Earn Money with Google Adwords in Just 30 Minutes

By Michael Paladin

The problem with Google AdWords is that it has become very difficult to find keywords at a reasonable price. Bidding on keywords like “make money online” or something in that range will kill your advertising budget in no time. When you're just starting out, you have to find a niche that you can afford.

How do you find those profitable, but cheap niches? First, download the free keyword search tool Good Keywords. You can go to Search Engine Watch's "Most Popular Keywords" page to get keyword ideas, or you can use your own knowledge of what people are interested in to check out keywords. For example, prom season is coming up as I write this, and Good Keywords says that there have been 536,354 searches for the keyword "prom dress." The Google Adwords Keyword Tool (you have to sign into your Google account to use it) says this keyword will cost only $.26 for the top spot. Linkshare has an affiliate program called “Prom Girl”. The rest is an easy match.

Here are a couple of other examples. I've seen lots of e-books selling recipes advertised online, and I'm sure some of them have an affiliate program. The keyword “recipes” has 254,904 searches and the cost per click is $.21. The other day I saw a magazine called N, published by the Naturist Society, on the magazine rack at the bookstore. The keyword “naturist” has 125,920 searches, and the cost per click is $.12. A search on Google brings up an affiliate program called eNaturist with an affiliate program that pays $20 for each new signup.These are just three niches where the keywords are not that expensive. Use a keyword list or your imagination, and you can find many more.

How do you decide what keywords can make you money? Until you have loads of experience, here are a couple of guidelines to follow. Look for a cost per click of one cent or less per ten thousand searches. You can see that the keyword "prom dress" is an excellent value with a cost per click of $.26 for 536,354 searches. One other guideline I follow is to compare the cost per click to the commission. Take your affiliate commission and move the decimal point to the left two places. For the eNaturist affiliate program, that gives us $.20. If your cost per click is less than this figure, which for the keyword "naturist" it is, you have a good chance of making money.

A word of caution though: when you are running campaigns with keywords that get 100,000 or more searches, remember to set a daily spending limit and keep a close eye on your campaign. You can always increase your daily spending limit later after you see that your ad is working, and the money is starting to roll in.