Is There A Market For AdSense Niches That Pay Only $0.50-$1.20 Per Click On Average?

Hi guys, I’m new here and I’d like to pick your brain. Here is my question. I’ve just started a membership site. And I don’t know how to price the information I’d like to sell, nor am I sure how valuable it is to other AdSense publishers.

I run a popular odd news site, which gets decent traffic. I basically pick odd news from Google News and Yahoo! News. My AdSense earnings are OK, but they are very choppy. The reason for this is that the site really has no topic. So sometimes I can get an article with 50 clicks and get 61 dollars and other times I get close to a 100 clicks and only 7 bucks in AdSense revenue.

I’ve started using channels and basic tracking tool to see what articles make me money and what niches don’t. I’ve been able to find out some really cool information. For example, that posting an article about “psychic readings” made me 47 cents per click on average. I’ve been lucky enough to find out niches that pay $1.05 and even $1.20 per click (just two keywords that pay over a buck a click on average so far).

However my problem that I can put news about “psychic readings” or “veneer logs” every day. Since I just reprint other media news (much like BoingBoing does) I can’t fully use the data I gathered, so my average EPC is still only around 40 cents, although it did increase drastically due to the fact that I no longer publish news on topics that I know aren’t profitable.

Than I got the idea – people are paying a lot of money for high paying keywords list. But they are total crap. For instance Overture Bid Tool suggests that a click for Mesothelioma is worth $25, but I ran a story on Mesothelioma-mania among AdSense publishers a while ago and ads for Mesothelioma pay only 7 cents per click.

So I though – hey I know real data about real AdSense niches from my own account. Sure, 40, 50, 70, 90 cents per click doesn’t sound as exciting as 40 dollars per click, but that’s a myth anyway. The highest single payout per click I received was $2.75 and I’ve never been able to make more than $1.20 for average click.

That’s how I decided that starting a membership site and sending reports about niches that make anywhere 40 cents to a dollar twenty on average may be a good idea. But is there a market for it?
Would you pay someone to tell you – hey, I just received 46 clicks worth $21.43 for ads about XXX. What if XXX is an obscure term like “veneer logs”?

Also, would people pay for a database of topics and keywords that are known NOT to make any profit from AdSense?

What do you guys think?

 

I got $0.15 per click

 

Yeah, I know. Some people make $0.05 per click, some $0.15, some $0.30.
That's not what I am asking. I'm asking - can information about how much certain niches generate (real numbers, not bullship $20 per click) be of interest to other AdSense publishers. And if yes, how much is it worth?

 

The info you'd be supplying would only be of value to people with your identical ctr (and possibly a few other variables).

What you get for an ad that the advertiser has set a max cpc of, say $1.00, is going to be different from what, say, Mr. Hyper-Targeted-and-Adsense-Optimized's micro niche site will get for the same ad. And SLashdot, or BoingBoing (assuming they used adsense) would get something else entirely for that ad.

And, really in Adwords, you don't bid on a niche basis, but rather a very specific keyword/keyphrase basis.

BTW, if you are interested in a more consistant way of monetizing your odd news site, you may want to consider using affiliate ads rather than (or in combination with) adsense.

Best luck!

 

There is always a market for REAL WORLD data. We can estimate to our hearts contnet using adwords tools and still not know what the page is truely going to pay until we run it on our websites and compare with our channels.

The problem with this is every site about term XXX is going to be different and unless it is the exact same across every website then you will not know exact amounts. Then if it is the exact same across many websites smart pricing comes into effect. So your in a damned if you do damned if you don't type thing.

How much would I pay--$0 but I know lots of people who would pay 20 to 30 dollars for a very comprehensive list of REAL data.

 

The data may be useful but you'd be going against Google's terms sharing it, so probably not worth it IMO.

 

Well here is the thing. What's a comprehensive list? I've got over 60 niches that paid over 50 cents per click on average. I can't create a list of 10000 niches that pay over 50 cents. What I do is - I put up several articles a day and track the results. For some articles I get dismal results, for other great, for some articles I don't get enough clicks to make a judgement (I track only those with over 20 clicks) and some articles may display ads for drunk driving and baby colics on the same page, so I don't know what the niche is, so I ignore it.

