I learnt about smart pricing in DP and is now wondering if publishers could get rid of it. Also, how long does smart pricing last? Does it applies to the whole account or only the domain? Does Smart pricing means that you won't earn as much as $50 per click even you got keywords like "Legal Advice" or "Auto Hire"? Thanks for any help.
#1 There are no $50 clicks. #2 You aren't going to get $1 a click for words like "legal advice" even if you aren't smart priced. #3 Smart pricing is a quality score assigned by google and based on how well your clicks convert for the advertiser. Having quality sites that have traffic that converts well will help you avoid smart pricing. Ultimately, your visitors are going to determine whether or not you are smart priced. #4 The bid prices you see include the google search (ads that run when you do a search on google). This are the highest paying ads and they probably don't run on adsense sites (content network). Advertiser opt out of the content network or can set much lower bid prices. A click on google search might run $5 and a click on the content network might run 50 cents. #5 Don't try and chase high paying keyword lists. Concentrate on building a quality site with traffic and the rest will follow. If you build a made for adsense site that is just trying to get clicks, they will have a lower pay rate. $1 a click is considered a higher paying click for adsense. Many publishers would be happy with a 25 cent average.
Thanks mjewel , your post was informative and cleared up some of my questions. But still I got a few uncertainties. #1 But waht are those keywords that people post out there (which they claim are high paying)? #2 Is traffic that important? And does this means that you get higher paying if you got loads of traffic? And I wonder what are the CPC for other DP members ... Frustrated about smart pricing ...
Those "lists" are often old, and give the the highest bid for a particular keyword. That is what one single advertiser is willing to pay. The #4 advertiser might have a bid that is 20% of the #1. There are two bids with google - one for "google search" and one for "google content". Google does not disclose "content" only bids, but those are the ads that will show on adsense sites. The highest paying "google search" ads only run on google or network partners like AOL. Many advertisers do not run ads on the "content" network or set bid prices much lower because of click fraud. There are certainly higher paying keywords, but nothing like $50 a click. Quality of traffic is important for Smart Pricing. If the visitors that are clicking your ads don't buy anything, then they aren't worth much to the advertiser. Google has a quality score that is assigns to your account - and this gets recalculated every week. That determines smart pricing. The amount of traffic you get doesn't mean you will get higher paying ads, but without traffic, you obviously aren't going to get any clicks. Even without Smart Pricing, getting a $1 a click is considered in the high range. There are clicks that pay more than $1, but they tend to be in sectors that have a lot of competition and make it very hard to get traffic from search engines. Picking a theme that is known to pay higher is ok, just don't expect to get $10 a click because the keyword was on some list that everyone else has seen. Advetisers can also block your site from receiving their ads - another reason why quality traffic that sends them converting traffic is important. If you have a legal site, traffic from natural rankings in yahoo is going to be much better than visitors from MySpace, etc.
This makes a lot more sense to me now. Thanks mjewel for a great answer and for clearing it up for me.