AdSense Arbitrage Explained

A reader's asked me for more information about AdSense arbitrage, specifically in reference to the AdSense Arbitrage — Still Alive and Well report that was released a couple of days ago. Are the methods it describes valid? Absolutely. Is it something anyone can do? Yes, but only with eyes wide open. It's not a game, after all, you can lose money if you do it wrong.

The idea behind any form of arbitrage is to take advantage of any pricing discrepencies in different parts of a market. You buy something for a lower price in one part of the market and sell it for a higher price in another part of the market. The margins can be pretty thin, which means you need to spend a lot of money to make a lot of money. Which is why you can lose a lot of money in the process.

AdSense arbitrage, which is also referred to as AdWords arbitrage, is essentially buying traffic via AdWords and making money from that traffic via AdSense. In theory this works anytime the per-click revenue you get from AdSense exceeds the cost of the ad that brought the visitor to your site. But in reality you have to factor in the clickthrough rate into the equation — most visitors probably won't click ads. So the ads on your site have to make you significantly more per-click in AdSense than what you spend per-click in AdWords. Which is why it's easy to lose money doing this.

Successful arbitrageurs do many things to make it all work:

They monitor their spending vs. earnings on a regular basis.
They use advanced strategies for lowering their per-click AdWords costs. (You should read AdWords Miracle for advice on how to do this consistently.)
They find low-cost but very related keywords for their ad campaign. (Most use tools like Keyword Elite to do this.)
They target their landing pages and the rest of the content on their sites towards the higher-paying keywords. (Again, using tools like KE or AdSense Accelerator.)
They optimize their pages to get the highest AdSense clickthrough ratios they can. (Blending ads, placing them in the right spot, not providing too much information, etc.)
They abandon obviously unprofitable arbitrages and move onto the next topic. The occasional loss is to be expected.

It definitely takes work to do it, and you have to be willing to spend money (on the ads, of course) to do it. A common return for successful arbitrageurs seems to be between 2 to 3 times what they spend on AdWords. So in theory, the more you spend, the more you'll make. But you have to get it right, and that's the hard part.

If you want to get started, I suggest you begin by opening
an AdWords account, which is almost free. Then start learning about AdWords before you try playing the arbitrage game. If anything, it'll be useful for you as an AdSense publisher to figure how things work from the advertiser's viewpoint.

Sponsored Link: Check out the AdSense Discovery training package while it's still at a low price.

Eric Giguere wrote Make Easy Money with Google, which is not the spammy get-rich book you might think it is, and is about to release (finally) Uncommon AdSense, a book aimed at more experienced AdSense publishers. And no, it won't be overpriced.

November 30, 2006 | Filed Under AdSense | Comments Off

Use the 300 by 250 Ad Unit: How to Make Your AdSense Sites Appealing to "Conversion-Driven" vs. "Brand Building" Advertisers

The first part of today's AdSense webinar about the new AdSense ad placement feature was about how to make your AdSense site(s) more appealing to AdWords advertisers. It was actually the most interesting part for me. Here's my summary of what the AdWords product marketing manager said about the Google advertisers who target AdSense sites with their ads.

The Two Types of Advertisers

AdWords sees two primary types of advertisers using AdWords to place ads on the Google Content Network (us AdSense publishers):

Conversion-driven advertisers are looking to drive sales, so they want their ads to convert into a monetizable event, such as having the clicker buy one of their products. They tend to buy CPC (cost-per-click) ads.
Brand builders are looking to build brand awareness. They often use site targeting to place ads on specific sites, where they bid for their ad space on a CPM (cost-per-thousand-impression) basis.

Google then proceeded to list what each group of advertisers wanted from AdSense publishers.

Conversion-Driven AdSense Needs

The conversion-driven advertisers want the following from AdSense publishers:

Unique, quality content on the site
Monitoring of user-generated content
Ad placements embedded within the site content
Image-enabled ad units whenever possible, because
advertisers like to put calls to action in their image ads

The point about monitoring user-generated content may surprise you, but if advertisers find questionable content (racist, sexist, pornography, etc.) on your site they will either exclude your site from their advertising or else opt-out of the Google Content Network entirely.

Brand Builder AdSense Needs

The brand builders have different needs from AdSense publishers:

Image and video ad placements, particularly the larger sizes. The 300 by 250 size is current the most-wanted video ad unit, in particular.
Prominent, above-the-fold placements for their ads.
High-quality content for positive brand association.
Policing of user-generated content.

Brand builders tend to primarily run image and video ads. The video ad inventory at Google is expected to increase significantly over the next few months.

What It All Means

Your goal as an AdSense publisher is to make your sites as appealing to advertisers as possible, except of course where it interferes with your site's usability. The visitor experience is very important to Google, and if you do something that you think will annoy your visitors you should reconsider your actions.

