With the holidays breathing down our necks and our wallets looking like they’ve developed a case of anorexia, who couldn’t use a little bit of extra cash right about now. I’ve been inspired by a few guys on the web to look at ways to harness the power that is Google AdSense and set up a few static web pages that can earn small bits of money over a period of time with minimal maintenance. I know this practice is not uncommon, in fact folks have been doing this for many years online as a way to increase their monthly revenues. With Google making it so easy and paying you for it, it would seriously behoove you to take advantage of the opportunities available.

But what kind of site will be easy to find, yet specific enough in content that it has the potential to earn big pay-per-click revenues? For now, get a good start on what’s hot and what’s not with the Overture Keyword Selector Tool. Enter your niche subject matter into the search bar to see how many inquiries were requested in recent months. Ideally you would be looking for something with enough hits to make it worth your time, but still profitable from an ad standpoint. Get something with too much traffic, the payout will be substantially less. If you shoot for larger per-click dollars by choosing something that is too niche, people may never find you site. Finding something that strikes a balance between the two is the art behind this business model.

Along with my day job, current freelance work and some ideas that I hope to get up and running in the first quarter of 2006, the slow steady profit of a niche static web site is a big ticket item on my to-do list for the new year. Are any of you currently reaping the rewards of a low-maintenance niche site? If so, do you have any recommendations for those of us that are looking to get started? Feedback on the matter would be much appreciated and I will certainly share my findings/resources as I dig deeper into this after the holidays.

P.S. This site will not validate until after Christmas. The snow in the Flash header is a must for the holiday season! I took the time to make it validate. We’re still XHTML 1.0 Strict.

With the holidays breathing down our necks and our wallets looking like they’ve developed a case of anorexia, who couldn’t use a little bit of extra cash right about now. I’ve been inspired by a few guys on the web to look at ways to harness the power that is Google AdSense and set up a few static web pages that can earn small bits of money over a period of time with minimal maintenance.