I didn't really write this hub to teach you anything new, it was more to put on record my thoughts about those 'highest paying CPC' or 'highest paying keyword' lists, I know for a fact that these lists generate a fair bit of traffic and I hope that some of this traffic now reaches me on this hub! The truth is that anybody who thinks that they will make money by finding these lists is probably going to end up severely disappointed, even those that compile and distribute those lists know not to subsequently compete for the keywords. For somebody starting out in the world of AdSense right now I firmly believe that there is more money to be made finding hugely popular keyword phrases with low competition but with low CPCs. I know of two hubbers that make a fair bit of money by competing for low CPC traffic and then seeking to push it towards higher value pages of online content, or even better to affiliate products on Amazon or Ebay. I would quite like to demonstrate my beliefs here, so I searched for the term 'Highest paying keywords 2010' on Google. This search alone brought me more than 500,000 results!

Now lets look at the absolute crap on the front page. The first result was a torrent file listing '500 High Paying Keywords', I can't criticize the selection as I refuse to use file sharing networks on my new top of the range desktop. I will point out that 'high' is subjective and anybody could type in the term 'MBA' right now on the Google Keyword Tool and find almost 100 'high' paying keywords. It was Google result 3 which really confirmed my suspicions. How this man and his tacky blogger template got that high up the search engines with this phrase I do not know - perhaps it has something to do with the fact that he compiled his list of on December 19th 2009 in time for a Page Rank update on 1st January 2010 (wanker!). What really takes the biscuit is the length of the list, he has listed just 16 keywords (that would have taken him two minutes) and some of them are amongst the most competitive keyword topics on the Internet. I really don't want to give this mans blog credibility by linking to him, in fact I am going to launch a full out assault on getting this page above that one on Google by the time of the next Page Rank update, instead I am going to do a competition analysis for each keywords in it's simplest form. The other complete scandal about these lists are the use of the word 'earning'. The CPC relates to the estimated cost per click to the advertiser, not the amount paid to a publisher, often the publisher will receive half of the revenue from each click. Just How Crap The 'High Paying AdSense Keywords 2010' List Is......(click column header to sort results)