In general, though, you should strive to:

Create unique/original/fresh content with blended advertisements
Enable image and video ads wherever possible
Offer a prominent above-the-fold ad unit for brand builders to target

The most interesting thing to me was the recommendation to use the 300 by 250 ad format (with image and text ads enabled) in order to target video advertisers. A lot of AdSense publishers have been using the larger 336 by 280 format, so they might want to try switching to the slightly-smaller 300 by 250 format to see if their earnings go up. This will likely become more important as video ads move into the mainstream.

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November 29, 2006 | Filed Under AdSense | Comments Off

AdSense Arbitrage With Keyword Elite

Yesterday, Brad Callen released a free e-book to promote his Keyword Elite tool, one of the better keyword tools out there (several readers have told me they own it, too). The report, AdSense Arbitrage — Still Alive and Well (PDF, 672K), is an interesting read for two reasons:

It shows that AdSense arbitrage — buying traffic via AdWords and directing it to a site in the hope of earning more from AdSense than you spend on AdWords — is still a viable option, despite the effect of landing page quality on AdWords ad prices.
You can whip together an e-book pretty quickly by grabbing postings from one of your forums (make sure you get permission from the posters, of course), making each posting a chapter, and adding chapter summaries that mostly repeat what's in the postings. (Not to be cynical or anything!)

The second point aside, it's true that the market for wholesale AdSense arbitrage has changed — or is changing. AdSense arbitrage was primarily the domain of made-for-AdSense (MFA) sites that would scrape or auto-create keyword-rich content and then drive traffic to them via cheap AdWords ads. The quality score factor makes it harder to arbitrage that traffic.

Now, it should be noted that the Keyword Elite case study (which has the exciting subtitle Learn How Michael Plante Made $4,515 In AdSense Commissions In Just Over
1 Month � With Absolutely No Success In The Past!) actually started before the last major AdWords quality score update, ending just after Google implemented their changes at the beginning of November. But, the points about writing simple pages with good, high-quality, relevant, original content and a couple of well-blended and well-placed AdSense ads is the key to the whole process. (Yes, there's no doubt that Keyword Elite makes it easier to find inexpensive AdWords keywords, but you can do so by hand if you want to spend the time.)

And in case it's not clear from reading the document, notice how the case study refers specifically to getting AdWords clicks from the content network, not the search network. In other words, the case study focuses on the much cheaper traffic you get from other AdSense sites, not the more expensive traffic from the Google search result pages.

If you've been thinking about using AdWords to drive traffic to your site, for AdSense arbitrage or for affiliate marketing, it's definitely worth a read.

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November 29, 2006 | Filed Under AdSense | Comments Off

AdSense Earnings and the Time of Day

A reader asked me yesterday to comment on a ProBlogger guest post that asserts that AdSense publishers can get higher click values by posting to their blogs earlier in the day. In this context “earlier” refers to the early morning hours — the writer being in the Eastern (GMT-5) time zone. The idea posting time is therefore sometime between midnight and 6 am.

Is it true that click values are higher in that time period? Maybe. Let's look at the variables involved:

AdWords advertisers (remember, all the money comes from AdWords) set a daily budget for their ad campaigns.
The AdWords “day” defaults to Pacific time (GMT-8).
The AdSense “day” is also Pacific time.
AdWords advertisers can optionally set their day to be
their own time zone.
Ad campaigns can be spread evenly across the entire AdWords “day” (the default) or else accelerated so that ads are shown as quickly as possible.
Ad campaigns can be limited to specific time periods.
Ad campaigns can be limited to specific regions by geography and/or language.
Ad campaigns can specifically target either the search network (Google's search pages) or the content network (AdSense) or both and pay different prices for each.

As you can see, there are quite a few variables involved. Because of this, I don't think there's one answer that applies to everyone. Ultimately, your blog's earnings are based on the traffic to your site and when your readers typically read your postings. If your readers are mostly in EST, for example, then posting early in the “AdSense day” means you'll catch the readers who start their day with their favorite blogs. If the advertisers in your niche target the EST crowd, then yes, there would be more ads available overall early in the morning. I can see that happening.

But it all depends on the blog. This one you're reading right now gets a lot of clicks late in the AdSense day.

In other words, you need to do some experiments to see if there's an optimal time to post your blog entries. Try posting at a specific time for a week or two and see if makes a difference. Then try posting at a different time and see what happens then. I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all answer for this one.

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November 29, 2006 | Filed Under AdSense | Comments Off

The Internet Marketing Board Game

Every once in a while, someone in the world of Internet Marketing comes out with something fairly original. One of my readers has just launched a board game about Internet Marketing called, er, The Internet Marketing Board Game. Yes, it's a physical product that they ship to you, not a downloadable digital product — otherwise I wouldn't be mentioning it here. It's certainly the first such board game I've heard about.

The makers of this game are promoting it as a fun educational tool whose primary goal is to teach the players all the ins and outs of Internet marketing. The learning starts immediately: whip out your credit card to order the game and you'll learn your first lesson about Internet marketing, that Internet-only products tend to sell for a lot more than what you'd pay for at your local department/discount store. (This one has an introductory price of $247.)

