SEM Tycoon

**moonlightmile** · 02-26-2007, 01:27 PM

I've been wrestling with this question for a while and I haven't found/come up with a good answer. I'm trying to plan this venture in web marketing as much as possible. I've got the content creation -> site design -> getting peoples eyes to the site all planned out, but when I get to the big part, the monetization potential, I'm having a hard time coming up with a way to estimate the monetization potential of the niches I am exploring.

Here is what I have come up with so far:
1.Choose your niche - I searched sunglassses using the seo book keyword search and came up with lots of results. Sunglasses gets searched for approximatley 468,000 times. Scrolling down a little bit there are other keywords that are search for less and less. Ahh... one that I like Aviator Sunglasses. Its estimated search volume is around 22,000 per month

2. So we have the approximate number of searches that people are doing per month for my targeted keyword... 22,000. I'm planning on ranking #1 with my 15 page minisite devoted to aviator sunglasses.

1st question... How much traffic can I expect from the serps?
With the sites I have so far, all of my traffic is coming from long tail, multiple keyword searches. I don't rank on the first page for my key terms (yet :1eye: ). But it is becoming clear that a lot of traffic comes in from these longtail searches.

Assuming I am the number one result for aviator sunglasses in google, msn, and yahoo should I expect around %40 of people to click over to my site that search for that term. Is that fairly accurate? I'm getting that from the thread about the leaked AOL data here on earners forum (I can't post URLs yet, just seach AOL data here)

That gives me around 9,000 hits per month just for the search term Aviator Sunglasses. There will also be many longtail searches that target my site (eg.. coolest sunglasses in movie, top gun shades, etc....) Its not clear to me that this traffic (longtail) can be estimated reasonably. I'm just going to put out there that I'll get another 5,000 hits from other searches. For a total of 15,000 hits/month. Thats about 500 hits/day.

Its going to be a 15 page minisite, along with a blog where the latest news about aviator sunglasses can be seen. Lets say on average each visitor generates 10 page impressions for a total of 5,000 page impressions a day and 150,000 page impressions per month.

3. I'm going to monetize with Adsense, plus some CPA network.
Now I need to estimate how much I can make from Adsense. According to googles keyword tool a bid of around 1.40 will get you in the top 1-3 placement for the search word aviator sunglasses and other related aviator searches. From what I can tell publishers get about half of what the advertisor pays so I'd get about .70 everyime someone clicked on one of my ads. I need to estimate click through rate (ctr) now. Lets say %2. 2% of all page views result in a click. That would be 100 clicks per/day. Is this correct or is ctr an estimate of clicks per visitor? which would be 10 clicks/day

100 clicks per day from 500 visitors seems high to me. Do some people see this with visitors that get a lot of page impressions?

So I'm going to go with an estimate of 10 clicks/day at .70 per clicks on adsense ads.
Thats $7/day from adsense for a total of $210/month

The CPA ads I'm less familiar with. I know that payouts are higher, but I haven't joined any CPA networks yet but lets say 1 person/day signs up for whatever the offer is and I get a 50/50 split for a total of $10/day. Over a month that would be $300.

Total income from site/month $510 /year ~$6,000 :chef:

Does this seem reasonable based on the search data? I know adsense clicks can vary wildly in payout. Is .70 a reasonable payout based on the google keyword data? Is one CPA signup per day reasonable with 500 visitors/day (too low, too high)?

I'd appriciate any input you guys(and gals) have on this.
Thanks,
Matt

**jesterx** · 02-28-2007, 12:11 AM

monetize with adsense is good but the products that you are going to sell...are they really going to be sunglasses??

maybe research more on sunglasses seems too broad to me and too much competition.

just my two cents worth.

**imported_WillB** · 02-28-2007, 01:33 PM

The niche and SEO plan sounds fine. Get ranked, get tons of traffic.
Also think about using social media to hit the teen/young person
demographic - YouTube, MySpace etc.

As for monetisation, I'd skip the AdSense. Your primary income (in
my opinion) should come from sunglasses sales, not PPC. Find a
decent dropshipper, and offer up discounts on sunglasses, or buy
up rare stock on eBay and resell it.

PPC isn't the *only* way to monetise a site, and it's usually not
the *best* way either. If you must, put it in along with the CPA,
but generally I'd go for something more substantial for the bulk of
your money.

Concerning the figures - get a site up and start testing. You'll
soon see how accurate your guesses were, and you'll have some
real data to work with in the future.

**skiper** · 03-05-2007, 11:29 PM

Seems sunglasses is good niche but ithink you need to find affiliates that provides sunglasses..you need a product... ithink users are searching for sunglasses because they want to buy it.

**moonlightmile** · 03-06-2007, 10:43 AM

WillB - Some good thoughts. When I first got into this the idea was to put up a site with some adsense, sit back, and watch the money roll in. Its clear that it doesn't work that way (maybe it used to?).

Do you have any reccomendations for drop shippers? I hadn't even considered selling a product myself, but that is a good idea.

I also like the idea of using social media sites to target the younger generation (the people that would be buying sunglasses). Thanks for the ideas.

Skiper - What you said about "users searching for sunglasses because they want to buy it" really struck a chord. It goes to the very heart of the question of why do people search for things to begin with. I think in general its because they want more information on it, but sometimes they search for things they want to buy outright.

**wumple** · 03-07-2007, 03:53 AM

Yeah I second the myspace/facebook advertising...you might try Youtube too.

And you should look into affiliate programs for sunglasses. I'm sure there are plenty of them around. IMO that's what your biggest earner will be.

Try associateprograms.com, look at the shopping sites and find an affiliate program that lets you link directly to a specific pair of sunglasses (don't have links to storefronts, conversion % goes way down if they have to search for a product).

**jesterx** · 03-10-2007, 06:16 PM

yeah a fast snappy ad approch on youtube with some models....that might work.

lots of good ideas here...now go out and try them

**moonlightmile** · 03-11-2007, 02:51 PM

Some great ideas here guys (and gals maybe). I was using Sunglasses just as an example, but I might have to give it a try and see what happens. I especially like the idea about the youtube video with models....