Recently I was introduced to an interesting formula for identifying profitable keywords to target in article writing and blog posting. The formula -as it was told to me- is (CPC)*(global monthly count of searches)*.005. The result, I was told should be greater than 50 to be a “good” keyword to focus on. As previously stated I thought this was fairly interesting but I also feel it’s a bit anal and lacking in scope. Mainly because it doesn’t take into account which keywords you can actually rank high for, nor does it account for keywords that result in web searchers actually clicking on ads.
I’m sure many people use formulas such as this one and probably many others to size up their target words and I’m many of these people make good money but let me tell you what I think about this one in particular based on a case study of one of my articles that ranks light years higher than 50 in this but will likely not perform up to such a lofty standard.
Based solely on income derived, my highest earning article on eHow to date (which hasn’t even been live for two months) works out to 287.55 on the formula and it get’s approximately $16.79 per thousand pave views (PV). The formula has at least correctly identified my winner but as I previously stated the formula lacks the foresight to know whether or not you can feasibly rank in the first page for your keyword. In my case I can. I am currently 7th and 10th on Google for two variations of my keyword phrase. Hopefully with a little strategic plugging I can get these to fall higher on the page and increase my net page views and earnings. The point is however if I can’t get on the front page then no matter the result of this formula I won’t get the visitors to get me good income.
My highest earner that got the 287.55 through the formula is up against roughly 70,600 pages where as my highest potential earner based on the formula based on this formula comes out to 11,352.8, but it's hardly my best earner because it's up against other pages (only about 4,000) that also rank very well for my keyword (I can't get close to the front page... yet). This article’s earnings are good but no where near my best. It has the potential though, it's earned so far $23.57 per thousand PVs so far, which is better than my number one article. The problem with it though is it doesn't get to the front of Google easily so my page views are down and thus, the overall dollars in my pocket is lower than you might think.
All this is to say that it's easy to figure out which articles have potential but this must be compared against which can actually be achieved in search results. I know everyone says that the secret algorithm for earnings in eHow is mysterious but from a blogger's perspective it's just based on ad clicks... and maybe a little bit on views. It can’t be much different with eHow. The more eyes show up to pages that show expensive ads, the more money you will make.
My longevity blog has one page, Leading Causes of Death in the US, that gets a third of the site’s overall traffic... unfortunately it is a page where the ads pay very little. Thus even though it gets most of my traffic it is not in the top ten for earnings on my blog. You have to get high CPC keywords to make good money and then you have to get eyes on those articles. If you can only get one or none of those two elements you might have good article or post but also a poorly earning article or post.
One such eHow article I have that fits this profile (good article - poor earnings) is the very first article ever written titled How To Purchase Fine Wine for Under Ten Dollars (article was deleted by eHow). This was published before I knew to do keyword phrase research and thus it has been live for nearly two months but has only gotten 37 PVs and no earnings. I decided to experiment a bit today by editing some of the text to include a few more keyword mentions. I added a SEO proper picture with a keyworded caption, and I have just linked to it with good anchor link text here on this post. We’ll see how this article does over the next 45 days or so now that I gave it some love. Unfortunately I can’t change the title but hey; it was my first article, I have to accept it for what it is.
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