How to Pick an AdSense Topic

Questions to Help You Figure Out Your Online Niche
 

If you’re trying to think of a topic for an AdSense website, you’ve probably read this good advice already. In case you haven’t, I’ll summarize.

If you want to build a website you can be proud of that consistently makes money from Google AdSense, it should be about a topic that interests you (and that has the potential to attract visitors). It should interest you because you’ll be spending a lot of time maintaining your site. It should interest you because your site will be up for a long time. It should interest you because you’ll need to keep your content captivating for repeat visitors. The topic should also be hyper-focused for all the good reasons AdSense experts say it should be.

If you’re having trouble figuring out what YOUR online niche could be, read through these questions to see if any of them jog your brain into a great idea. Spend some quiet time brainstorming with pen and paper. Once you have a list, no matter the size, use a keyword research tool to get more ideas, to help you narrow down your topic, and to pick popular keywords in your niche. Sign up for and complete this free course about profitable niche discovery to help you do that. (It’s not my course—I just highly recommend the guy’s work.)

A. Questions to Jumpstart Your Website Ideas

 

Obvious Indicators of Your Interests

• What do you spend a lot of time doing? Or would rather spend a lot of time doing?
• If you have bumper stickers, what do they reflect about your thoughts, values, etc.?
• If you could get a personalized newspaper, which sections would be in it?
• Why do you love the TV shows that you love?
• What do you volunteer for? Or would if you had time?
• If you could make a lot of money doing whatever you wanted, what would you do for a living?
• Your religion or spiritual life
• What’s on your list of things to do before you die?
• What do you find so fascinating about your field of study?
• Which Web pages do you have bookmarked? Which make up the largest folder?
• Which books sitting on your bookshelf did you love?
• Which books are on your “to read” list?

More Questions

• What have you spent a lot of time researching before purchasing?
• What are you considering buying that you’ll want to research?
• What products in your home do you love? What products do you tell your friends about?
• What about the latest technological gadgets is confusing? (A lot of other people will be confused, too)
• What in current events catches your interest?
• What have you seen on Oprah that stuck with you?
• What have you searched for online that you couldn’t find?
• What human rights abuse issue makes you so mad?
• What do you know professionally? You could address a site about your professional interests either to your colleagues or to lay people.
• If you were to go back to college, what would you study?
• What did you always think you would do with your life when you were younger?
• What goals do you have for your children? The answers to this question will show you what you think is important to do and know, and you could work that into a topic. Another topic could be how a parent can bring to fruition in a child’s life what the parent thinks is important (e.g., bilingualism).
• What do you want to improve about yourself? Could others benefit from your past, present, or future journey by learning what you’ve done?
• If you could start a support group of people like you, what would you all have in common?
• What life experiences make you unique?
• What do you wish you could change in other people’s lives?
• What on the news makes you so mad?
• What do you think you spend too much money on?
• What do you think you should be paying attention to in life, but you keep saying, “I don't have time.”? As you learn about something for yourself, you can keep a website about the topic so others can learn from you.
• What problem are you struggling with at work? Or personally?
• What problem have you solved for others?
• What have you done in the past that you’d like to start doing again?
• What philanthropic interests move you most?
• What have you always thought you’d like doing?
• What riveting topics have you heard on your favorite radio shows?
• How can you make your profession interesting to the non-interested?
• What fascinates you?
• What class(es) did you take in high school or college just for fun?
• What negative stereotypes do you have that you could tackle to improve your knowledge and understanding?

Minority Status

Is there something about you that makes you a minority in your community? Potential websites could focus on educating others about your minority community or it could focus on bringing together resources for people in your minority community (or both).

Collectibles

Possible topics include:

• Specialized knowledge about what you collect
• What to look for regarding your collectibles’ worth
• How you go about finding your collectibles (e.g., garage sales, eBay, antique stores)
• Insider tips you’ve learned while shopping on eBay, at estate sales, etc.

Hobbies

Possible topics include:

• How to get started in your hobby
• Cost-cutting measures you’ve learned on-the-job
• Advanced hobby knowledge and skills
• Stories about the most skilled people in the field
• What’s so fascinating about your hobby?
• What do non-enthusiasts most want to learn about your hobby?

Magazines

• Which magazines do you read regularly? Why do you like them and what is their content?
• Which magazines do you really NOT like?
• Which column could you write better?
• What topics never seem to be covered?

