Determining Adsense payouts

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Mike

Mike

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Jun 27, 2006
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Okay, this has been bugging me for a long time, and I just now hit the boiling point. I do all my keyword research, I check bids, I even go look at sites that claim to have a list of high paying keywords. The problem is, the numbers never add up.

Let's use the infamous "mesothelioma" for an example. Almost any site that has a list of high paying keywords has meso up in the $50 range. But when you key that into the Adwords bid tool, you can buy the number 1 spot for about $6.18. On Overture it's about $25. So, if I, as an advertiser can get top spot for $6.18, how the hell is it going to pay me the publisher $50+ bucks per click? The math is really fucked up.

And that's not the only keyword. Most of them follow the same formula. "Top Paying Adsense Keywords" type website says that keyword "A" pays $x.xx, and Google's Bid Tool for Adwords shows about 25% of that, and Overture is usually less than Adwords.

Basically, I guess I'm just trying to figure out where the inflated numbers come from. Apparently I'm missing something somewhere.

One of those High Paying Adsense lists
Google Adwords bid tool
Overture bid tool
 


SEO-mike, did you not know that the keyword lists were a racket? you are on the content network so your payout is going to be different, there is no real way to know!
 
John said:
those lists and sites are gayer then aids.
Click to expand...

I completely agree. Forget about the lists then (I normally don't bother with them, but sometimes they'll jog loose a niche idea), how do you determine and approximate click value for a niche that you are considering?

I've been using Adwords Keyword Tool, and slowly increasing the "bid" amount until I have an idea of the difference between the 4-6 spots and the 1-3 spots, then figure that Adsense is going to pay somewhere in between those two numbers (approximately).
 
mike, what you do is quite revolutionary, YOU FUCKIN TEST THE BITCH OUT ON A PPC CAMPAIGN!

JJ - BUT NO SERIOUSLY - trial and error is the only way!
 
I do the opposite. I look for high searched keywords that I can get dirt cheap traffic for. Throw it up drive traffic to it and if it pays good I keep it online and if it doesn't I ditch it.
 
Remember to check that keyword actually has some advertisers. High CPC doesn't mean shit if there's only few advertisers.

I don't know whether it's true, but I have heard rumors that Google is manually reviewing sites before they can get the really high clicks like in mesothelioma keyword. So if the 1st place is $50, you can't get more than maybe $2-4 until Google reviews your site. Like I said, I can't say whether it's true, but it certainly isn't impossible. I don't target these well-known "high paying keywords" so if somebody has actual facts, let's hear 'em.

and before I forget.. asshats, bastards and other words you need to say in every post here.
 
micfire said:
Remember to check that keyword actually has some advertisers. High CPC doesn't mean shit if there's only few advertisers.
Click to expand...

True enough. I usually punch up the wordtracker numbers and then run it through a Google search to see how many of the adspaces are taken.

crislingle said:
mike, what you do is quite revolutionary, YOU FUCKIN TEST THE BITCH OUT ON A PPC CAMPAIGN!
Click to expand...

NOOOO!!!! That requires committment. I don't know if I'm ready for that yet. :D
 
The numbers given for various keyword tools should be taken with a grain of salt, but as far as I know they're the only way to determine high-paying niches without testing. Testing is an important step, but as far as I know the tools are the best way to single out promising niches to test in the first place.

Since I'm doing YPN arbitrage, I'm using the Overture keyword results in WordTracker. I throw in a whole bunch of keywords to test and then evaluate to show the top 10+ Overture results. I export to a spreadsheet so that I can sort by the bid results, and then I target the niches with the highest bids in the 5+ spot, not the 1st spot. Niches with lots of high-bidding advertisers discovered that way seem to be doing well for me. There are LOTS of other niches with insanely high bids in the 1st spot which almost certainly aren't showing up on content sites, and then the 2nd spot is some crap bid. Keyword lists rank words by those anomalous high top-spot search network bids.

Keyword lists are shit; keyword tools are the shit.
 
As everyone has said, chuck up a site, spend $5 on traffic and see how the clicks fair. If they are good start working heavily on the site if not, change the subject and use another $5 to test it.

Trial and error baby
 
illusion said:
As everyone has said, chuck up a site, spend $5 on traffic and see how the clicks fair. If they are good start working heavily on the site if not, change the subject and use another $5 to test it.

Trial and error baby
Click to expand...

Yeah, I think that's what I'm going to have to do. Just kick the tires and light the fires, eh?
 
Before I started I had a list of keywords that were supposedly "high paying" that I had put together...I quickly concluded a lot of those "tools" and "lists" out there are either e-stunts for traffic or to try and throw newbies off.

Luckly I realized that before I started and I choose niches that were off the wall and never to be found on any list.

I see daily new people posting everywhere how they've lost money or are barely breaking even and when they state their niche...it's one off of one of the "high paying" lists and are generally over saturated markets anyway.
 
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