Yes, AdSense is covered. So are private label products, affiliate marketing, autoresponders, etc. It might be a fun way to teach your friends and family what it is you do exactly, since they probably think you're not doing anything important, just sitting at your computer all the time, wasting your time…

I wonder if the game would qualify as a training-related tax deduction? Let me know if you try it (either the game or the tax deductibility).

Better hurry if you want it for Christmas, though. While you can be up on ClickBank buying gifts on Christmas eve (note that I don't recommend you do that unless you're truly desperate… it's certainly not the kind of gift my spouse would want), something like a board game has to be shipped to your house and we all know how much time that can take.

Sponsored Link: Buy an HDTV from Amazon for Christmas and make us both happy.

Next up: an AdSense question from one of my readers…

November 28, 2006 | Filed Under AdSense | Comments Off

Link to Eric Giguere on LinkedIn and Inflate My Profile

Hey, since GrayWolf is doing it, I thought I'd join in the fray… Actually, I'm not begging. But if you're on LinkedIn and want to link to me, here's the profile for that Eric Giguere fellow whose name you can never pronounce and just drop me a mail at any of my email addresses (yeah, I'll make you work for it… hint: look at the bottom of the page) and I'll happy to send you an invitation if you seem legit. (No recruiters, please, there's just no point.)

Part of me, though, thinks that LinkedIn is nothing more than the online equivalent of a male instrument size comparison contest. (See point above about recruiters.) There, I said it.

Sponsored Link: Visit GeekAffiliate for more fascinating posts like this.

November 28, 2006 | Filed Under AdSense | Comments Off

AdSense Discovery Bucks The High-Priced AdSense Package Trend

So today I get email from Ben Shaffer (he runs a high-paying keyword site) announcing his new AdSense Discovery package, a set of books, software, audios and videos aimed at those who want to get started with AdSense. (No, sadly, I'm not one of the “gurus” he interviews. Nobody seems to want to interview me… wah, wah, wah…) I can't comment on the quality of the package since I haven't seen it yet and I'm not sure I have the time to actually review it for a while. I'd be curious to hear your comments about it if you do buy it.

If the free three-month membership to Ben's keyword site interests you (he gave me a free membership a long time ago, though I don't really use it, so I can attest that the site is at least legitimate), be sure to keep in mind the caveats I mentioned in my high-paying keywords series. Remember, it's rare that an advertiser will actually pay the top price shown for an ad. There's often a large drop between the first and second place bids and other factors (like smart pricing, separate bidding for the content network, landing page quality) can further reduce the final price an advertiser pays. (Sometimes quite drastically — I was able recently to change an AdWords ad I placed that had an $11 per click minimum to $0.45 per click just by working on the landing pages. It took some work, though.)

What really interested me, though, was the price for the entire package. Surprisingly enough, Ben is actually selling this package for a semi-reasonable $67, which is much lower than I've seen for most of these kinds of packages. (I suspect $67 is probably a minimum price to get enough attention from affiliates.) I was expecting to see $147 when I clicked the order button. I'm finishing up my new e-book, Uncommon AdSense, and I don't plan on charging much for it, either. (How does $37 sound to you for a 100-page e-book packed full of info?) I wonder if this is a trend? Perhaps the market for the overpriced packages has finally been saturated?

Or maybe I'm just being silly. Sorry, don't know what came over me…

Sponsored Link: OK, I bought the Dominating CB, I admit it. It's a decent enough video introduction to making money via ClickBank, but for $97 I think Affiliate “Project X” is much better value. (Though it seems like Dominating CB did a much better promotional job.)

November 27, 2006 | Filed Under AdSense | Comments Off

How to Generate Google Sitemaps for blojsom-Based Blogs

As I mentioned yesterday, I finally got around to building a Google Sitemap for this blog. What follows are instructions for other blojsom owners to do the same, so it probably won't interest most of you. I'd like to remind my readers who use WordPress that the same functionality can be achieved by installing the Google Sitemaps Generator for WordPress, which I use all the time on my other blogs.

A New Flavor

At first I thought I'd have to write a new blojsom plugin in order to get Sitemaps functionality, which is why I put it off for so long. But eventually I had no choice to start the project, as I really needed to have the pages of Make Easy Money with Google and AdSense properly indexed by Google.

Anyhow, I was learning how to build blojsom plugins when it occurred to me that I was doing it all wrong: I could achieve the same thing much more easily with a new blojsom flavor. Hence the “sitemap” flavor was born. Access this URL:

http://www.memwg.com/blog/adsense/?flavor=sitemap

And you'll see a Google Sitemap for the blog.

Creating the Sitemap Flavor

Adding the sitemap flavor is trivial. In your blog's directory (usually WEB-INF/blog-name) there are two files to modify. Add the following line to flavor.properties:

sitemap=sitemap.vm, text/xml;charset=UTF-8

Similarly, add this line to plugin.properties:

sitemap.blojsom-plugin-chain=string-utilities, all-entries

These changes define a new flavor, “sitemap”, that ends up running the Velocity file “sitemap.vm” after first running the “string-utilities” and “all-entries” plugins. You'll need to restart the blojsom webapp before continuing.

