Your free keyword this week is a slightly tougher one than in previous weeks, so if you are just starting out with SEO and building sites, this is probably not for you.

If on the other hand, you have your linking techniques all sorted and you know that you can make real progress with some bigger words, then here it is:

12 volt battery

This is car batteries we are talking about here, so they go up pretty high if you want to look at Amazon or another affiliate program to shift some. Let’s look a bit closer (as always, all figures are from the new keyword tool)

This is a US keyword primarily, getting 74,000 broad searches, 33k phrase and dropping down to 3,600 exact searches month. Applying a quick “phrase x CPC x 0.4″ (for a first place entry on the front page) calculation still gives a very respectable $9,000 a month and those clicks are only around a dollar each, so you’d make more from selling batteries.

Competition on this is a lot higher with more PR  3′s than I would normally go for, but Youtube and another vid site are in there, so maybe a video is the way forwards with this one.

As a freebie for those who are a bit daunted by that prospect, you might just want to check out “12 volt battery charger”. Of course, it gets lower searches, but it too is available and is a lot easier to rank for. I see Amazon on the front page – always a good sign!

From now on, I will be keeping the second free keyword back for my subscribers, so if you want a double dose every week, sign up for my email list and I will keep you well rewarded. This week you’ll get a third keyword (as we’ve already had 2 here!)

I’ll bring you an earnings update tomorrow along with theis week’s keyword of the week, but I wanted to put out some more personal stuff today and just see what you think (about how I think).

If you go back far enough in the blog, you’ll find a lot of my early thoughts on how I have ended up where I am and who I was before etc. etc. Suffice it to say, that I was a corporate spokesman on all things relating to internet technology, from Java programming all the way to cloud computing via application servers and social networking. I was the archetypal technical evangelist, speaking at conferences and talking to the press.

And now, I don’t.

So what does that mean in terms of career advancement? Well, I guess it just depends on your perspective.  I never set out on this path to ” make a million” on the internet, although heaven knows, I’ve helped to build enough of it that I feel a bit deserving!

So, after a time of being on my own, building a business of my own, what would I be doing having interviews back in the old corporate world. Well, every now and again, one of them comes along and says “we think you might fit”…and every now and again I agree and we go through the interview dance. And then……and then….they say “no we don’t think you’d work” and I’ve had enough of it!!

The latest bunch started out wanting a person who could run their EMEA press and analyst gigs, do conferences for them and generally evangelise about social media. “I can do that”, I thought. In fact, I’d be bloody brilliant at that! Ah, no. Half way through the process they decide they want someone whol knows every nuance of social media “from experience” and who can grow to be a good speaker…

Well, all I can say is: GOOD LUCK WITH THAT!

All it’s done is to rile me up to the point that I will be setting up an industry-leading guide to both the social media and cloud computing spaces and generally building myself a name. Maybe it’s taken this final little kick for me to get passionate enough to want to kick sand back in the corporate world’s face a bit. Maybe this is the passion that drives all other Internet Marketer’s.

Who’s to say, I will be updating you with results of this venture. Tell me I’m talking crap in the comments or let me know what your turning point was.

Tomorrow. Keyword of the Week.

I’m guessing that you have been subjected to the same bombardment as I have over the last few days if you are working in the IM space. John Carlton and Jeff Johnson releasing stuff at about the same time and for the same amount of cash: $1997 if I remember correctly.

I looked at these courses and I listened and read everything about them (losing a load of time in the process) and decided that I absolutely needed both of them – and that I absolutely should NOT spend any money on them at all. Now, I know I’m a sucker for good sales copy and let’s face it, John C is the master of all that stuff anyway, but I think I have finally grown a spine

I looked at the 2 grand I’d need to buy each package and then compared it to the Sick Submitter at $20 a month and realised that I could be building some links of my own for many, many years before I’d have spent the same as just one of these courses. I know I’m going to need them eventually, but I just have to get some basic stuff right first.

So, no more course buying…it’s time to turn what I own already into money!

Earnings for the last few days have been around $1 a day in Adsense, so no big growth there, but I have put up a good number of new sites and am working on a littlee seasonal project too.

One of the things I have learned about myself over the last few weeks/months/years is that I’m a particularly strong researcher. What that means is that I love to dif around in subjects and find out stuff. What it does not mean is that I’m any good at making that stuff happen! I’m not what Myers-Briggs calls a “completer-finisher”.

The good thing for everyone reading, is that finding keywords feels like researching to me. I love to dig around and check out all the details of keyword subjects and that’s why you get free keywords here every week.

What am I doing about my personality? Well, you may or may not have seen the Ezinearticles hundred day challenge appear again (started yesterday). This is an end of year challenge to get a hundred articles written in the hundred days left before the end of the year…hopefully getting to Platinum status in the process and theoretically generating a load of traffic to wherever you point it. Now, since I have to write some articles anyway, I’ve signed up for the challenge…we’ll see how it goes.

I’m tempted at the same time to sign up for John Carlton’s Simple Writing System – combining the article writing experience with learning copywriting from the master. I’m just not sure if that’s biting off one too many things to do. I’d be interested to hear what you think of the idea…..does anyone need a tame copywriter that’s been trained by John?

Anyway, you came here for keywords, so here they are. Two this week, one for the US, one for the UK with a bit of a shared theme.

First up for the US: Doctor Who Episodes

According the new keyword tool this gets 8,100 exact searches a month and it’s not so much of a buyer’s phrase, but with access to these episodes being harder to get hold of in America,  you could monetize it with some DVD sales or toys relating to Doctor Who.  As soon as you look at phrase match, this jumps to 18,000 and the US is the biggest searcher for this keyword phrase – no idea why it isn’t the UK!

Second one for the UK: Doctor Who Games     (You see the theme now!)

This gets a huge 18,100 exact searches a month, rising to 22,000 phrase match. Almost 100% of these searches come from the UK. I won’t state the obvious here, but…..Christmas!!

As always, with both of these, there’s a TLD available.

As a special bonus – because you’ve been so good – here’s a range of things to look up for yourself, mainly because typing the numbers out gets tedious.

Check out “almost any kind of animal for sale”. So, for example “ferrets for sale”. If you whiz that through the keyword tool a couple of times, I think you’ll be amazed at just how many domains are available if you want to be a specialist animal seller Maybe I’ll relent and show you what I’ve found if anyone shows any real interest!

I’ve spent the last week with a new employee from the Philippines (not literally, you understand). She’s a good example of why you should just keep calm when looking for someone over there. I mailed her some months back while I was looking for new workers and while her English is excellent, she was just not available at the time.

I sent her a quick “hope it all works out, let me know if anything changes” mail and lo and behold, she mailed me back a couple of weeks ago and we are seeing how she gets on.

I haven’t really written about my ideas around outsourcing very much, so I’ll put that in a post this week sometime. If you want to look way back in the blog, you’ll also see that I went off to John Jonas’ outsource retreat in the Philippines in March – which is where some of my opinions were formed.

I’ll write more, but for now here’s a quick summary of the last little while in earnings (about 11 days back!)

Adsense earnings: $3.75
Amazon UK: $4.12
Amazon US: $2.73

A couple of nice value clicks in Adsense really helped….now all I need to do is to get rid of my MFA nemesis and get a few more visitors.