Whether or not this informational niche has promise for ads

[BobGW]

Hello,

I've been studying shamanism (healing) for about a decade.

shamanism, shamanic healing, shaman healing

There's plenty to write about here, but people that are reading about Shamanism are much less likely than the average person to click on an ad. They still would, just they're not usually material oriented.

What is your feel? Is this still a possible informational niche? I would flood the niche with excellent content and sell some rare products.

Thanks

[Linda-Vassily]

For me, a good rule of thumb for this type of question is to search with the term and see if ads for products come up. If so, there are people spending money on the  niche. I then look in Google Adwords to get search volume and see how much people are paying.

[EGOL]

I saw a guy bidding on adwords.  He charges $1500 for six sessions of 90 minutes each.  He claims that he can heal cancer, sleep disorders, heart disease, depression, AIDS, autism...  That type of revenue  should support some healthy bids for ad clicks.  I might start a contrarian blog.

[Linda-Vassily]

As a general rule, if money is being made, ads are being bought. A search with no ads = don't try this at home. A search with ads = look deeper. [One of the sites I manage is a contrarian blog.]

[BobGW]

EGOL,

If you think Shamanism has a shot I will try it. You are the master.

I have a second idea that has lots of ads in the niche but a lot of the suggested bids in Google Planner are dashes. A few say $2.50

Should I stay away from keywords with dashes?

Simple answer is fine.

[EGOL]

Several years ago the relevance of the topic area was really important.

However, today there are enough remarketing and behavioral ads being run that ad rates, even in some of the dismal topics on my sites, tend to pay better than they did in the past.  This niche has ads being run by the "service provider" instead of the "lead generator" - which is a good sign.

Hypenated domains?  I used to have a couple but purchased the unhypenated versions from domainers.

[BobGW]

Thanks EGOL, Linda above (which seems really knowledgable) almost scared me off Shamanism. But the remarketing/behavioral comment makes sense and there's a lot of traffic.

By hyphenated, I meant that there's no price in the suggested price area on the Googele keyword planner. It's got a dash for many of the keywords, no dollar amount. I thought this meant ads don't do very well for that term.

[EGOL]

Dashes usually mean - not much data.  I would assume not much traffic or interest.

[Linda-Vassily]

I didn't mean to scare you off--when I did your searches, I saw ads, so my intention was for you to look deeper, because people are spending money there.

Who is advertising? Are they reputable in the field? What are they advertising? Is this related to what you might be selling? I don't know the niche, so I don't have those answers.

What specific items will you be selling? Or if it is something too specific, what would the next more general category be? I would look into those search terms.

The keyword shamanism itself gets a lot of search, but it is broad and conceptual and probably would not by itself be your number one money word, though you would want to have some authority for it.

I also wouldn't entirely base my decision on Adwords (unless your decision is about advertising there), that's just a starting point--a rule of thumb to gauge interest. Paid search is different from organic search.

ps- Yes, the remarketing/behavioral component can be big, if you are planning to spend money in addition to your organic efforts. Good Luck!

[Alick300]

Hi Bob,

In your second reply you mentioned  "

I have a second idea that has lots of ads in the niche but a lot of the suggested bids in Google Planner are dashes. A few say $2.50

Should I stay away from keywords with dashes?"

Dashes only means that Google does not have enough data from the last 12 months in your selected location and language, in short low traffic keywords.

AdWords has no fixed price per click it is a dynamic bidding system and the price per click depends on many factors. You can read more from here :  How costs are calculated in AdWords

If you really want to reach more audience and try to find search volume IMO you should start campaign with BMM keywords only with very low budget like $10 per day and just bid that much that you can appear on first page not on top so you can avoid more clicks. By doing this you will get an idea about keyword search volume by spending little and if you think impression is enough you can raise your bids and include other match types to get goal conversions.

Hope this helps.

Thanks