New AdSense Case Study: Building A Travel Site

It's been a while since I've done an AdSense case study like the one I did before for the electronic pet fence guide (which, BTW, I'm happy to note ranks 4th on Google for “adsense case study” — the first three are Google's own case studies). My (much needed) vacation last week in San Diego gave me the idea for a new AdSense case study focusing on travel. Let's build a travel site!

Travel is for Everyone

So why choose travel as a general topic? Because traveling is something that almost everyone does at some point in their lives. Some people travel to exotic locations far away. Some don't stray too far from their hometown. It doesn't really matter — if you've gone somewhere, you can write about it. And that means you can monetize it with AdSense. If you do it right!

The problem with travel is that it's an ultra-competitive topic. You don't have to use any fancy keyword tools to know this, just type travel into Google and you'll see that there are about 1,790,000,000 pages in Google's index containing the word “travel”. Forget about getting a good ranking. And getting your AdWords ad in the #1 spot for “travel” will set you back a few dollars per click.

But competition is good, because it means there's broad interest in the topic. It also means that there's a chance to make good money with AdSense.

The key to success, of course, is to go small. When real people think about traveling, they usually have a specific place in mind. They don't type “travel” into Google, they actually type things like “travel san diego” or “travel disney”. They want to see pages relevant to the journey they wish to undertake. They're looking for travel deals or travel information. And that's where you can jump in.

Documenting Your Travels

What we're talking about here is essentially documenting your travels. It's not hard to do. When you start planning a trip, keep all your reference materials handy. Take along a digital camera and take some pictures. Collect maps, brochures, pamphlets and other useful informational or promotional materials. If the trip is complicated, you can even write some notes during your travels about what you've seen, where you stayed, etc.

When you return from your travels, sit down and organize all the materials you've gathered and build a site or blog around them. Keep it focused, don't make the mistake of trying to expand your visit into a general guide to whatever area you were visiting. There are plenty of professional sites out there that create those kinds of sites. Your site needs to be more personal and more specific.

I'll be using my trip to San Diego as an example. I don't want to write a generic site about San Diego because I didn't see all of San Diego. But I did learn some interesting things about visiting San Diego:

• I discovered that staying in the Mission Valley area of San Diego, which came about mostly by chance because that's where the conference hotel (my wife was attending a conference) was located, was very convenient. Highways 163, I-8 and I-5 were in easy reach.
• Anthony's Fish Grotto has good seafood but a terrible atmosphere, they herd you in like cattle. And if, like me, you're not fond of seafood, the pickings are pretty slim.
• If you're a dog owner, Saturday morning on Dog Beach is lots of fun.
• We had exceptionally lovely weather due to Santa Anas, which I hadn't heard of before.

These things could all be incorporated into a site/blog about San Diego. If they're interesting to me, they'll be interesting to others traveling to San Diego as well.

There are some crucial decisions you need to make at the start of the project, however. What do you name your site? Should it be a blog or a standalone website? Should you document one trip or multiple trips? We'll tackle these next time.

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?

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