Seems to me that there must not be TOO many PPC listings (and therefore adsense ads to display) for many local business types.

For example… “Pasadena Tree Trimming” or something.

How do you go about profiting from such keywords?

I have a client who’s roof I did and I noticed his signature link in an email he sent me. He’s a Chiropractor and when I saw his site linked in his email I followed it. I found out some interesting things.

He pays a company X dollars per month for hosting, web site, articles, and supposedly top ranking in Google.

I decided to do a copy scape for one of his pages that the company had put an article on. I got a lot of results with the exact same article!

I called him and told him about it, among other things I found that could have been done better. Blogs, Hubpages, etc.

So now my client is taking matters into his own hands and writing some of his own articles, and making some blogs, etc.

I think you are right, there is a huge local market that can by exploited for just about any industry class there is!