B. Kinds of AdSense Web Sites

If you sell products on your website for your business, you may not want AdSense ads on the pages luring away potential buyers. AdSense ads work well on informational sites. The idea is that people will come to your site to read all your good information, and if they see an ad that gets their attention and click, you make money as a bonus. (Sometimes that “bonus” is big enough to significantly pay down debt or to support yourself which is why there are thousands of people telling you how to make money with AdSense—you really can earn a lot of money from it.) Along with your topic, you will need to decide in which format your informational site will be. Following are some examples:

Directories

Collect a bunch of related links and organize them in a useful way. Also find a way to integrate actual words (e.g., blurbs, articles, summaries) into the directory. When I contacted Google about getting more relevant ads on my directory site, the advice was to put more sentences on my site. Because my site was a directory, I had a lot of headings, subheadings, single words, and links, but not too many sentences. The AdSense team stressed that the sentences be written in human-friendly form, not keyword-laden form. An example of a weird keyword-laden sentence would be the following:

My favorite AdSense author’s newest book about AdSense is Uncommon AdSense. This AdSense book is a comprehensive set of AdSense tips, techniques, and strategies to maximize your AdSense earnings. Uncommon AdSense is available for immediate download from ClickBank for only $47.

A human-friendly way to say this is the following:

Uncommon AdSense: My favorite AdSense author’s newest book. It’s a comprehensive set of tips, techniques, and strategies to maximize your AdSense earnings. Available for immediate download from ClickBank for only $47.

Online Magazines

What can I say about online magazines that isn’t self-explanatory? They are the perfect place to run ads. Take a look at an online magazine to see all the cool things a site like this can have (e.g., Jen Magazine).

Blogs

Blogs are websites, too. If you like to write and have a burning desire to get your opinion out there, you could start a blog and run AdSense ads on it. There are loads of resources on the Web telling you how to make money from a blog. I like Eric Giguere’s series of blog posts about using AdSense-ready WordPress.

Reviews

Do you love reading product reviews before you buy something? If you can find an underserved product or family of products, you can make a site that provides product reviews. It doesn’t even have to be a product that you review (or provide the framework so others can review). You can review websites in a niche, work-from-home jobs, and brick-and-mortar stores to name a few. I’m sure you can think of other non-product things to review.

“How To”

“How to” sites are also perfect for AdSense ads. What do you know how to do? Tell others on your website. This kind of site is also the perfect place to promote affiliate products related to your how-to topic. For example, on this website, I help you jumpstart your creative thinking about a website topic, and at the bottom of the page, I tell you about e-books I’ve read that have helped my AdSense earnings immensely.

Self-Help

Are you particularly skilled in some aspect of self-help? If you are, it would probably make a great topic. If you are not and you want to embark on a journey to improve something about yourself, you can document your journey to help others interested in the same journey.

C. Keyword Research

If you haven’t read anywhere yet about using keyword research tools, take note here. You’ll help yourself out a lot by using a keyword research tool to find out exactly what words people are searching with regarding your topic. Keyword research is a part of search engine optimization (SEO). Regarding SEO, the idea is to write about the topic of your site with the same words that people are using in search engines so that there is a greater chance of them finding your site. Keyword research tools can also help you with choosing a topic by giving you related ideas you hadn’t thought of. Try one out once, and you’ll see what I mean. WordTracker has a free trial you can use. Also sign up for and complete this free course about profitable niche discovery.

D. AdSense Resources

Be sure to check out the following AdSense resources as well if you haven’t already:

• : The place to sign up for an AdSense account after your Web site is up.
• Uncommon AdSense: My favorite AdSense author’s newest book. It’s a comprehensive set of tips, techniques, and strategies to maximize your AdSense earnings. Available for immediate download from ClickBank for only $47.
• MEMWG is an award-nominated AdSense blog, also from my favorite AdSense author, Eric Giguere. He posts news, case studies, tips, and other useful AdSense-related information almost daily on his blog. Add it to your list of must-reads right now!
• AdSense Secrets 4 ebook: The breakthrough 4th edition of Joel Comm’s hugely successful AdSense manual “What Google Never Told You About Making Money with AdSense.” More than 200 pages of new content to help you grab every AdSense dollar you can possibly get!
• Make Easy Money with Google: Using the AdSense Advertising Program: If you’re an absolute beginner on the Web and want to earn money with AdSense, read this real, paperback book! It’s written just for you—a gentle introduction to building money-making websites and blogs using Google’s AdSense program. This is the book I refer to Web-novice friends and acquaintances who get interested when I tell them how I make money online.
• Play The AdSense Game!

 

This page is based on the Single-Page AdSense Template developed by Eric Giguere, author of the Uncommon AdSense book and the award-nominated blog Make Easy Money with Google and AdSense.