The Velocity Sitemap Template

We're almost done. In the blog's templates directory you need to create sitemap.vm with the following contents:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="gss.xsl"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84">

 <url>
   <loc>$BLOJSOM_BLOG.getBlogURL()</loc>
   <priority>1.0</priority>
   <changefreq>hourly</changefreq>
 </url>
#foreach ($entry in $BLOJSOM_PLUGIN_ALL_ENTRIES)
 #DatelessFriendlyPermalink($entry)

 <url>
   <loc>$BLOJSOM_PLUGIN_STRING_UTILITIES.escapeString($entryLink)</loc>
   <lastmod>#FormatDate($entry "yyyy-MM-dd")</lastmod>
   <changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
   <priority>0.5</priority>
 </url>
#if ($BLOJSOM_COMMENTS_ENABLED.booleanValue() &&
$entry.supportsComments() &&
( $entry.getNumComments() > 0 ) && ($entry.getMetaData() &&
!$entry.getMetaData().containsKey("blog-entry-comments-disabled")))

 <url>
   <loc>$BLOJSOM_PLUGIN_STRING_UTILITIES.escapeString("$entryLink?page=comments")</loc>
   <changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
   <priority>0.1</priority>
 </url>
#end
#end

</urlset>

This template is actually very simple. First, it creates a <url> block for the blog root, in this case http://www.memwg.com/blog/adsense/. Then it loops through all the blog entries (added to the flavor's context via the “all-entries” plugin) and adds <url> blocks for each blog entry and, for the entries with comments, each comment page.

Once the sitemap.vm file is created you should be able to access your sitemap using the URL:

http://www.yourdomain.com/blog/blogname/?flavor=sitemap

The Sitemaps Index

We're almost done. Although the sitemap we generate is valid, it's in the wrong spot. The Sitemaps protocol requires you to place the sitemaps file at the root of your site. Rather than moving it, though, we can cheat and use a “sitemap index” file to refer to it instead. For example, this is the sitemap index for memwg.com:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<sitemapindex xmlns="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84">
  <sitemap>
    <loc>http://www.memwg.com/blog/adsense/?flavor=sitemap</loc>
  </sitemap>
</sitemapindex>

If you had multiple blogs running on the same site, you'd add a block for each sitemap. You could also create a sitemap for the non-blog pages and add it here as well.

You can now submit your sitemap to Google.

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November 27, 2006 | Filed Under AdSense | 2 Comments

Google Sitemaps 101: How to Get Out of the Supplemental Index

I'm trying to do a little maintenance on the blogging software I use to run this blog. For historical reasons, I use blojsom, although most of my other blogs are done using WordPress. Unfortunately, blojsom simply isn't as well-supported as WordPress, which means I haven't been able to find an equivalent to the Google Sitemap Generator for WordPress, although in honesty I could have gotten off my butt and written one myself. And I have, sort of, but that's a different post. There's now an official sitemap.xml file for this site that's been submitted to Google and hopefully will fix some of the wonkiness that's happened with this blog. That's what I want to talk about in this post: using Google Sitemaps to better index your blog or site.

What is a Google Sitemap?

You probably understand what a sitemap is, and it's something I recommend that each site have. A sitemap is just an HTML file that lists all the pages (or all the major pages) of your site. It's a simple way for both humans and search engines to find the other pages on your site.

In June of 2005, however, Google took the sitemap concept further and introduced Google Sitemaps, which is now part of Google's expanded set of Google Webmaster Tools.

A Google Sitemap is like a regular sitemap, except it's not HTML. It's in XML format, which looks a lot like HTML except that the tags are different. Here's a very simple sitemap for one of my sites:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84">
  <url>
    <loc>http://www.NoDebtIsGood.com/</loc>
    <priority>1.0</priority>
    <changefreq>daily</changefreq>
  </url>
</urlset>

Create a file like this called sitemap.xml at the root of your site or blog and add a <url> entry for each page you want indexed by Google. (Yahoo! and MSN will soon be supporting this format, too, by the way. You can find out more at Sitemaps.org, the new site for the common Sitemaps format.) All the gory details are found on Using the Sitemap Protocol.

Why Use Google Sitemaps?

So why use Google Sitemaps if you already have a perfectly good HTML sitemap? There are different reasons. One is completeness. Your human-readable sitemap may not list every page on your site in order to prevent information overload and also to avoid being flagged by the search engines for excessive linking. Another reason is that they provide more information about the page — how often it updates, when it was last updated, how important it is relative to other pages — than a simple link provides.

A really good reason, though, is to help deal with site mishaps. Say you've got pages accessible via a number of different URLs, possibly because you screwed up the configuration of the site once or twice. With a proper Sitemap you can “normalize” the site by providing Google with the list of “real” URLs and then taking steps to redirect all the other URLs to the normalized version. (This may or may not be simple to do, though.)

