We have discussed why Google Adsense is easier for a beginner to make money online than affiliate marketing. We also suggested you sign up for a free Google Adwords account to use Google Adwords Words Tool, because after you signed into an Adwords account, the tool shows more relevant returns, and you need an Adwords account to access the Contextual Targeting Tool(CTT), which will be a key tool in selecting keywords and estimating Adsense earnings to build your profitable Adsense website. If you want to read more about keyword research, please refer to How To Find Keywords Using Google Ad Words Tool. This article discusses how to estimate your Adsense earnings to help you create a money making Adsense website.
The Contextual Targeting Tool
CPC figures on the Adwords Keyword Tool offer valuable information for us to use in our keyword research, because the Adwords Keyword Tool displays a lot of extremely valuable data that the Contextual Targeting Tool does not show. However, when we estimate Adsense earnings, we can not use the CPC shown on the Adwords Keyword Tool. Because the CPC shown on the Google Adwords Tool are for Google’s Search network, and indicate what an advertiser would pay to display their ad on the search network. However, Adsense publishers display ads for Google’s content network. And content advertisers are willing to pay much less to advertise on the Content network, because they don’t have the visibility that ads on the search network do.
Let’s take a look at the Contextual Targeting Tool. You can access this tool by signing in to your Google Adwords account. It is free to do this and you do not have to start an Adwords campaign to use it. After you signed in, just click “Contextual Targeting Tool ” at left side as the following.
One very important thing is that you should always change the filters to indicate the primary country that you are targeting for your site. The Contextual Targeting Tool doesn’t show search volume or competition at all. Instead, it shows you groups of keywords that have the same “suggested bid.” Every keyword in the group has the exact same suggested bid, which is the Contextual Targeting Tool’s version of CPC. You’ll notice some little “+” signs beside the various groups of keywords. When you click on these, they expand into even more groups of related keywords which offer you more options.
If you compare the exact same keyword between the Contextual Targeting Tool and the regular Google Adwords Keyword Tool, you will likely see a huge difference between the CPC.
Estimating AdSense Earnings
The Contextual Targeting Tool is the tool that we really need to use to check out the value of a click on one of our ads. In order to estimate Adsense earnings, we will need to know search volume and suggested bid for our keywords to get to that $100/month goal I set out in the Plan of Making Money with Adsense.
CTR and CTT
Let’s assume that our click through rates(CTR) to our ads is 3%. That’s actually a fairly good CTR for Adsense. We also assume our ads earn us $1.00 when a reader clicks on one of our ads. We know that Google pays Adsense publishers 68% of the value of what an advertiser pays for a click. Therefore, we want our clicks to have a suggested bid price of $1.00 plus 68% which equals $1.47. So, as long as the clicks are worth at least $1.47 according to the CTT, it should be fine.
100/1.00=100
In other words, we are seeking to get at least 100 clicks per month on our ads.
3333 visitors x .03 CTR = 100 Clicks
So , if assuming that 3% CTR, the number of visitors we need to get to our site per month is 3333 visitors.
3333(visitors)/30 days per month = 111 visitors per day.
Therefore, we are looking to get approximately 111 visitors per day to reach our goal of $100/month based on that 3% CTR and clicks worth $1.00.
How Long Will It take to get 111 visitors per day? It depends. It depends on how often you add new content to your side, what kind of keywords you choose, how you build backlinks for your site. For beginners, if you work part time on your site, the realistic goal could be 1 year. It took me about 3 years to earn $100/month by Google AdSense for my first website while I was only work part time on it, actually I was working on it actively about 1 year part time. With a new domain, good on-page SEO and link building, it is possible to get to the 111 visitors per day mark in two months. However, If you are a beginner, you need some time to learn. The great benefit of Adsense earnings is that it is kind of passive income, which means once you built your site and made some money, the money will keep coming in and you only need very little maintenance work.
Estimating Traffic: Search Volume
Our goal is to get our sites to rank on the first page of Google for the chosen keywords, ideally rank in the top three positions for the keywords. Because if our sites appear in the top 3 search engine positions for that keyword, the chances that visitors will see our site in the Search Engine Ranking Positions (SERPs) and select our site increases exponentially.
Bellow are the percentages of visitors click through the search results to a site based on the search engine rankings of the site by SEO experts.
No.1 Position: 42.4%
No.2 Position: 11.8%
No.3 Position: 8.4%
In other words, the sites ranking in Google top three ranking positions have 62.4% of all click throughs. So if our site can get into one of the top three positions, and if we average the 62.4% total over the 3 positions, we can get an average of 20.86% of someone clicking through to our site.
100 (100 represents total search volume of 100%) / 20.86 = 4.79
3333(visitors needed) X 4.79= 15977 (needed search volume for our keyword groups)
We don’t need to look for a single keyword with a search volume of 15977, we need to find a group of keywords that have a total search volume of 15977 added together. If we plan to build a 10 page niche website, we would aim for 10 keywords in our initial keyword group.
To summarize, we are targeting $100 month for our site here. The combined exact match local search volume of the keywords must be at least 15977. If you get a higher number, even better! The suggested bid on the CTT must be worth at least $1.47, preferably $2.00. There should be lots of advertisers for our chosen keywords, based on the “green bar” in the Google Adwords Tool showing at least 75% and doing a Google search for the keyword without quotes to see how many ads show up. Remember, lots of competition as shown on the Google Adwords Tool is a good thing! Please do not forget to change your filters to the geographic region you are targeting. To build a profitable niche site, in addition to estimate your AdSense earning correctly, you need to do a thorough keyword competition analysis to increase your chance to rank high in Google search.
Related posts:
- Making Money with Google AdSense : Choose the Best Keywords
- Making Money with Google AdSense Step By Step: The Plan
- How To Find Keywords Using Google Ad Words Tool
$1.00 is not 68% of a $1.68. You need the PPC to be $1.47 to earn 68% (the $1/click earnings you want). In other words, 68% of a 1.47 is $1.00.
Thanks to you, Math Guy, for your good explanation and accurate math.