When we consider affiliate marketing programs, one of the
first questions that comes to mind is “Affiliate or AdSense?” This is like a
trick question, however, because if you are a professional blogger like I am,
you can’t afford to play with your recurring income, and you can’t afford to
miss the opportunity offered by affiliate marketing, where the real money is.
In this post I will share some of my experiences in this
regard, and you can decide which is right for you: AdSense or affiliate
marketing.
If you are new to affiliate marketing, you can read my post
on: how to start with affiliate
marketing.
Let’s have a brief look at my model: I use affiliate
marketing banners + AdSense + direct advertisements to monetize my blog.
There is a very common misconception that Google is against
affiliate marketing, and this is not true. Google allows you to keep the
affiliate link, but insists that you place it on a quality blog. If you publish
low-quality content and place ten affiliate links within that low-quality
content, no search engine bots will accept this shoddy work.
Things to know: AdSense vs. affiliate marketing:
It’s easier to get into an affiliate network than it is to
get an approved AdSense account
Affiliate marketing pays more than AdSense
Most of the affiliate companies offer PayPal as a payment
method, whereas AdSense does not.
You can find affiliate products for all niches, but AdSense
is not allowed on certain niches.
AdSense offers recurring income, whereas affiliate marketing
pays once per shot.
AdSense is managed by Google alone, whereas there are many
large and small affiliate companies.
Affiliate ads are more attractive, whereas we don’t have
control over AdSense ads.
Clearly, just from a look at the points noted above,
affiliate marketing is more lucrative and beneficial than AdSense. Still, before drawing your own conclusion,
there are a few things you should know about affiliate marketing:
Affiliate marketing works only on certain pages, so every
page of your blog will not be making money for you. AdSense, on the other hand,
works even for those pages that do not work for affiliate marketing products.
Adsense is a backbone for any blogger when it comes to making money online,
because it keeps your cash machine flowing, though the payout per day is less
than a single affiliate sale.
With one affiliate sale, you can make somewhere between
$10-$100, depending on the product that you are pitching. In my case, the
payment from one affiliate sale will be more than what I will be making with
AdSense in a week.
One thing that I can do here is take down my prominent
AdSense ad spots above my post, and replace them with any affiliate banner from
within my niche. This can be risky, though, because it might perform very well…or
it might not. If I end up making 5-7 sales a month, it will be better than my
AdSense unit for that location. But if it is not, then I might end up making
$0.
If you are like me and you rely on both AdSense and
affiliate sales, I would suggest working on a combination of both AdSense and
affiliate sales, done in the proper manner, so that you don’t become an
affiliate market blogger. With useful
content, you will end up making some handsome amounts of cash by the end of the
month.
Make sure your most clickable areas, like above the post and
the sidebar 350 block, are covered with AdSense ads.
In my opinion, you can select these fields for affiliate
placement:
125*125 (sidebar)
728*90 (header,Footer)
468*60 (below the post, below comments, above comments)
Always remember that using the maximum AdSense unit does not
guarantee maximum revenue. In fact, using 1-2 ad units mixed with links and
search units yields better results.