Supplemental Index Hell

Another reason to use Google Sitemaps is to get out of Google's supplemental index and back into the main index. The supplemental index where misbehaving pages go, although the Google Webmaster FAQ doesn't put it so kindly. Google likes to index those bad pages for completeness, but avoids exposing them to searchers unless absolutely necessary. It's like being in Limbo, the first circle of Hell.

Sometimes you get into the supplemental index by accident more than anything. Having duplicate pages is one way. Having confused URL structures is another. This blog's been in supplemental hell for a while now, but I was just too lazy (again) to do anything about it. The new sitemap for the site to normalize the URL structure is my first step in jumping back to the main index. I'm not expecting that a sitemap by itself will do this, I'll also need to fix the ways the blog entries link to each other, put some nofollows on certain links, and noodle with the robots.txt file. But hopefully I'll be able to make the transition within a month or two.

If you're running a site and are having problems getting properly indexed, try building and submitting a sitemap. A good place to start is with the Sitemaps FAQ.

Sponsored Link: Add eBay data to your site using Build A Niche Store.

Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. If you like this posting, why not link to his blog or bookmark it as one of your favorites?

November 26, 2006 | Filed Under AdSense | Comments Off

Amazon aStore Out Of Beta: New Features Available

In a previous post I showed how to use AdSense with Amazon aStore as an example of how to integrate AdSense with embedded content. At that time the aStore program (available to all members of the Amazon Associates affiliate program) was limited to one aStore per affiliate and you could do only a few things with the aStore. Well, aStore is now officially out of beta and you can now:

create multiple stores;
create custom categories;
integrate with more Amazon features

Also, they're increasing the amount an aStore can earn you through the Christmas season.

You can see my original aStore in action at The HDTV Shoppe. Although it was built strictly as an example of integrating AdSense with embedded content (the aStore is embedded via an <iframe> tag), surprisingly enough people have actually bought HDTV sets through it!

An Amazon aStore is a very simple way to add an Amazon-based store to your site. It's not as flexible as Build A Niche Store is for building eBay stores, but it's worth a quick look if you're an Amazon affiliate. The Amazon program's not a huge money-maker for most folks, and it only pays on a quarterly basis, but an aStore with high-priced items (leave the HDTVs to me, please :-)) might be worth the effort if you can attach it to a higher-traffic site.

Sponsored Link: Learn specific affiliate marketing strategies with Affiliate “Project X”.

November 25, 2006 | Filed Under AdSense | Comments Off

Happy Thanksgiving

I hope all my US readers had a happy Thanksgiving yesterday. For many people this is basically the start of the Christmas season (although I think most stores put up Christmas decor the day after Halloween…) and today is a big shopping day in the US, so you might not be doing much to your AdSense sites over this long weekend. But we all have reasons to be thankful for many things in our lives, so don't forget to stop and think about that.

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November 24, 2006 | Filed Under AdSense | Comments Off

$200K Worth of Invalid AdSense Clicks?

A reader pointed me to this WebmasterWorld thread (registration required) from an AdSense Premium publisher who normally makes between $50,000 and $100,000 a month in AdSense earnings. The publisher's been told by Google that $200,000 worth of invalid clicks have been attributed to his account and that they're going to be debiting his future earnings to recover the $200K.

Now, I know some of you are going to say I wish I had those kinds of problems, but we don't know how much of that $75K per month (on average) is profit. It's not unusual for sites at that end of the spectrum to spend a lot of money on traffic acquisition and on bandwidth/hosting costs. For example, they might spend say $25K on AdWords and other pay-per-click advertising to drive traffic to their sites. Earnings does not equal profits.

Despite the $200K chargeback, though, the publisher is still very positive about Google:

…if not for Google, I would have been making probably 1% of what I make without the changes and help they gave me. I thank Google to this day for giving me that opportunity…. I intend (and hope?!) to stay with Google Adsense, because quite honestly, they've treated me really well, given me some breaks, and helped me to help myself!

This chargeback comes shortly after Google made changes to its pricing algorithms to penalize poor quality sites, so I wonder if this is the first major example of a site falling prey to the new rules.

Sponsored Link: Try Build A Niche Store to add eBay listings to your site.

November 23, 2006 | Filed Under AdSense | Comments Off

The Nike Rule of AdSense: "Just Do It"

Today I published a new essay on my affiliate marketing blog that applies as equally well to AdSense as it does to Internet marketing. Although it's obviously slanted towards affiliate selling because of where I published it, please take a moment to read The Nike Rule of Affiliate Marketing: “Just Do It”. Then ask yourself this question: am I not making as much money as I could from AdSense because I'm not focused enough on creating quality niche sites and blogs? Answer it truthfully (yes, I could be doing more myself!) and then go out and just do it.

I hate motivational crap, but sometimes everyone needs a swift kick in the pants. Consider yourself kicked.

