to compete against, meaning you will have a much easier time to rank for them. This experiment is a demonstration of what Grizzly has been showing us in his American Idol and Blinkweb review posts.

For this experiment, I am going to target a keyword and report its earnings and ranking for about 2 months. We will see how much effort is needed and for what kind of returns can I achieved. In this experiment, I am targeting eclipse clothing line to capitalise on the latest Twilight craze. The site has already been set up and is now ranking on page two to three, depending on where your data centre is. This out of the box ranking can be achieved through the exact domain bonus as well as the non competitiveness of the keyword itself.

As a first step, you need to have a source for finding these hot trend niches. Personally, I often use AOL hot, Amazon Hot New Release as well as all the niche forums that talk about new products and services. I used to visit Google Trends as well but all the other Internet Marketers guys are crawling over that so to be successful, you need to have your own areas to draw ideas from. The best way is to look out for new products in the forums or social networks that you are currently hanging out in. See what things are getting people in your niche excited. This is the perfect keyword to target. Most of these trends will die off but if you can earn some passive money while they are still hot, it is not a big deal. Moreover, some of these trends might turn out to have some lasting power. That is where you really hit the jackpot.

Once you have found these keywords, the next thing is to set up a site optimised for that keyword. If you want to know how to set up an optimised site, here is a basic breakdown:
- keyword in URL
- keyword in blog title
- keyword and related keywords in blog description area
- keyword in post titles

This is how a SEO optimised site will have. However, to really rank well, you need anchored backlinks. This means get backlinks from article directories such as ezine, inforbarrel, hubpages, post your articles etc. All these sites can give you good links. For non competitive keywords, they will be enough to bring your site up. If you need more sources for free backlinks, I will cover that topic in a post scheduled to be published in July.

When targeting keywords, it is always good to target related keywords as well. For example, in the eclipse experiment, my site will also target related words like eclipose fashion line, eclipse clothing, where to buy eclipse clothing line etc. All these longtail keywords will bring you more traffic than just one word. If you want to know more about these anchored keywords, click on the link to read my previous coverage for more information.

Stay tuned for the my update on this experiment. I shall be back in two weeks with income reports and other interesting facts that come up in the experiment.

Btw, this is my last day in US. I have been spending about two weeks touring the western coast with my wife. The good thing about passive income is that while I am on tour, the income doesn't let up and continues to come up. My amazon is also up meaning my authority site experiment is beginning to see some results as well. I will report on that as well once I have more data.

In the meantime, go earn some passive income. It will change your life and your perspective on what is possible : )

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How to find keywords from ezine that brings in traffic

Most of the time, beginners are advised to do keyword search using Google adword tool. While that is a good start, I find that the tool is useless for longtail keyword that beginners should target. What I am currently using now is a different approach.

This is how I do keyword research. It is a variation of the common strategy that IM folksuses. When analysing keyword competition, they look out for an ezine or hubpage or other web 2.0 properties on the first page of the SERP, because that is a strong indication that the keyword is easy to beat. However, this process is tedious and is very dependent on luck. You just need to try a lot of keywords to see which one has the result that contains these Web 2.0 in the first page.

What I do is the reverse. I first analyse which ezine article is already getting lots of views in a short time by using the following search string:

site:ezinearticles.com “This article has been viewed″ “Article Submitted On: * 2010″

The first part allows you to see the no of views directly on the SERP so saving you the trouble of clicking into individual articles. The second part is your niche. The third part will filter the articles according to date.

For me, I look for articles that have been written in the past 3-4 months and see which ones have a couple of hundred views. This tells me that the market has interest in the niche.

Then I look at the post article and try to deduce what are the keywords that the article is ranking for. I then do a search using the keyword that I have deduced. If I see that article in the first page for the keyword, it means that the keyword is easy to rank for.

The reason I look only at the past few months is to take away the age factor. If an article written in April has gather ranking and generate hundreds of views within 1-2 months, it means we can probably achieve the same result by either using an EDN or creating a page on your current site and point several Web 2.0 properties to it.

As an example, this is what I found just 15 minutes ago using the diet niche

http://ezinearticles.com/?1300-Calorie-Diet-Menu-and-Meal-Plan&id=4101617

Submitted on 13 April 2010,
455 Views
Ranking for: 1300 Calories Diet Menu

I have tried this method a couple of times and so far, the results are what I have expected. However, I need to experiment for a longer time to draw any meaningful conclusion. In fact, I have all these data in my spreadsheet. Once I have enough sample, I hope to derive some formula such that I can estimate any monthly traffic based on these few statistics that been mentioned.

