So one thing you can do is to do a search for your root keyword and then see how the websites that dominate your topic earn their money.
This can be a very enlightening exercise if you have never really paid much attention to it before.
For example, almost any niche or topic has AdSense as a potential form of monetization. You can find websites about just about any topic that are monetized that way. But that does not always mean that AdSense is the best choice for advertising for those websites. And in fact, it usually isn’t.
Google has publicly stated that their “take” from AdSense/Adwords is about 27 percent or so. This means that, while you are doing fairly decent in terms of having contextual ads delivered and getting paid most of the money, you are still losing at least 27 percent of the value to the middleman.
That percentage may not seem like much to some people, but to others it will seem like a lot. Regardless, if you earning about $750/month with your AdSense and you want to make a thousand or more, then going “direct” or finding a more efficient monetization method would get you there instantly, without any change in traffic.
If you look at the big hotel keywords and the websites that come up for those, they are not running ads. They are booking hotel rooms.
If you look up the big financial keywords, they are not selling ads, they are selling leads or trying to get customers for debt relief, consolidation, etc.
As a matter of fact, another thing that you might do is this:
Look at the AdSense ads that come up on your website (do NOT click them) but do visit the URL to see what they are selling.
Obviously, they are paying for traffic and there is a reason that they are paying for that traffic. They have some sort of offer that is lucrative for them to pursue. It is so lucrative, in fact, that they can afford to buy traffic on a per-click basis and still make money from it.
This is a big hint to you and your own business. What you are doing is to get the traffic, pass it on to them by selling advertising, and thus you both get a piece of the potential profit pie.
But what exactly are your advertisers selling, and how are they making their money from your customer?
Could you forgo the advertising and start selling whatever it is that your advertisers are selling? Because if you can, then you can make a lot more money that way, without the clunky advertising getting in the way at all, siphoning off part of the profit and value.
Do a few Google searches for your root keyword and then carefully study the first page of organic results. See how each website earns money. What is their business model? Are they all pretty much doing the same thing to make money?
Is that the same thing you are doing to make money too? Maybe it should be!
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