November 21, 2006 | Filed Under AdSense | Comments Off

The AdSense Travel Site Series: Part 1

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I decided to do another AdSense case study, much as I did with the electronic pet fence guide. As before, I'll walk you through the steps necessary to build a functioning and ultimately profitable AdSense travel site.

Preliminaries

The ideal AdSense travel site is a site whose content is based on your own travel experiences. The travel niche is clogged with content from the big players. Travel portals, official government tourism sites, travel guide publishers — they've got a lot of info out there and it's tough to compete against them for general stuff.

So what do you do? The most successful AdSense sites are the ones that are heavily trafficed or that have extremely targeted traffic. Getting tons of traffic is hard, so generally you go the opposite way and drill down into your niche. Concentrate on a specific aspect of your travels, not the destination in its entirety. What did you do that was really fun? What did you like or dislike about the destination? Did you partake in some interesting events? (If you can't come up with anything good, you might want to rethink your vacations!)

And whatever you do, take lots of pictures when you travel. They'll come in handy both as eye candy for the site and as a way to generate some traffic from sites like Flickr. You can even get your kids to take pictures, too. We bought a Fisher Price Kid Tough digital camera for our seven-year-old daughter and she loved using it. (She actually preferred the boy version, but there's also a pink version for girls available. I also recommend you get the matching case, also available either in blue or pink, for extra protection.) Be sure to put a large memory card in the camera!

There are other kinds of similarly durable cameras available for young children. Older kids can use inexpensive cameras — Amazon has a surprising number of digital cameras for less than $100 available, most of which are perfectly adequate for pictures that are to be uploaded or printed on small photo sheets.

The Right Domain

After your trip's over, it's time to look over the pictures and notes you took and decide what you're going to focus on. Then you have to decide where you're going to put the information. Some people just add pages to an existing site or blog. Some create a new subdomain. Some buy a new domain. There are pros and cons to each approach, but generally I'd go either for a subdomain or a new domain. If you already have a travel-themed site or blog then maybe the material would fit well in it, but it's generally not a good idea to mix travel with non-travel content. After all, you're targeting different audiences.

If you choose to create a subdomain on an existing domain, your naming choices are pretty much unlimited. (Be careful with trademarks, though.) If you plan on creating several travel sites, it may make sense to go the subdomain route to save on domain name costs — buy a generic travel domain and use the subdomains to define the niche for each site. Make sure your subdomain includes important keywords, like the name of the destination.

For new sites, though, finding a good travel name is tough. Most of the “obvious” names — say name of city plus “travel” — are taken. Check for them anyhow, but chances are you'll have to come up with something else. One place to get ideas is to use my Google Suggest Explorer tool. Type in the destination name and see what searches it suggests. Use this as the starting point for your domain search. If you can include a highly-searched-for phrase in your domain name, all the better, it makes for better targeting of traffic and ads.

That's all for this time. Stay tuned for Part 2…

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Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. If you like this posting, why not ask Technorati to fix their broken tracking system!

November 20, 2006 | Filed Under AdSense | Comments Off

How Much Do Mesothelioma Keywords Really Pay?

Continuing the theme (don't worry, I think this will be the last set of keyword values I talk about for a while…), I thought I'd use AdSenseAccelerator to look up some keyword values again, but this time to check out some keyphrases based on the keyword that is often claimed to be the top-paying keyword on the market: yep, it's “mesothelioma” time again.

Now, I had never heard of mesothelioma before someone discovered it was such a high-paying keyword. About all I can write about this terrible affliction (it's a type of cancer due to asbestos exposure, often in miners, that doesn't show up until long after the exposure) is that it's a terrible affliction and that there are some lawyers out there actively canvassing for clients with mesothelioma to go after the companies responsible for their exposure to asbestos. And, let's be honest, that's probably about all you can really write about it. So what are you going to do for content? And how are you going to get your site to rank against all the other (primarily lawyer-sponsored) sites that dominate the search engine rankings for those terms?

But first, is there truth to the claim that “mesothelioma” is a high-paying keyword? Well, yes. Look at this summary:

Keyword	Top Bid	Bid Quality	# Searches	# Competitors	KEI
mesothelioma	$78.85	$$$$	1,300	12,200,000	0.1
mesothelioma lawyer	$54.61	$$$$	250	889,000	0.1
mesothelioma attorney	$61.86	$$$$	200	1,050,000	0
mesothelioma cancer	$74.88	$$$$	50	398,000	0
pleural mesothelioma	$72.97	$$$$	50	457,000	0
malignant mesothelioma	$67.96	$$$$	0	773,000	0
peritoneal mesothelioma	$73.63	$$$	50	270,000	0
asbestos mesothelioma	$25.99	$$$	0	643,000	0
mesothelioma treatment	$24.73	$$	16	208,000	0
mesothelioma info	$14.44	$$	0	97,200	0
mesothelioma law	$17.66	$$	0	132,000	0
mesothelioma litigation	$13.28	$$	0	47,800	0
mesothelioma diagnosis	$11.63	$	0	184,000	0
mesothelioma research	$12.69	$	0	365,000	0

