In playing around with some search terms today and running trial ads it appears for prime position on what are often $100 to $200 in sales a single click will run $5. Figuring on 5-7 clicks prior to a sale there's no money to be made which leads me to the obvious conclusion that the long term advertisers are not paying $5. Is there a simple tutorial on how to optimize the landing page so that the overall price drops?
getting the best price, means starting with a higher bid initally and writing very targeted adcopy that relates extremely well to your landing page. The guys that make money with ppc spend a lot to start with, so they get on top...they then get a great CTR which in turn means a better quality score then they start to reduce their CPC's and begin to make a profit as the days go on
Aurtus, while a higher CTR ad will get a higher QS, and higher positions get higher relative CTR, QS is normalized to position. This means that going for a higher position with higher bids does not guarantee a higher QS. In fact, this is a poor strategy. If your QS is 7 in sixth position, it will likely be 7 in first. As to the OP's question, use relevant keywords and create ads that people click on.
Paying even 100$ pr click is cheap if the click converts and the cost pr conversion is above the cost pr click. Making a KEI list is very important - not only doing keyword research.