 

Tell me now saying something like "I ran an article about psychic readings, saw a bunch of psychic reading ads, got 76 clicks worth $35.84" is a violation of TOS? I'm not breaking any rules, am I?

 

You are not allowed to share many statistics, certainly CTR and I'd expect CPC. Have a serious read of the TOS if you want to be on the safe side.

 

This may be true if you provide EXACT earnings. I'm sure you could get away with it with an average CPC instead of providing 76 pages earned me $35.84 the line could state:
I ran 76 pages and my average CPC was $0.471578.
Not sure now?? Could be a very fine line as far as the TOS goes.

 

To be absolutely on the safe side you could always ask Google if it's allowed.

 

I've I see four ads, all of which contain "veneer logs" or "psychic readings" it's pretty obvious that these are the keywords that trigger ads. So when I say niche, I mean key phrases that I see in ads and that are scattered in the articles. Most ads contain search terms that advertisers bid on, so this isn't a problem. I'm really talking about keywords and keyphrases, I just can't be 100% because Google doesn't tell me what keyword triggered what ad, but it's obvious.
Also, what does CTR has to do with how much AdSense publisher get paid? Don't understand that.

 

What do you mean by exact earnings? Yesterday I made 57 bucks. I've made $43.56 from a single article that got Digged and that brought me 81 clicks. The article is about a very specific technical thingy that was in every ad that was displayed on the page. So I'd report that. $43.56 for 81 click for ads that said XXX.

The rest of the revenue came from other articles but I would not report that because, while I know exactly how much each article generated for me, it's not always possible to determing the exact topic. It's impossible to figure out what triggered some lame eBay ad, nor are people interested in this data because eBay ads don't pay.

 

To make it more clear a direct quote from Googles terms and condtions

I believe it is number 7:

 

IMO that sort of information would only be useful to AdSense publishers who had a site similar to yours, i.e. a general site with no fixed topic. That gives them the scope to use all of your recommended keywords to their maximum advantage. Of course that puts them in your shoes, in which case they'd be publishing like you and concentrating on high paying topics to keep the income rolling in. They'd have exactly the same data you do.

Just my tuppence

 

It is called smart pricing. There are threads upon threads about it at DP, so I won't bother getting into it here, but you can search around DP for more on that topic.

 

You see, I think just the opposite. Knowing, for instance that "psychic readings" gets you decent earning per click isn't of any interest to any news site. Because you can't pump out an article about "psychic readings" every day. Or keep same old article on front page. The readers simply won't return to the news site that has same-old, same-old. BUT a guy or a gal who knows how to create perhaps a directory of psychics or free online psychic reading site can profit from this information and I'm sure they want to know if the niche averages 5 cent or 5 cents per click BEFORE starting their work. Am I right or am I wrong?

 

No, smart pricing has NOTHING to do with CTRs. Smart pricing has to do with the fact that the visitors from your site don't convert. When articles at my site get picked up by Digg, the CTR may fall tenfold from 5% to 0.5%, yet I often see that EPC values don't change much at all. I've been very good at keeping stats and my CTR changes wildly. I've never been punished for low CTR rates. Or high CTR rates, for that matter. Tell me, why do you think that CTR and smartpricing is somehow connected?

 

My evidence is empirical. I can accept that your results may be different, but I know I'm not alone in this belief.

 

LOL--the highly debated topic of CTR and smart pricing. Gotta love the MYSTERY behind Google Adsense.


TestedAdsenseNiche - You have a Smart Idea - run with it don't let anyone tell you it is a bad idea. The only way you will know if it works is after you do it.
There are thousands of websites online that target High paying keywords. I have a search engine and I push(advertise) the "specific search results pages" that pay well. I'd rather pay money to get people to my website and see "high paying keyword" rather than sending them to "fdgkljflgfjfljflm" which wont get me anything but some untargeted ads and a penny click through.

Luckily I have great ad tracking software and analytics that let me know what is paying and what is not so I don't need sites like what you want to do --but I know there are many more that do.