Too true, keyword research is the most important part. I spend hours looking for easy to rank keywords, go for long tail. Many will not have a high search volume, however you can get a good return on your clicks if you pick the right products to promote, using click bank or whatever. I go for long tail keywords and use web 2.0 backlinks to fire my sites to the top of the SERPs. You can rank easy keywords in three months just using Tumblr backlinks. You can scrape expired Tumblr with pretty decent metrics and use those to rank high. It works for me every time.