I know russians making close to $20k daily (non adult) from SEs.
Anyway, Google or any other SE is just a site listing other sites. Rules of listing are set by algo. If I understand algo, I am listed, that's all. So basically you can be succesfull when creating sites for SE, not for surfer. It's totally opposite to what SEs are trying to do but it's their problem not mine. Google is for me like TheHun, except it takes thousands submissions at once, reviewer works much faster, doesn't want nice layout and surfers convert 30x better.
XM