Edmund Spenser, Hot Property

Last month, we started a small marketing campaign for the Calendar using the Google Adwords Starter Edition. I've been put in charge of it and I have to admit it's been interesting and fun. We set up about 40 keywords to bid on. As an economy, and in keeping with the spirit of the Calendar, we tried to keep them somewhat high-minded and cleverly obscure. "Sylvia Plath" had been our most successful keyword for search, but over the last couple weeks, we haven't gotten any listings for search.

Today I graduated to Adwords Standard Edition and found out why. Standard Edition, unlike Starter Edition, tells you the going rate for various keywords. For search, all of the keywords are much higher than the impecunious maximum bid amount we set. But what is most surprising is discovering which among our keywords is most expensive: "Edmund Spenser".

Actually, Adwords offers an interesting index of the commercial value of artists and poets. From our current keyword list:

edmund spenser 20x
dorothy parker 8x
sylvia plath 4x
stan apps 3x
philip larkin 2x
august kleinzahler 2x

I've not listed actual amounts as I am not sure that's within Adwords terms & conditions. But assume x is worth about a nickel.

I think someone did a more thorough experiment of this sort a couple years ago, but I don't know where to find it now.