If this method works, it will be interesting because I can use the same approach to data mine all article directories like ehow, associated content etc. In fact, with some alterations to the search string, you can identify a lot of big seasonal money makers : )

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How to create an authority site for passive income

This a long post about how to go about creating an authority site. It comes from an email that I have sent to my 'students' learning how to do internet marketing. I thought it would be useful to produce that here:

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As you guys know, Google undertook some serious cleanup for the past few weeks. I have already told you guys how to position your blogs to be sustainable in the long run. I am going to summarise this in this email as well as to rant a bit of other stuff, so do stay with me for a while.

One of the thing about making money online is about commitment. It is all about doing CONSISTENT work for the first few months before seeing any results but they will come. To show you evidence, here are the adsense earning trends of my fellow marketers. As you noticed, the shape is all the same although the amount earned can be different i.e. a flat line for the first few months and a sudden jump in earnings. This is because age plays an important factor in the ranking. All the good work done in the first few months is just to convince Google that your site is genuine. Once Google trust, they will suddenly release your content into the SERP, resulting in a jump in your traffic and money.

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http://i.imgur.com/vamrv.jpg

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http://twitpic.com/1hz8qk

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Hopefully, these will help you set the right expectations. Nothing good in this world comes easily and it is the same with passive income. You need to put in the work first before seeing any result. I had quite a number of ‘students’ in the past and 95 % of them failed because they didn’t really commit. Sure, verbally they will say they are ‘in’ but action wise, you know they are not committed. By commitment, I mean do mean commitment. The kind shown by sportsman who want to win medals, who trains everyday rain or shine. That is commitment. Not the type where “oh, I need to go out with my friends today; oh, I need to do XXX”. All these are excuses.

One way to commit is to set targets. A lot of my students didn’t. They work as and when they like and whenever I gave them a push. So for you guys to really succeed like me, you need concrete targets. These targets should not be in the form of earnings or rankings or traffic, they should be in terms of work. More specifically, they should be in the form of articles produced per day, per week or per month.

You might say this is easy for me as I have been through this already. Fair comment. So, to work along with you guys, I am setting myself a new challenge and target. For the next 2 months, I am going to master Amazon. Currently, my Amazon earnings are pitiful as they range from 20 cents to 20 dollars a month. I don’t know how to do this properly but I am going to take these 2 months to try. For this experiment, I going to use 2 new sites and create content on them that targets the grilling and toy niches respectively. My target is terms of workload for May and June is this:

- 50 articles on 1 site with each article focusing on reviewing one specific model and brand

- 50 backlinks to each article

That means a total of 200 article within 2 months. I am going to throw these out and see what happens in July. In the meantime, I will not check my stats or ranking or traffic. The only thing I will be checking is the work I have done.

I hope you can commit yourself to some target along with me. I suggest you focus on one site and create 100 articles for it within these 2 months: 50 to be posted on your site and 50 to be used for backlinks. 100 articles within 2 months means an average of 1.6 articles per day, very doable if you commit.

Guys, this is a great time to start. A new month is coming and that is good to start something new. With the Amazon experiment, I am now on the same footing as you. I will be working on the new site as well and I am will figuring out how to do things. If I can try something new, I am sure you guys can. Remember, I am still be doing work on my Adsense sites even when doing this experiment so my personal workload will be much much heavier.

Ok, as a recap on how to create an authority site, here are the basic things you need to be aware of:

1) Pick a wider niche that obeys the same principles:

a.Competition: PR3s and below in the Google search result page. PR4 is ok if the main keyword didn’t appear in the heading of the search result


b.Potential: I would recommend more than 500USD to worth the effort, even 1,000USD.

Notice that I didn’t say pick keywords, I say pick a niche. A niche can have lots of keywords. When calculating the potential of a niche, you need to sum up all the profit potential of all the keywords within the niche. For example, if I am picking the niche “ rain boots”, I would sum the profit potential of not only the keyword “rain boots” but for all related keywords such as “women rain boots”, “rain boots for kids”, “red rain boots” etc. So, a keyword itself might not give you 500USD but the summation of all the related keywords in a niche can easily hit that target.


2) Write 50 articles for your site:


a. Each article should target a long tail. I have sent you guys some info about how to do that yesterday. Read that again to understand what is long tail keywords. In the beginning, your site will only attract long tail keyword searches and the more you have, the more traffic you will gain in the short run. Once you are ranking of many long tail keywords, your main keyword will start to appear.


b. Your long tail keyword must appear in the article title. However, do not make it spammy by including just the long tail keyword. In the past you can do that but with the new changes, you will want a post title that appears natural and yet contains your keyword. For example, if you are targeting ‘yellow rain boots’ in an article, you should use titles like “best looking yellow rain boots”, “where to find the cheapest yellow rain boots” etc.

