When we consider affiliate marketing programs, one of the first questions that come 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 what is affiliate marketing.
Let’s have a brief look at my model: I use affiliate marketing banners + AdSense + direct advertisements to monetize my blog.
First thing first: Earning Proof
Here is my Earning proof from both the monetisation technique.
AdSense earning proof:
Here is my earning proof from Affiliate marketing. And, this report is only from a single affiliate program:
It is clearly visible that affiliate marketing is more profitable than AdSense.
If you want to dive deep into the world of affiliate marketing, you can join ShoutUniversity’s affiliate marketing course which is for only $249 one time payment.
Also, 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 or Payoneer 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 is managed by Google alone, whereas there are many large and small affiliate companies.
- Affiliate ads are more attractive and generate more money than Google AdSense.
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 to 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.
Read: Can you use affiliate links with AdSense on your blog?
Do let me know your opinion. Which do you prefer…AdSense ads, affiliate banners, or both?
Update: 1 1/2 years after writing this post, I am here to let you know that affiliate marketing has worked better for me. Even with 1-2 banners, the conversion is high, because target visitors convert more for affiliate product sales.
Use the comments section below to let us know whether affiliate marketing or AdSense is working better for you.
If you find the information in this post useful, please share it with your friends and colleagues on Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus.
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My website has adsense and now I am willing to add affiliate ads but I am confused if Google doesn’t allow me to keep both at a time.
Is there any website which has both – adsense and affiliate? If yes, please send me the link.
Thanks,
Benojir
@Benojir
That’s a smart question and you can find the answer over here: https://www.shoutmeloud.com/adsense-and-affiliate-ads-on-same-webpage.html
I believe affiliate marketing is far more better then just using adsense. Infact I am runing my blog since 4 months my traffic is low so from that I can’t earn more from adsense but I have earned quite well from affiliate links. All you need to do is build direct readers for your blog and they will follow you. 🙂
Anyways thanks for this great article 😀
i think affiliate is better than adsense if your website most of visitor are come from us or Canada. right??
@Saif
It all depends upon what kind of blog and one traffic one have. You are right about the fact that U.S./Canada traffic works good for Affiliate, at the same time it works great for AdSense too. What really matter is, what kind of website you are running and what kind of affiliate program you are promoting.
On the begining I was not able to think blogging without Google Adsense but as the time passed I started loving affiliate marketing and its quite enjoyable.
Affiliate is certainly much better but it is not as passive income as Adsense. I’ve sold a few HostGator hosting, some wordpress plugins and very few eBooks. The problem with Affiliate is that if you are busy with something else and could not promote the products consistently, you make NO MONEY at all!
hmm.seems like affiliate marketing is much better than adsense..applied for dreamhost and thesis affiliate and i think its not going to be easy to make some serious money with them.
hey harsh its very nice to read your blogs….they just motivate you not only in wirtting blog content but also to work hard in a right direction. i also have started my blog after knowing my interest and reading your blogs techburst.in
can u please have a look onto it and after reading some of the content tell me wether should/can i take it forward?
pls give me some advice….really looking forward to your reply
I prefer Adsense because adsense provides a steady income rate,Can we use Adsense and other affiliates together??
I were using one ad unit above content and were happy with the out come but then after hearing lot of voices from blog i started using few other ad units as well and again happy with the out come!
YEs true but in case when there are less affilate or direct adverts person needs 2 depend on adsense primarily
I only keep focus on adsense marketing.
But affiliate marketing also good bussines to get some profit.
Some gurus claim that they can make thoudand of dollars everyday by selling affiliate products. For me, it is tough to make even 1 cent.
Great article..but I think link & search ads pay very little as compared to other ad units…..
Hi,
I actually have a question relating to the content in your article. (great article by the way) If you have created a blog with information about an affiliate product (and just general information to create interesting content) will adsense approve your blog even though you are an affiliate for another product on that site?
I can’t say anything negative about either one, as long as you know how to leverage both of them, then you can really make some killer money, but its definitely harder with adsense.
I am using combination of both. As written in your post, Adsense is the backbone for any blogger’s earnings. I always play around with my affiliate links, But Adsense is the place where i get most of my revenues. So i dont risk it much.
AdSense is working well with me. No luck with Amazon’s affiliate till now. I also tried infolinks but it’s 1 month earning is equal to my 1 day AdSense earning. So, I discontinued it today after a month.
Affiliate Marketing is more profitable but it’s harder to earn compared to AdSense. I’m doing a mixture, depends on the post I’m writing about but AdSense is quite alright although most visitors have gone blind nowadays with AdSense
You forgot to mention amazon, ebay and click bank. I got some success in amazon affiliates. Looks very promising if you can write nice things.
i have also started with click bank so harsh can you tell me how it perform did you have any experience with theme?and if you can then please write one post on it.