Adsense or Affiliates – What Suits Your Site?

Posted by: foxmarketer on December 9 in Earning



One of the leading debates webmasters have these days is on the advantages and disadvantages of using Adsense or affiliate products to generate income from their site.

In fact I often find this problem being asked time and again on forums… “Is it easier to make money online through Google’s Adsense or through affiliate programs on my website?”

The simple answer to this question is some sites will suit adsense, while others will suit affiliate products.

For example, I’ve found that some of my own niche sites respond well to adsense and seem to generate a consistent amount of money every day, while other websites perform better when affiliate programs are used.

So it really has a lot to do with the niche that your site is in.

Let us look at the advantages and disadvantages of both Adsense and affiliates.

ADSENSE

Advantages
1. Adsense earns you money every time someone clicks on an ad. Generally, visitors will be more willing to click on an ad than purchase an affiliate product.

2. Adsense matches your ads related to your sites content. The ads displayed will therefore be relevant making the site more relevant to your visitors.

3. Earnings from Adsense can provide a consistent income each day, compared to affiliate sales which can be very inconsistent at times.

Disadvantages
1. Earnings can vary – some days you will earn very good cost per click on your ads’, while other days you will earn a few cents for a click.

2. Adsense ads can be very obtrusive and some visitors may dislike a site full of ads and leave your site immediately upon arrival.

3. You have no say in choosing what ads are shown on your site.

AFFILIATE PROGRAMS

Advantages
1. Affiliate programs will in general earn you much more revenue overall than adsense. For example one sale will earn you a great deal more money than what you would expect from a single adsense click.

2. Affiliate programs can be cleverly concealed or ‘cloaked’ so that the links are not noticeable.

3. You are able to decide and in control of what affiliate programs you place on your site.

Disadvantages
1. On some days you may have a few good sales then not have a sale for weeks on end. Affiliate income can be very inconsistent at times unless you have a number of high converting sites.

2. Not all niches have affiliate products available to them.

Other Factors to consider

I want to mention here that not all niches having affiliate products available to them is a crucial point.

If you think there isn’t any affiliate products available worth promoting on your site because they are not of a very high standard then I recommend you choose adsense over affiliate products.

I have found it is very difficult to make affiliate sales if the product you are promoting is of poor quality and not up to standard. Consumers are looking for quality and value for money and will quickly go elsewhere if they are not satisfied with the product being promoted.

Another factor you should take into consideration when considering adsense or affiliate products is the average cost per click for your keyword.

To obtain this information go to the Google Adwords Keyword tool and enter your keyword.

Select “show average cost per click” and it will tell you the average revenue you would earn for a click on an ad related to that keyword.

Obviously, a high cost per click is always good as you will earn more revenue.

Generally if an adsense click is a high amount (like $6.00 for example) then you should definitely consider adsense.

Another tool I also use when researching adsense is spyfoo – http://www.spyfoo.com

Spyfoo is a very powerful tool as it allows you to see how many advertisers there are bidding on a keyword, as well as a graph showing the average cost per click over a number of months.

A high advertiser number is very good as this indicates there are a number of advertisers all paying money to advertise on the keyword, which can result in a good cost per click for your site.

To conclude, I recommend you use your own judgement when determining whether or not Adsense or affiliate products are best for your site.

Like I said at the beginning of this post, some sites suit affiliates while others suit adsense. Some sites may suit both adsense and affiliate programs which you can use together to generate even more income – it’s up to you.

About the Author:

Brandon Walker is an accomplished internet marketer who provides tips, techniques and advice to other bloggers on how to generate income from working online. You can visit his site at http://www.foxmarketer.com