Planning to start new sites that pay better

how to find good topics

[sallam]

Greetings

I run a forum about a topic that doesn't pay good.
But I'm out of work, so I need to put adsense to better use to support my family.
So, I plan to spend time now to start a few new sites, and I did not decide yet on which topics to choose. I don't know much so I need your help in:

- what tools do you guys use to know which topics or keywords get the most searches?
- what tools do you use to know which of those keywords get higher CPC
- what form is more successful, adsense-wise: is it blogs? forums? static websites?
- what tools or software you find the simplest to build your sites with?

I'm interested in what you can advise me, out of your experience. There are amazing members here who run tens or even hundreds of websites, and I'm sure their tips will be most valuable.

Many thanks in advance.

[sallam]

anyone please?

[ganderla]

Here is a basic run down of how I build sites.

1. I come up with a topic
2. I have a freelance person build me a 75-100 word keyword list.
3. I send the words to my writer
4. I pay a designer to design the site.
5. My mother-in-law proof reads the articles.
6. I copy and paste the articles in the design.
7. I start with 20 articles and add 2-3 a week.

I just did about 60 minutes of real work and spent well under $500 total and I now have a seriously fantastic content site that will last a lifetime. ROI is well under a year.

I would not worry about paying better or what get searched for. If you have a good site with good content, people come, click on your ads, convert with the advertiser, you get paid well.

[kkibak]

Thanks ganderla for the great reply.

I was wondering, what do you think is a standard/fair price to pay per article? And also, how important do you think quality is (as I realize this will effect the cost)?

My dilemna is I have the tough choice of deciding whether to outsource the article writing to someone in India where it's dirt cheap, or paying a local college student who is a much better writer quite a bit more.

If you could use some numbers in your reply it would be really helpful.

thanks,
kkibak

[kkibak]

To get things started, is $4.50 per article (appx $9.00 per hour) too much to pay for a decent ROI?

[jdvjdv]

I have personally had trouble finding a good writer (good is by my personal standards which are the result of a mother who teaches english..) for less than 12 dollars per 500/600 words.

I have experimented with a lady who writes for 6 dollars an article and it is not worth it thanks to the additional time it takes for me to edit her mistakes.

[anton23]

My dilemna is I have the tough choice of deciding whether to outsource the article writing to someone in India where it's dirt cheap, or paying a local college student who is a much better writer quite a bit more.

Cheap writers (scrapers) can screw up your site. I think an article for 2c/words provides me a decent ROI.

[futuresky]

Are there a lot of people out there who are willng to do decent unique sole-use articles at the rate of 12 dollars or a bit more, say up to to 15 or 20 20dollars per 500/600 words (and if so, can I humbly ask where to find them)? That's around the type of amount I'd willingly pay but can't find many articles at that price.

Back to the original question

1. Overture's inventory
2. Usually none although I've sometimes (rarely) looked at google adwords to get some kind of idea. I'm currently trying to concentrate on writing a base of pages on topics I've got some interest in
3. Forums are awful for income adsense-wise as far as my experience (I've currently removed adsense from my forum as it was getting so little). Haven't done a blog yet.
4. Mostly hand-written html in wordpad (windows) or abiword (Linux). Sometimes Netscape composer. PHP and mysql for any programming/database stuff.

[Curiosity]

Are there a lot of people out there who are willng to do decent unique sole-use articles at the rate of 12 dollars or a bit more, say up to to 15 or 20 20dollars per 500/600 words (and if so, can I humbly ask where to find them)?

There are hundreds of reasonably good writers who will write for $12 an article, and thousands who will write for $20. Check freelance writers' forums and job boards. I can't post URLs here, but if you Google for "freelance writing," the first site to come up has a quite busy job posting section. You want the "low/non-paying" section.

[sunnydiv]

well, where i agree that paying for articles is a good thing when promoting a product, but i dont think its necessary is adsense.

is are so many "good" articles out there , that are reall nice read. i think one can rather use them instead of going through "paying" to write article thing.

[jdvjdv]

No, it's not better to use the nice articles you read 'out there': 1) they're someone else's property and 2) Not as valuable to a site as its own original content would be.

12 dollars for a page that will probably pay you back for the rest of your life? It's an asset, the poor mans asset.

[webwright]

There are a growing number of sites out there who sell content..

Constant Content is one of 'em that seems pretty decent, though the articles seem a little spendy...

In terms of finding topics, buy a keyword list or do a free search on IotaWeb - but PLEASE don't add more crud to the Internet.

And, honestly-- don't rely on Google to support your family. That's a lotta eggs in one basket. There are too many people screaming "Google changed the way they do things, and have thus destroyed my income! I hate google!".

Regards,
-t