Writing for Your Wealth

Though I’m interested in all sorts of ways to build assets and earn money from words (and I’m sure you are too), displaying Adsense on my sites has been my biggest earner over the years. I could actually make a living from my Adsense revenue alone. Thus I’m sure you’ll get more than your share of how-to-do-well-with-Adsense posts around here. In fact, the title does not lie–you’re reading one right now!

A few weeks back, I mentioned that Google Adsense is a great way to start making money online if you enjoy writing. The more content you can create, the greater your potential to earn.

If you’ve already tried the program and had mediocre results, you might be folding your arms across your chest and saying, “Oh, really,” about now. Well, read on, because I’m giving you what may be my biggest tip here:

Write about consumer-oriented topics.

The sites that do best with Adsense are the ones tied to consumer products or services. (By the way, don’t worry about the nay-sayers who tell you not to rely solely on Google for your income–if you build up a large authority site that does well with Adsense, there will be all sorts of other ways to monetize it too.)

So, why consumer-oriented topics?

People who get online to search for information on products are in “buy mode” and are already thinking of making a purchase. It’s much more lucrative to target these people than folks who have logged on for entertainment or idle surfing.

Often people in buy mode are looking for reviews or more information to narrow down a choice, or they may have a problem but they’re not yet sure of what product or service could help solve that problem. If you make it your role to help them in the decision making process, not only will they appreciate the information you’ve given them, but they’ll often click on an ad to get to their next point (where they actually make the purchase).

This is because Google works very hard to relate its ads to the text on the page. If you’re writing about hotels in Cancun, odds are good that ads for hotels in Cancun or closely related travel links will show up.

Let’s look at an example of two topics you could choose to cover (and how different of an audience you’ll attract depending on which you choose).

Suppose you’re a sports fan, and you are deciding whether to start a site that covers sports news and results or one that reviews sports gear.

Occasionally people who come to your site looking for news will see an ad that interests them and end up clicking on it, but the people who watch sports probably aren’t in the market for athletic cups, running shoes, bicycles, etc. In fact, they’re not really looking to buy anything–they’re just on your site to satisfy their curiosity on the latest sports scores.

On the other hand, people who come to a site that reviews sports equipment will frequently click on ads since the whole reason they found your site in the first place is because they play sports and they do need athletic cups (they probably need one right away before anything untoward happens again…).

So, in short, articles that revolve around consumer topics get more ad clicks and earn you more money.

This doesn’t mean your whole site has to be focused on products (though it can be), but including product-oriented articles or posts can help overall clicks. And the more people who click, the more you earn.