Affiliate Marketing v/s Adsense: Which benefits you more?
In Internet marketing, bloggers and other people owning websites make money in millions of dollars every year. But most of them struggle to make more money because they don’t know what monetization strategy to use on their blogs.
The two major income sources which many bloggers use are:
- Google Adsense
- Affiliate marketing
Let’s see what they are.
Google Adsense is an advertisement placing service by Google. It links the text and display ads to your site based on the type of content and visitors. You advertise the ads and get paid by advertisers who want to promote their products. You will get a commission when the visitor visits your blog and clicks one of the ads. You usually will be paid in a small amount or even a large amount in case of high demanding topics or products.
Affiliate marketing is a little more customized. You pick products you like and recommend them to visitors who visit your blogs, specifically targeting the needs and interests of your business. You will be paid based on as per that sale or CPA (Cost per Action) basis. You can say, Affiliate marketing has four members: the advertiser that is the company who owns the offer, the affiliate who promotes the products, the affiliate network (like Mobidea) which acts as a medium between the advertiser and the affiliate, and the end-user or the customer.
You got a blog. You got a website. You want to make money online. The confusion arises here.
How do you profit the traffic that flows into your website, into money? Which tool do you choose?
Both the tools help in making money online. But, which is the best one that helps you make more money?
Both Adsense and affiliate marketing have their pros and cons.
Adsense marketing:
Pros
- It is a very simple tool and easy to set up. You do not need to do any extra work like maintaining your accounts and managing an email list how you do in affiliate marketing.
- Get paid per click or impression basis, not per sale!
- It has lots of inventory that keeps changing from time to time and makes interesting for visitors as they see new ads all the time. Good for high traffic sites.
- It provides many different types of ad formats from content ads, video ads, search or link units, etc. You can choose the type of ads of your choice.
- No need to think which products to advertise, Google does the job and takes care of everything! Adsense uses the visitors’ history activity (cookies) into consideration and shows them the relevant ads. For example, if you search for “best cake shop near me”, in your future online activity you will see ads about cake shop pages.
- Your wage will be directly sent to your bank account through online transfer or you will be paid by cheque, based on the payment option you select. You do not need a PayPal or Payoneer account for the payment which is used in case of affiliate marketing.
Cons
- People may visit ads and are less likely to spend time on your website or blog.
- You will have less editorial control. Some ads may be of your competitors. Though you are allowed to block them, there are always new competitors arising or in other parts of the world whom you may not be sure about.
- It can slow the load time of your site because of some ads.
- You won’t be allowed to show other monetization programs in your blog. You will relay on Google to show ads relevant to the content of your blog.
- It’s very hard to get account approval and follow their policies. Sometimes, they shut down your account without a warning if you are not following the Adsense policies and you won’t make money even if the visitors click the ads.
- You get a low income usually and can only be paid high if you have high traffic visiting your websites and clicking on the ads.
Affiliate marketing
Pros
- You can build a business as you have a lot of editorial control. You promote the products which you only like to recommend on your site.
- More attractive than Adsense ads and you get higher commission even with the fewer sales.
- No need for dealing with the customers of the products or no need to fulfill your products. The company does for you!
- You can develop an expertise in a certain area that can create Search Engine
Optimization value for your site as well.
- Here, there are no policies to follow, unlike Adsense. You can create your own rules and policies. And no one can shut you down or do anything else. You are the owner and you just have to promote sales for other businesses.
So out of 10, almost 6 bloggers choose affiliate marketing!
Affiliate: Cons
- You will be paid only when someone buys the product.
- Little more investment than Adsense as you need to research on the products
- It’s not your business. So you should be careful about the product’s displacement.
- Paid ads can sometimes be expensive.
So there is a balance between high volume but the low value (Adsense) and low volume but the high value (affiliate). If you want high traffic to flow on your website, you can go for Adsense and if you want a high commission, you can go for affiliate marketing.
Or you can even mix both in your website to benefit more! You can check for the latest ads on your website and can recommend them to your audience who visits your blog. Thus, you can create high trafficking into your website or blog and get paid high.