But again, that just shows us the highest bids. Let's drill down further and look at the bid gaps:

Keyword	Bid 1	Bid 3	Bid 4	Bid 6	Bid 7	Bid 10
[mesothelioma]	$78.85	$52.57	$18.76	$12.51	$11.61	$8.20
[mesothelioma cancer]	$63.99	$42.66	$13.72	$9.28	$3.57	$2.41
[peritoneal mesothelioma]	$55.25	$36.83	$9.68	$6.45	$1.13	$0.77
[mesothelioma lawyer]	$54.61	$42.69	$18.91	$12.61	$6.08	$4.34
[mesothelioma attorney]	$51.86	$38.23	$19.41	$12.96	$6.17	$4.25
[malignant mesothelioma]	$49.82	$33.22	$11.98	$8.03	$2.04	$1.38
[pleural mesothelioma]	$49.61	$33.08	$12.43	$8.29	$2.35	$1.57
mesothelioma diagnosis	$28.40	$20.83	$2.58	$1.72	$0.41	$0.25
“mesothelioma”	$28.07	$18.83	$2.14	$1.41	$0.16	$0.07
mesothelioma	$27.77	$18.51	$2.05	$1.35	$0.14	$0.07
“pleural mesothelioma”	$23.24	$15.50	$1.29	$0.84	$0.30	n/a
[asbestos mesothelioma]	$22.88	$15.25	$3.82	$2.55	$0.46	$0.26
[mesothelioma treatment]	$20.46	$13.64	$1.44	$0.96	$0.43	$0.26
peritoneal mesothelioma	$19.18	$12.79	$0.60	$0.37	$0.09	$0.05
“peritoneal mesothelioma”	$18.91	$12.61	$0.40	$0.24	$0.06	$0.05
“mesothelioma cancer”	$18.70	$12.47	$0.89	$0.56	$0.13	$0.05
[mesothelioma law]	$17.94	$12.42	$1.91	$1.27	$0.34	$0.20
[mesothelioma litigation]	$17.74	$11.82	$2.21	$1.51	$0.64	$0.43
[mesothelioma diagnosis]	$16.03	$11.73	$0.70	$0.44	$0.20	$0.09
pleural mesothelioma	$15.87	$10.59	$0.42	$0.26	$0.12	$0.06
“mesothelioma lawyer”	$15.59	$10.72	$0.98	$0.63	$0.12	$0.05
“mesothelioma attorney”	$15.44	$10.96	$0.44	$0.26	n/a	n/a
[mesothelioma info]	$14.93	$11.00	$1.56	$1.06	$0.56	$0.36
“malignant mesothelioma”	$13.44	$8.96	$0.24	$0.12	n/a	n/a
“mesothelioma diagnosis”	$12.45	$9.41	$0.36	$0.20	$0.10	n/a
“mesothelioma info”	$12.30	$9.34	$0.65	$0.42	$0.20	$0.10
[mesothelioma research]	$11.36	$8.40	$0.47	$0.29	$0.16	$0.07
mesothelioma info	$10.80	$8.14	$0.55	$0.33	$0.17	$0.08
mesothelioma lawyer	$10.54	$7.21	$0.31	$0.17	$0.05	$0.00
malignant mesothelioma	$9.50	$6.32	$0.16	$0.07	$0.05	$0.00
“mesothelioma treatment”	$9.21	$6.13	$0.20	$0.10	$0.06	$0.05
mesothelioma attorney	$8.95	$6.29	$0.18	$0.09	n/a	n/a
mesothelioma treatment	$8.77	$5.83	$0.17	$0.07	n/a	n/a
“mesothelioma research”	$8.53	$5.97	$0.15	$0.07	n/a	n/a
mesothelioma research	$7.12	$5.01	$0.13	$0.06	n/a	n/a
“mesothelioma litigation”	$6.27	$4.17	$0.16	$0.08	n/a	n/a
“mesothelioma law”	$6.07	$4.33	$0.17	$0.08	n/a	n/a
mesothelioma cancer	$3.39	$2.37	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
mesothelioma litigation	$3.15	$2.24	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
“asbestos mesothelioma”	$2.82	$2.00	$0.06	$0.05	n/a	n/a
asbestos mesothelioma	$2.52	$1.75	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
mesothelioma law	$2.41	$1.79	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a

So yes, it looks like there is a law firm out there willing to pay up to $78 per click for the exact term [mesothelioma]. And someone just behind them willing to pay $52 per click. Even the fourth place bid is at the $18 mark. (But note that related phrases pay significantly less, especially after the first few bids.)

Wow, are lawyers really willing to pay that kind of money to get these clients? Sure, once you understand that each lead they get on a client is a chance to make hundreds of thousands of dollars by working on a contingency basis to get their clients (or their estates) some kind of large monetary settlement from the responsible parties.

