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ronburk - 6:49 pm on Apr 10, 2006 (gmt 0)
Topics with no Advertisers Hard to make money when there's no money to be had. But this takes some research. You could Google for "widgets" and see 0 AdSense ads (or only generic ads beside the resulting SERPs, and then conclude that there's no advertisers for "widgets". In fact, it might be the case that "widgets" is too popular and generic for advertisers to get a decent CTR rate on. It might turn out that there are still lots of advertisers for "widget repair", "widget training", and the like. One solution is to search for competing sites on the desired topic and study their AdSense ad inventory. Lots of relevant advertisers? Ads showing up all day long, even in the wee hours of the morning? Of course, only looking at competitors will preclude you from finding a sweet topic where there are no competitors. So that puts you back at the Google SERPs, poking around different keywords related to your topic, looking for where the ad money is being spent. Too Much Competition Who cares if there's lots of advertisers if you'll never rank for any worthwhile terms and get the free SE traffic? Too much competition can make a great AdSense topic lousy -- for you. As usual, the actual equation here is complex.
topics that flat-out don't do well with adsense.
Example: I can't rank well for "earthquake insurance", but I can rank well for "moving to Sacramento". So, my landing pages for terms related to "moving to Sacramento" don't display AdSense ads -- instead, they display an "in-house ad" that says "Pros and cons of earthquake insurance", which takes visitors to an article that will display AdSense ads for the money term that I could not rank well for myself. In general, if there's a lot of money being spent, then there's probably a way to beat the problem of too much competition -- if you're clever and willing to settle for a fraction of what the big boys are getting. Topics You Can't Make/Buy Content For It's getting tougher all the time to make AdSense money without delivering something of value. So if it's a topic you can't build, buy, or steal plausible content for, it's going to be a bad bet. Topics that are Nevergreen AdSensers generally hope for "evergreen" content -- pages that you can write once, put up, and then reap an income from for years with no changes. The opposite end of that spectrum is "nevergreen" content -- stuff that requires constant updating and research to be useful to visitors. Want to target your favorite pop star? Then you may have to constantly revise past material. Childless? Not anymore. Just out of rehab? That was 6 months ago. This partly depends on traffic's sensitivity to "freshness". People searching for a pop star's name are likely doing so because of something that just happened. This is another case where a drawback can be turned into an advantage. Can you highly automate "nevergreen" content production so that you can do it with less time investment than any of your competitors? If so, then maybe you've found your niche.