This depends on the competition of the keyword and your ability to rank the sites. Start small, like 50 exact searches a day (=1.5k/month) and at least $1.00 in adwords. If that turns out to rank easily, go for more competitive/higher traffic terms etc.etc. until you find your own "sweet spot".

This needs to go in the AdSense forum.

Everyone has their own criteria and they all have merit for those that are using them. It is pretty arbitrary really. Depending on my mood when i am hunting keywords, I will use anywhere from 1,000 to 5,000 as a minimum search volume. My CPC value I look for is usually $2 to $5, again depending on my mood at the time.

Some niches don't have many keywords with CPC over $2 so if the volume is good, then that will work. I know I had a couple of days with over $200 AdSense earnings from a site of mine. My average payout per click was $0.14, yet I made well over $200 that day on that site. I had a bit over 14,000 visits that day, and I don't remember the click through percentage, but it was pretty good.

Bottom line, you can make money if you have traffic, even with low cost keywords. But I will always choose higher cost keywords with traffic if I can find them.

There are 2 ways to look at this...

1. Go for lots of sites or pages on a single site that target the long-tail keywords that don't get a lot of monthly searches. Easier traffic, but not as much of it.

2. Go for the more competitive keywords, as long as they get a ton of searches. You may never reach the Top 10 at Google, but I can tell you from lots of personal experience that sitting on Page 2 can bring a lot of traffic if the keyword gets searched a lot.

Don't get too hung up on CPC. I like around $2.00 as a minimum, but I'll go lower if the search volume is higher. After all, you can make just as much from ads paying 10 cents per click if your traffic is high as you can from ads paying you $1.00 each click and very little traffic.

Remember, too, that Google wants your traffic to convert for the advertiser. So, you might start out with the high-paying clicks, then find that number dropping if your traffic isn't actually buying anything.

In other words, Adsense is more complicated than most people think. You can tangle yourself up in knots trying to come up with the "perfect" formula, but in reality your time is better spent adding more content. Pick a strategy for picking keywords and go with it. Don't overthink it. Get good at finding them quickly so you can get on with the content creation.

John

There are SO many variables when it comes to how much Adsense pays you per click.

- the season
- the time of month
- time of day
- quality of content
- where the visitor came from
- how long the visitor is on the advertiser's site
- conversion rate for advertiser

Any many many many other variables.

For instance; I used to believe (like 5 years ago) that only the BIG niches paid off - like finance, insurance, legal, etc. paid big.

But I tell ya - there are allot of really high paying clicks in Water Softeners too.

Just "pick a square" and fill it - HARD!