3) Write another 50 articles for backlinks:

a. Nothing much to say except that each article should target the backlink to one of your articles that you have written for your site. The good thing is I have a backlink resource you guys can use. When I started by myself, I need to literally beg for these backlink resources.

4) Enforce what Google already recognizes you for:

a. By the third or fourth week, you should start to see some traffic if you have been diligent and have put up more than 15 articles in your site. Use analytics software like StatCounter to monitor what keywords are bringing you these traffic. For example, you might find that ‘green rain boots’ is giving you traffic even though your article was about ‘yellow rain boots’. You just happen to mention the word ‘green’ in the article and got ranked because of that. If the traffic is good for this keyword, you might want to write a new article that just targets ‘green rain boots’.

If you finish these within 2 months, I can safely say you will have your first click by July. However, the full effects will come only in September or even October when the site has aged and there will be a sudden jump in your earnings. If you do have your first click in July, I think that will motivate you enough to continue what you are doing and you should have a good passive stream in the future. The tough part is always the beginning.

So, how badly do you want this? Take a moment and think for yourself. If you are not willing to do the work above, I suggest you stop now. Seriously. No point wasting your time as you wouldn’t get anywhere with half hearted attempts anyway. I have seen this happen to my old students so many times so I don’t want it to happen to you.

Are you in or out?

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Buying keywords for beginners

I have not updated this blog because I am been working hard at building my niche blogs and making money. It has been a very rewarding experience to apply all the SEO tips that I have learned to make a real living. However, this is not instant wealth. Don't expect to create one blog and expect to quit your job. It wouldn't happen that way. Making money online using niche blogs is a long process. Give yourself a year and tw0(plus constant hard work) and you will have a passive income stream that can then allow you to quit your job and do what you really.

A year or two of hardwork is not actually that long. Most of us have worked for 5 years or more and we are still stuck in the same 9-5 working conditions. However, we don't complain about working for 5 years. Relative to that, 1-2 years is nothing because the rewards at the end of the day is so much richer. My plan is to have enough passive income to travel the world for almost everyday of my life. Because I can work anywhere with my niche blogs, I can practically work from any country. Even if I don't work at all, it will be ok because I have the passive income coming in. That is my end goal and that is why I am motivated to do this.

When you first start out as I have, the beginning is always the most difficult. The income you get is so small that you will think whether this is worth it. My first month adsense earning is only $15. Well, that wouldn't get anybody excited and this is why most people will fail. They can't see the long term potential of that USD$15. My second month is around USD$50. Again, not exciting but the growth is there. I break theUSD $100 mark in my third month and things got really interesting. I am now at the 6th month and I am on track to break the USD$1000 a month mark. That is my aim for this year and to break the USD$5000 a month by next year. Based on my current progress, this is certainty doable if you put enough hard work into it.

Making money using adsense is not rocket science. You just need to

(i) select good keywords which can produce profits,
(ii) create keyword relevant content on free platforms such as Blogspot, Blogetery, Blogpico or your own self hosted blogs, and
(iii) the most important part, getting anchored backlinks to your site using a variety of varied phases relating to your keywords.

If you do the above, your site will be ranked on the first page of Google and you will received targeted traffic that will click on your adsense because they are relevant to the searcher. Once that happens, you make money.

However, getting the anchored backlinks is the most difficult because as a beginner, we don't have a lot of resources to place our links. Therefore, we need to think of out the box and figure out niches that our site can get to the top page without that many backlinks. To do that, I have 2 tips for you.

The first is to buy domains containing the exact keyword phase. Domains carry quite a bit of SEO juice so they can rank out of the box if the competition is not strong. If you select keywords that are typically three letter long and the result pages in Google showing 100,000 or less, the chances of that domain ranking for its keyword is very high. This is my current strategy and I am using it to create 100 micro sites. I called this my microsite challenge and I intend to finish it by end of May. With 100 microsites making roughly $10-$40 per month, you are looking at USD$1000-USD$4000 a month, a full time income right there.

I will detailing this challenge in my future posts. So far, the learnings have been great from creating these sites and I can't wait to share them here.

The second tip is to look for keywords that have no authority sites for them. What are authority sites? These are sites that Google trust and you will find that there will be 1-2 for these for any 2 word common keywords. Take window blinds for example. There will be ecommerce store selling blinds that have around since 2000 and these site, due to the age, will have a lot of trust in Google's eyes. Trying to outrank them is possible if they don't have a lot of anchored backlinks but it will take a while and most beginners don't have patience or confidence for this.

The tip is then is to look for new keywords that have no authority sites. Where to find them? Look for trends and events. One good example is movies. There are always new movies so the title of the movies are new keywords that have no authority sites. A personal example is New Moon. This is the title for the second saga for the popular Twilight series. This word is new and there were no authority for it. I created a blog around a merchandise item around New Moon and got ranked on the first page within 3 weeks with only 3 backlinks. This 2 post blog made me a few hundred dollars a month during Nov and Dec.

