The Google Keyword Tool

So we’ve seen that finding a keyword with a wide price spread is going to be crucial. Overture’s Bids Tool is one way to do that. Google’s Keyword Tool is another.

But what this tool gives you isn’t just the current top bids for particular keywords. It also gives you the top bids for other similar keywords.

Instead of trying to find a keyword with a price spread wide enough to cover the lost users, you could bring users in with one keyword and send them out with another.

For example, according to Google, “organic fruit baskets” pays as much as $4.12 per click. Even with Google’s commission at 22.5 percent, that would still generate $3.23 per click. If you were to advertise at 10 cents per click for the phrase “organic fruit” on Overture and show ads for “organic fruit baskets” on your AdSense ad units, you would only need a CTR of around 3 percent to make a profit.

Of course, that means that you have to be able to bring up the ads you want. And you can’t quite do that. What you can do though is to use Section Targeting and all the other ad targeting strategies to increase the chances that you’ll be bring up the highest-paying ads on your site.