Some think there is one, best, way to make money off Adsense. Use sites with articles or reviews which are very well-targeted to the ads. This is not the only way.
You don't have to target high paying ads. In fact, don't target ads at all. Focus on traffic-generating keywords, with pages able to get good search engine rankings. Google will targets ads to the content (usually to what the content is about).
Get a general idea of what advertisers are paying. However, there are other factors in play.
Adsense, Step-by-Step.
Here is a breakdown of what to look for:
How many times has the main keyword, your site is based on, been searched.
Forget how much they are paying right now.
Look at how many variations of this keyword there are (e.g. blue widgets). Plug this into a keyword suggestion tool, first. Write down any relevant variations and # of searches.
Next, do each word seperately (blue first - then widgets). Write down the variations and # of searches from those results.
If any others catch your eyes, for future use, write them down on a seperate piece of paper. Go through the variations and do the same. A word processor or spreadsheet works best.
Go through all the keywords most general to the subject.
Use those best-suited as a theme. Look for themes with very good supporting keyword phrases. Select those using one or more terms in your main theme.
Look at the amount advertisers are paying per click, for your main keyword themes.
Write the prices down (this is just to give you an idea).
Go to google.
See how many ads there are and their quality. Note how demanding they are to a potential searcher/visitor (this is just to get an idea).
Make a ranking system, 1-5 or 1-10. Write it down next to the keyword theme.
Look for affiliate opportunities as a backup.
Look at various search engine results (google, yahoo, msn).
Pay attention to the top 6, #10 and #11. Visit these sites (or use a keyword extractor). Find out what they are targeting.
If there are words or phrases not on your list, write them down to look into later.
While you are visiting these sites, ask some questions.
Are these sites heavily SEO'd? Are they branded? How long have they been on the internet? How many backlinks do they have? How many pages of content do they have, around the theme you are looking to build a site around? How many sites link to them? What is the quality of that info? Is there anything they are forgetting, or not targeting? Can I beat this site, or will it take a lot of effort to do so?
Have a little ranking system based on the answers you find.
Go through the results up to 100.
Some think this is the most important step. Look at the title/URL/snippets of the listings. What you are looking for is where the results start to break up and become crappy.
Eventually, pages become less professional and not very targeted. Sites only offer a page or two on the subject. Pages are not targeted to their theme. Keywords are less frequent in the title url and snippet.
Write down the number when you start seeing this and when they become total crap. This gives you a range where (worst-case) a new page ranks, with little effort.
If you cannot find a break, don't discard the keyword. Go to the next and repeat.
Look at the the site, at the position where the break starts.
Visit it. See if you feel you have a better page. Beat them out with little effort and SEO (be careful, they may be over SEO'd).
Note their site structure (just repeat the questions from step 8). Go up 5 or 10 positions from there, and ask again. When you feel it takes effort, take note and go up 2-5 and ask again. Take note of how high you go until you first have to put in a lot of effort.
This gives you a good idea where you, more than likely, land in the results. This is immediately, or in the first few months. The higher you get, before it takes a lot of effort, the better.
Go through your keywords and go one level down.
These are topic areas of your theme. Repeat above steps.
When you analyze the search engine rankings, take note of sites already visited. Also, take note of any niche sites, with main themes, for those topic areas. Sometimes these are hard to overtake immediately.
After repeating, you now have a HUGE list of keywords.
These keywords give you ideas ranging from general to topic. Now you have subtopic keywords relating to both topic and theme.
Build your content around the subtopics (sub-topics). Create around 4-5 articles on each subtopic.
Don't worry about bids, search engines, or anything with these subtopics. These tend to be fairly easy to rank, without heavy SEO. Just wait, and tweak later.
These tend to generate A LOT of traffic. This is because of how many subtopics you have, to generate new information. If they don't rank, you still get to benefit your topics and overall theme.
Compare your reasearch.
Decide if it is worth the effort to continue.
Conclusion.
These are 13 steps to building a profitable website, using adsense.