That said, let's bring a dose of reality to the table. Remember, AdWords bidders will pay less than what they bid for a variety of reasons. Ads with high clickthrough-rates will cost less per-click. A well-designed landing page will get a high quality score and lower costs that way. Ads shown in less desirable geographic areas will pay less. There are all kinds of reasons, in other words.

More importantly, you can bet that every advertiser willing to pay big-bucks for leads is going to remove the Content Network (that's us AdSense publishers) from the bidding process. They'll pay big bucks for ads shown on Google's search results pages, but not on our sites. If they do bid on the Content Network, it will be at a much lower cost.

And then there's the reality of getting traffic to your mesothelioma site. The top 10 sites about mesothelioma on Google are either governmental, the Wikipedia, or lawyer-sponsored sites. I haven't looked, but I suspect that pattern would hold for the top 100 sites. Good luck breaking into those rankings. You'd need to create an authoritative site in a crowded field. Or find another way to get targeted traffic (people looking for information about mesothelioma) to your site.

The conclusion? You're better off focusing your energies on less competitive niches. Those numbers sure look tempting, but it'd be exceedingly hard to pull this one off.

Speaking of niches, next week we'll finally start looking at travel sites.

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Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. If you like this posting, why not ask Technorati to fix their broken tracking system!

November 17, 2006 | Filed Under AdSense | 1 Comment

A List of Top-paying Computer Keywords

Since Christmas is coming and many of you reading this are into computers, I thought it'd be interesting to generate a list of the top-paying computer keywords. I used AdSenseAccelerator to generate a keyword list from three terms: “desktop computers”, “laptop computers” and “notebook computers”. It then analyzed the keywords and gave me this summary: (if you're reading this via an RSS reader, you probably won't see the data unless you directly view this posting via your browser)

Keyword	Top Bid	Bid Quality	# Searches	# Competitors	KEI
computer notebooks	$18.56	$$	77,050	1,560,000	3,805.6
desktop computers	$9.00	$$	40,275	3,670,000	442.0
laptop computer	$10.52	$$	22,300	2,270,000	219.1
laptop computers	$9.47	$$	18,825	3,100,000	114.3
notebook computers	$9.83	$$	3,750	3,050,000	4.6
notebook computer	$21.55	$$	3,100	2,860,000	3.4
computers notebook	$17.28	$$	2,100	247,000	17.9
laptops computers	$18.22	$$	200	374,000	0.1
computers laptop	$15.78	$$	200	465,000	0.1
small notebook computers	$11.15	$$	200	10,200	3.9
discount laptop computers	$9.28	$$	150	29,100	0.8
wireless laptop computers	$17.44	$$	100	33,600	0.3
laptop notebook computers	$15.74	$$	100	200,000	0.1
notebook computer sale	$8.96	$$	100	23,900	0.4
desktop computer deals	$7.61	$$	50	384,000	0.0
discount desktop computers	$6.50	$$	50	18,100	0.1
new laptop computers	$10.49	$$	50	51,400	0.0
laptop computers for sale	$8.84	$$	50	20,100	0.1
buy notebook computers	$12.74	$$	50	15,600	0.2
notebooks computers	$12.48	$$	50	99,400	0.0
buy notebook computer	$9.27	$$	50	23,400	0.1
buy desktop computers	$6.17	$$	0	35,100	0.0
portable laptop computers	$22.20	$$	0	17,800	0.0
laptop and notebook computers	$15.15	$$	0	60,300	0.0
lightweight laptop computers	$13.69	$$	0	1,160	0.0
laptop computers on sale	$11.80	$$	0	118,000	0.0
inexpensive laptop computers	$10.46	$$	0	11,200	0.0
affordable laptop computers	$9.93	$$	0	4,890	0.0
notebook computer deals	$14.81	$$	0	558	0.0
wireless notebook computers	$10.75	$$	0	31,100	0.0
notebook computer sales	$8.76	$$	0	12,500	0.0
tablet notebook computers	$8.00	$$	0	18,000	0.0
cheap desktop computers	$5.46	$	200	425,000	0.1
best desktop computers	$6.61	$	50	12,700	0.2
notebook laptop computers	$14.76	$	50	53,100	0.0
lightweight notebook computers	$10.90	$	50	9,040	0.3
new desktop computer	$8.11	$	0	39,600	0.0
computers and laptops	$8.66	$	0	464,000	0.0
lightweight notebook computer	$14.39	$	0	14,000	0.0
top notebook computers	$8.29	$	0	283	0.0
notebook computer comparisons	$8.03	$	0	10,200	0.0

The list is sorted by the number of searches. The KEI value is a measure used by WordTracker and others to determine how “good” a keyword is in terms of its competition. (The detailed explanation is here.)

Still, this particular list isn't the most interesting. What I like to see are the bid gaps, because high top bids (like “portable laptop computers” at $22.20) might be bogus in the sense that if there's a huge gap between the top bid and the next bid then no advertiser will actually pay anything near the top bid. So I took those keywords, generated the three AdWords variants for them — broad match, phrase match and exact match — and let AdSenseAccelerator calculate the bids for me:

Keyword