Blog Content Based Solely on High Paying Keywords

Doug Nelson writes "Michael Buffington chose to build a weblog using highly automated content aggregation tools around a single keyword, asbestos, because of the high click through rate associated with the ad. 'The subject matter, while weighty and all that, is of little importance to me. It's not that I don't have opinions on asbestos and asbestos reform, because I do. The whole point of the site is to experiment with an idea. I built a tool that helps me aggregate topical news with the help of Google's Alert system. So far it works wonderfully. But there's a second motive as well. Right now asbestos reform and asbestos related litigation is on fire. Lawyers are paying anywhere from $15-100 per click through on Google ads. The second part of this big experiment is to see if I can capture some of that click through revenue while still providing a somewhat valid service to people who might arrive by search results.'"

Comments

Have you met Roland?

[Dancin_Santa]

Roland Piquepaille does that now with Slashdot. Aggregate content and redigest it and offer it up for viewers with advertisement banners readily available.

Not saying there's anything wrong with it, it's just a little antithetical, if you know what I mean.

He chose the wrong word

[Bushcat]

"Asbestos" is too generic. "Asbestosis" would be better, but the word the ambulance chasers pay a lot for is "mesothelioma", on the assumption the person typing that word already has that problem or is close to someone who has it. I would have thought "pneumoconiosis" would be high on the list, but no-one seems to be tagging it.

There's a Cottage Industry Built Around This

[miller60]

What Buffington is doing is hardly new. Bloggers have been chasing high-paying keywords from the day AdSense was announced. The trend accelerated last year when the Wall Street Journal did a front-page feature about how much lawyers were paying for asbestos-related keywords. Tons of webmaster-related web sites offer tips on similar AdSense strategies, and there's even companies offering to sell databases of high-paying keywords for $199. This guy is actually way late in adopting a widely-used strategy. But by discussing his motivations so directly, he got linked on Boing-Boing and Slashdot. He's an accidental marketing genius. Go figure.

Re:Bankrupting the lawyers....

[Shuji]

Looks like the original estimate might have been a tad bit optimistic (shocker!). From Buffington's comments after his original posting:

And so far, my estimates on click through rates are way off. Like, I was smoking crack off. It's too early to tell at this point because Google doesn't give you specific ad stats until three days of data exists, but my guess is that current click through rates are a little over a $1.00. That suggests either two things - my estimates on what advertisers spend is way off, or that Google takes an insane cut. I'm inclined to think the former.

(http://www.michaelbuffington.com/archives/2005/02 /the_grand_expir.html):

Violates terms of Google Alerts as well...

[Optic7]

Yep, google thought of this. Here is the wording in the terms of use for their alerts service:

Personal Use Only The Google Services are made available for your personal, non-commercial use only. You may not use the Google Services to sell a product or service, or to increase traffic to your Web site for commercial reasons, such as advertising sales. You may not take the results from a Google search and reformat and display them, or mirror the Google home page or results pages on your Web site. You may not "meta-search" Google. If you want to make commercial use of the Google Services, you must enter into an agreement with Google to do so in advance. Please contact us for more information.

Meso Info

[mcguyver]

Having worked in this space for the past few years, I can provide some insight. There are two parts to this issue, the person paying for clicks and the person generating the clicks.

The asbestos mesothelioma bandwagon started a few years ago when the government set aside a multi billion dollar trust fund for victims. In order to dip into the trust fund, a lawyer needs a valid victim of asbestos. The name of the common disease for those that suffer from asbestos exposure is mesothelioma. The average payout is $1M and the attorney commissions are 40%. This explains why attorneys are willing to pay high prices for clicks. Clicks go for as much as $100 on Overture however in practice you never see those high CPC rates. A year ago, $30 clicks were normal; today it's more like $0.25-$5. Even at $100/click, attorneys are taking in huge profits. Paying $10k for a case or 100 clicks at $100/click can be a good investment if you can generate $400k in attorney fees for that case.

Setting up a website to capture these pricey clicks is simple but doing it well can be nearly impossible. The asbestos/meso space is as competitive as it gets. Setting up a blog, creating doorway pages, links and content will only generate a little traffic. Doing well in meso requires aggressive SEO, solid optimization, links and content. Having a lot of traffic makes it easier to monetize. With enough traffic you can lease your site to law firms. AdSense is generally very inefficient so it makes sense to cut out the middle man. Kicking publishers out of Adsense will not stop these sites.

It is an interesting space. The huge settlements that lawyers have been able to generate has fueled a frenzy of SEO activity in the past year. The same activity is seen on TV and print media in Vioxx ads. The most surprising thing here is people are acknowledging online advertising and its ability to sell almost anything.

Re:Meso Info

[jizmonkey]

Are you sure the average payout is $1m and the average commission is 40%? Those both seem quite high from what I heard a few years ago in bankruptcy class. I suspect by "having worked in this space," you mean SEO and not asbestos litigation.

The true numbers, as I understand them, is that the average claim for asbestos is maybe $10k-$20k, which is not high at all for someone who was given lung cancer. The commissions on filing claims are low, too, because it is very mechanical, but they're not zero because the law firm fronts all the costs (even for would-be plaintiffs who turn out not to have a viable claim) and the lawyers, secretaries, and paralegals need to make a modest living too.

Your numbers of $1m and 40% are from when asbestos litigation would go to trial and it wasn't a simple matter of filing a claim with the trust fund, and yet even then those figures are maximums, not averages. Many got smaller verdicts or nothing. The settlements of early litigants who didn't go all the way to verdict was often below what mesothelioma patients would get today from the trust fund, maybe $5k. Showing that a disease was caused by exposure to hazardous chemicals is extremely difficult. (Look at the recent, failed, litigation against IBM for workplace chemical exposure for another example of this.) There were some very few firms that got rich from the economies of scale of asbestos suits in the 1970s and 1980s, but another way to look at it is that they provided a way to help the cancer patients at a time when there was no other option.

Putting aside the general issue of "ambulance chasers," most of whom are by no means wealthy (although every now and then some like John Edwards strike it rich), I have trouble understanding the objection to filing asbestos claims. Having mesothelioma virtually guarantees that the person got lung cancer from asbestos, end of story, with a level of proof beyond that of almost any other kind of civil litigation. (Although a few decades ago it was very hard to win the suits.)

My understanding, though, is that the trust funds have been depleted by the filing of less important claims, where the patient shows scarring of the lungs but did not develop cancer. There's been some controversy in Britain recently over whether "pleural plaques" claims should be allowed. My own view is that they should not.