If you honestly think 450,000 exact monthly searches aka 1,830,000 broad matches is not "many searches", then you are in the wrong business.
George Brown (Google Sniper Expert) was making $900 per month on one wedding related website that was getting 5,000 exact searches a month.
I'm making about $150 per month with only 15,000 of the 450,000 traffic since I'm not position number 1-3 yet.
Do the math: $150 = 15,000 visitors, 450,000 visitors = $4,500 per month on autopilot.
And this is in an industry where I don't even have adsense in because I never got approved for it.
If I was approved for adsense, I could easily be making right now $450 and about $12,500 per month when I got to position 1-3.