making money with adsense. or: "money words"- don't bother

I make a decent bit with adsense, and it's increasing all the time.

I've never once tried to construct "money pages" (ie, mesothelioma, legal advice, and my guess would be that I'm making quite a bit more than most of the people that DO target these pages.

so what's the best way to make money with adsense, then? find keywords that're decent- not ultra high, but ones that at least have a respectable number of ads (you can check by plugging it into google, or by using the DP adsense sandbox and pointing the url to a similar site).

pick medium value keywords, but pick words that're easy to drive traffic to.

sure, mesothelioma may pay a lot per click, but how much genuine mesothelioma traffic do you really think you can get? this word isn't a "secret"- it's posted about in pretty much any forum on adsense out there. so many SEOs out there have probably tried taking a jab at trying to rank well for this (and many other) "money keywords."

getting a decent reliable revenue from money words is a very, very difficult task.

instead, pick high volume searches that aren't very commercial- there are TONS of them out there. with a moderate amount of effort, there are some keywords I've found that I feel I could probably get huge impressions for- for my newest one, I'm hoping to have ~100K pageviews a day in a few months.

say 50% of those pageviews become adsense impressions- 50K impressions with a 1% CTR at 20 cents a click is already 100$ a day.

just try to do some keyword research- think of everyday things that people will be searching for en masse. it works quite well, and it's a lot easier to optimize for than mesothelioma

 

This sounds great. Now I just have to find out, how to find out how much keywords go for.

 

there are a number of ways.

first, use the adsense sandbox. if you're thinking about making a "widgets" page, find an existing page on widgets and plug the url into the adsense sandbox tool- if you get a full page of adsense ads, it's most likely going to be a "decent" value (meaning, not horrible.. probably at least 10 cents a click)

you can also try using the demo when you sign up for adwords, but this has problems: some advertisers don't turn on content matching (they want traffic directly from google, not from sites with adsense)

 

Think up normal run of the mill keywords eh? That's a good one I have a hard enough time remembering to tie my shoes... oh crap... stand by...

(tying shoes)

See what I mean....

 

Disgust, I have been looking at doing something like this for some time. Not for the purpose of AdSense, although it would be a nice perk, but more so for some exposure as everything from Web Design to SEO etc.... As for specific terms, I still find AdWords very confusing (as you may remember from my previous post) but I do remember a tool I came across where it gave average $$$ for AdSense. Someone else may remember it, but I have lost it. I have come up with about 6 that I think would generate nice traffic while providing the possibility for decent AdSense returns.

I am pretty sure it is against G's TOS to design a site for the purpose of promoting AdSense.

 

And making money from a mesothelioma isn't easy. I made a mesothelioma website (not with the sole intention of displaying adsense ads!) and I didn't make anything close to 20 dollars a click.

 

100K a day - forgive me if I'm wrong but I don't think that just happens in a few months. Or maybe I'm missing something, .....it wouldn't be the first time.

I looked at a few searches in Overture

DVD - 90,000/day
Book - 84,000/day
Digital camera - 40,000/day
Laptop - 25,000/day

Then you have to get your site to the to the top of the SERPS to have any chance of getting even a percentage of thoes searches.

 

heyhey, it is because you and me, that the tiny market is broken down into so small. next time, if you truely found a high paying keyword, keep to yourself, until it drops to $2.

tell you a secretes of finding the highest paying adsense: it is indeed still in the commonly known ones, but you need to have a program to filter the low paying adsense.

even in M word, people just pay $1 or even $0.1. your job is to make sure those are never shown on your website. so you need to narrow your fields from displaing 4/5 to only 1 or 2 at most.

 

Good post Disgust. I would go so far as to say that if you go after the money-keywords, you are likely to make money only for a very short while, if at all.

3 million page views a month. I guess we are looking at a collection of a few thousand content pages! In any case, I am thrilled to see your confidence in this.

Ajeet

 

I wish you the best of luck in your endeavors.
(as long as you don't target the same keywords as me). Seriously though, there's plenty of room for everyone.

 

In a few years I think people will look back at this time as the golden age for finding popular but unexploited keywords. Here is one I ran across and don't have any idea of what to do with: 756 searches per day for "sodium carbonate soap cleaners" There are another 283 just for "sodium carbonate".

Ideas anyone ...

 

The highest bid for "sodium carbonate" is $0.11. Not much money you can make from the search term.

 

I'll admit eleven cents isn't much, so maybe this isn't a great example. However, if you call it a thousand searches a day with 5% click through, that would be about $150/mo. Not a lot, but how much work would it be to claw your way to the top for this term

My impression, based on very limited research, is that this term is searched for by "Greens" looking for environmentally friendly products. Probably well educated, many home schoolers, perhaps some science fair interest, etc. Perhaps it could be a way to pull in traffic that would then be directed to pages with content that would have higher paying ads.

 

good idea. Or you can put a few affiliate links on that page.

 

Would 17,958 searches according to Shawn's tool and a $4.67 adwords number be worth working on? It is something I know a little about (as far as content) but not sure if that warrants spending time on.

 

And how do you narrow the results exactly?

 

1. Have only one Adsense block instead of three.

2. Use a block with only 2 ads instead of 4.



If you have a block of 4 ads, then the user might have the following options:-

Ad 1 - worth £1.50 to you
Ad 2 - worth £1.45 to you
Ad 3 - worth £0.20 to you
Ad 4 - worth £0.05 to you

If you have a block of only 2 ads, then the user might have the following options:-

Ad 1 - worth £1.50 to you
Ad 2 - worth £1.45 to you

So you have more chance of earning more for a click with only 2 ads, BUT, you have to factor in that the user now only has 2 ads which might interest them rather than 4, so the click through rate may go down.

You need to test on your own pages whether 2 or 4 ads, or 1 or 3 blocks gives you the best return. It will vary from site to site.

 

But surely by reducing the ad block from 4 to 2 could equally end up getting rid of the £1.50 and £1.45 ad and just showing the £0.20 and £0.05 ads? Or are the ads shown in order of value?

 

No, the highest value ads are always shown first

 

OK that makes sense. I guess it's worth reducing the number of ads shown in an area where adwords are likely to be highly competitive. Thanks for the info.