Mesothelioma: the one word every AdSense publisher knows?

Mesothelioma. This obscure disease was on my mind yesterday due to a front-page article in The Globe and Mail titled Suffering from a father's job. The article relates the story of a 48-year-old man who is dying from this dreadful form of lung cancer without having had any direct asbestos exposure himself (asbestos is the only known cause of mesothelioma). Rather, he and his family were exposed to asbestos dust brought home by their father's work clothes. Two of his siblings have already died of the disease, which takes decades to manifest itself:

Cases such as Mr. O'Donnell's, once thought to be extremely rare, are starting to crop up more frequently in Canada. There are enough cases that they have been given the formal name of “bystanders,” people who never worked with asbestos yet are at risk of its illnesses.

Please read the full article for the details. It's truly a tragic story.

What struck me about this article, though, was the fact that I already knew what mesothelioma was. Not because someone I knew was suffering from it, or because it's a widespread form of cancer that everyone knows about — it's actually exceedingly rare, though the number of cases is on the uprise as the heavy use of asbestos in the 1960s and 1970s is finally showing its effects — but because it's been touted for a long time as an example of a high-paying AdSense keyword.

Two years ago, I can remember how excited certain publishers were to discover that they could make tens of dollars per click by building sites dedicated to mesothelioma. Of course, mesolthelioma doesn't pay nearly as much these days. Too many people got on the bandwagon. Advertisers (lawyers looking to represent claimants in asbestos lawsuits) smartened up and started to exclude the content network (AdSense publishers) from their advertising. Plus the market got to be so competitive that simply putting up a few pages about mesolthelioma wouldn't get you anywhere in the search engine rankings. (See my high-paying keywords mini-series for more on this.)

It seems odd to me that awareness of such a devastating disease can be so widespread among a community that really isn't affected by it. I don't think mesothelioma is on the same level as Vioxx, say, which I must admit is a keyword I've benefited from in the past. But I was on Vioxx (it's an anti-inflammatory commonly prescribed for arthritis but also useful for other thigns) at the time it was taken off the market, so at least I felt I had some claim to being able to talk about it. And I was able to see some humor in the situation. I can't say that about mesothelioma.

Now, I had a character in my book who was targeting a condition (obesity), but she wasn't out to make a large fortune or anything, just cover the costs of creating a site and providing some good information. More importantly, she was motivated to do it for personal reasons.

And that, I think, is one of the keys to doing well with these kinds of topics. Who are you, a lone individual, to compete against large authoritative sites, or even semi-authoritative ones like the Wikipedia? If you want to go down this path — and I don't think it's for everyone — then look for the personal angle, the story-telling angle. You can't compete on authority or on raw facts. You can, however, make your story a compelling one. Especially if it has the ring of authenticity.

So forget about mesothelioma and other obscure diseases, unless of course you're one of their unfortunate victims. Leave them to the ambulance chasers. I tried being a Vioxx ambulance chaser, but I never made a real go at it because I wasn't that interested in the story as a whole, because Vioxx never caused me any harm. Go for more interesting, useful, and personal content. Something that engages you. Even the most mundane things like talking about your dogs can make you money, surprisingly enough. It's hard to fake enthusiasm and personal experience, and that kind of stuff does show through in what you write.

And my deepest sympathies to those afflicted by mesothelioma, and to their family members.

Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. You can read this blog by mail if it's more convenient for you, just send a blank email to memwg-blog@aweber.com to subscribe.

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