While the earnings have tailored off, it still gets a constant traffic. Even if the earnings stopped, so wait., I have earned the money and I now have a blog ranking on page one of Google for its keyword that I can use for backlinking.

So, look for trends and spot keywords because they are easy to rank for beginners. However, do try to pick out buying keywords. Going back to the Twilight example. Ranking for something New Moon trailer might get you lots of traffic but the clicks will have low paying ads because the searchers do not really want to buy anything. When going back such niches, think of the product side. What kind of merchandise will fans of the movies looking for. These product related keywords are definitely buying keywords and will tend to have more clicks and higher paying ads.

If we continue the movie example, I will then look for what will be the hottest say, kids animation movies for 2010. I will do a little research to see which one of these titles have an existing fan base and will then select my keywords accordingly. For kids animation, things like coloring book, songtrack, toys, action figures etc are good buying keywords that you can tag below the name of the movie like this example: diary of a wimpy kid coloring book, or how to train your dragon toys.

Of course, besides movies, there are other types of niches that has new keywords with no authority. Look out for new product launches. Products can be in home applicanes like the new bladeless electric fan or they can be services like new type of cosmestic surgery. All these type of niches are easy to rank for. Of course, some will turn out to be duds but if you build on free blogspots, where is the cost?

I hope this post on selecting buying keywords for beginners has been useful.

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How to select good keywords for niche blogs

To make money online, there is two main things you need to do: picking good keywords and using keyword anchored links to get your site rank high in Google. This is as basic as it gets and anybody that follows this strategy will be able to make money within 2 months.

As an illustration, let me show you a niche of mine that I started in November. Using the tip to get index fast, I manage to get the blog to be indexed within 1 day. After which, it is a matter of selecting long tail keywords that are contains your main keyword and getting them ranked by using keyword anchored backlinks. Because I was able to rank for long tails, traffic begin to come in after one week. I slapped on Adsense after 2 weeks and in the month of November, this is my income for this new blog.













Earning around $5 is no big deal. What I did then was to look at the keywords that were bringing me traffic. I then create a post that targets each of the long tail keyword and build a couple of backlinks to each post. After a month, these long tail keywords begin to rank and my traffic increase. As a result, my income for December for this blog increase as well.














The best thing about this niche is the CTR. I got around 20% , meaning out of every 10 visitors, 2 would click on an ad. The price of the ad is also high, ranging from 80 cents to over a dollar. I will definitely break the $15 a month while my main keywords is not even on page one on Google yet. I can imagine that if my main keyword goes on to page one, my income for this blog will across a hundred bucks a month. Not bad for a free hosted blog.

$15 a month of course is not something to brag about. However imagine if I multiple this blog by 100 or 200. That would bring me about $1500 to $3000 per month of passive income. That, my friend, is what making money online is all about. You pick niches that you can rank given your current resources and you duplicate your success by 100 or 200 blogs.

So, what kind of keywords are good for beginners? This is my general guideline. I pick buying keywords. These keywords contain buying intentions such as affordable, cheap, inexpensive. They signal a strong buying intend from the searcher. Next, I choose ncihes that don't have much competition. I pick niches that have less than 100,000 competing sites. I also look out for niches that have lots of ezine articles or other article directories in the top 10 results. This means you can easily take the page one position with a few anchored backlinks.

When I say anchored backlinks, I doesn't mean links from commenting or bookmarking. I mean links that are found within the content of an relevant article. This is the best form of backlinks and is the hardest to get. As a beginner, if you pick a low competition keyword, you can do the following:

- set up a few hosted blogs on blogger, wordpress, typepad, squidoo that are long tails of your your niche. Make sure they are indexed and then point a link back to your main site
- submit a few articles to high PR article directories such as Ezine, Info barrel, Hub pages etc again point a few links back to your site.

Make sure you vary your anchor text. For example, if you are trying to rank for the keyword: used electric wheelchairs, you should embed the following as your long tail keyword:
- where to buy used electric wheelchair
- used electric wheelchair under $500
- acorn used electric wheelstair

These will ensure that your long tails will start to rank and you will see long tail traffic coming in. From my experience, it is almost impossible to rank for your main keyword. It is the long tail keywords that will bring in traffic first. Also, ranking well for your long tails will help your main keywords to rank if your long tail contains your main keyword.

In summary, to make money online, you need to pick buying keywords for niches that have low competition. Then, source for some anchored backlinks using means that any beginner can get. Within a few weeks, you can start to see income coming in.

This is all I have for how to select good keywords for niche blogs.

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