Affiliate Marketing Vs AdSense: Which is More Profitable

There are lots of options to make money online but There are only two major income sources that 90% of bloggers use to do that. Everyone knows about Affiliate marketing and AdSense but they are still struggling with low revenue from their blog.

Blogger often confuse which platform should they use to earn money online - Affiliate marketing or AdSense? Which is more profitable? Well, This is a very tricky question.

For some blog Affiliate marketing can help to generate a higher revenue than AdSense or For some blog, AdSense can help to generate a higher revenue than Affiliate marketing. 

Everything depends on the strategy that you use on your blog and the traffic that comes to your blog.

Now if you are wondering how to pick one among them to start making more money from your sites, this post is just for you.

So are you ready to discover which is better among affiliate marketing vs Google AdSense? Let’s dive into the details.

What is Google AdSense?

Google AdSense is Google’s online advertising network which connects advertisers with the online publishers, i.e. the website owners. It enables publishers to monetize their websites by placing ads at different locations on their websites using the CPC (cost per click) model.

While advertisers use Google AdWords to create campaigns and run ads, the publishers, on the other hand, use Google AdSense to allow ads on their website and thus earn money from the clicks obtained on the same.

Adsense is about the easiest way for bloggers or webmasters to start making money with their sites.

After installing the ad code in your site, the AdSense spiders will crawl your site to see what all your pages are about.

They then check their inventory of ads and put related ads next to each of your articles. This works out well for everyone as someone reading an article on gardening is much more likely to buy gardening tools than someone who is reading an article about car tires.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is one of the oldest forms of marketing wherein you refer someone to any online product and when that person buys the product based on your recommendation, you receive a commission. This commission varies from $1 to $10,000 depending on what product you are promoting.

Many online companies who sell products such as shoes, web-hosting spaces, or some other service, usually offer an affiliate program. You can simply sign up for the program and get your unique tracking link. 

Now, whenever you are writing about their product, you can simply use this special tracking affiliate link to recommend the company’s site. If your readers buy anything, you will get a commission.

Every affiliate program has a set TOS.

For example, many of them offer a 60-day cookie period, which means that if a visitor uses your special affiliate link to land on the sales page of the site and buys something within the next 60 days, you will be entitled to the sale’s commission.

Affiliate Marketing Vs AdSense: Which Is The Best for Bloggers?

Already said, For some blog Affiliate marketing can help to generate a higher revenue than AdSense or For some blog AdSense can help to generate a higher revenue than Affiliate marketing. Everything depends on the strategy that you use on your blog and the traffic that comes to your blog.

Let's check which network will work great for you to generate higher revenue by discussing their pros and cons. These pros and cons can give you an idea to choose your best network to earn more money from your blog.

Google AdSense Pros

• It is very easy to install on your blog. Just go to AdSense dashboard >> Ads >> Ad units and create New ad units. When done, You will get your AdSense ad code that you need to place on your blog where you want to display the ads.
• It Allows auto ads. This feature allows AdSense to decide where, how many and which ad sizes to place automatically. As a publisher, you only need to set it up once and can forget about manually handling each ad individually.
• It also generates passive income. You do not have to interact with customers or to create mailing lists. Just set up the ads and there is no real need to keep it updated with fresh content.
• No matter what your content is about, You can always use AdSense to generate extra income from your blog excluding some content like porn or illegal contents, etc.
• It allows you to create multiple ad units with few clicks that can help optimize your performance by leveraging their large inventory of ads.
• If you do update or change your content, the ads will change to reflect the new content after Google bot’s next visit.

Google AdSense Cons

• Your passive income will be low unless you promote it online. For instance, You need to have 1 million views to get $500 (assuming AdSense RPM $0.50).
• Your AdSense income slightly depends on referral traffics but highly depends on search engine traffics. 
• Google can change its policies any time, and your income could suddenly disappear.
• Google has very strict rules. You must have to follow their rules otherwise you will lose your money and also your publisher account too.
• You can easily be a victim of click fraud and If it happens, Your AdSense account will be suspended or terminated. 
• AdSense income is not suitable as a long-term business solution.

Affiliate Marketing Pros

• You can create a niche blog and focus on selling products related to your niche which will dramatically increase your sale and earnings.
• Affiliate marketing can be a longer-term business model that can offer a regular stream of income for many years.
• When you build your list you have a business asset that will pay dividends for many years as it grows.
• The income per sell is significantly higher than the income per AdSense click.
• You know exactly how much you make per sell – unlike AdSense when your ads can change from $10/click to 10c/click overnight at Google’s whim. Income planning is easier.
• You can set up pre-sales pages to persuade visitors to purchase your products.
• You can pay for clicks if you wish, or use cheaper PPC programs to advertise rather than Google AdWords.

Affiliate Marketing Cons

• It is time-consuming. You must spend time writing promotional material, generating emailing lists and seeking out new products to sell.
• Some affiliate programs apply strict eligibility rules, such as a minimum traffic requirement or for your website to pass scrutiny for relevance to the product being marketed.
• Other than that, there are no genuine reasons why you should not use affiliate marketing as a monetizing strategy for your blog. Sure, it can sometimes be hard work, but where do you make money without spending time on it?

Affiliate Marketing Vs AdSense: Which is More Profitable?

Both are profitable if applied correctly but generally, affiliate marketing is the best option for those who want to run a long-term business online otherwise AdSense is a good option to make some residual cash from your blog as a short-term business.

However, You can apply both on the same blog but Never use AdSense on your affiliate marketing pages otherwise you will lose the potential click, sales or income.

Affiliate marketing gives you the better opportunity to earn the most money and on the other hand AdSense gives you small amount of money regularly with little maintenance but it needs a fair amount of traffic to be really profitable. Whereas you can use a mailing list to sell your affiliate products. You can build up a large list over time, even with a small amount of daily traffic. 

AdSense is a good choice if you don’t have the technical ability to operate autoresponders or the time to seek out appropriate affiliate products for your site. However, you will find that autoresponders are usually made very easy for newbies to operate, and you need very little technical expertise to build your own list and sell to it.

The main problem with AdSense is the relatively low income per click, so you need a lot of traffic to make money. You are also trying to persuade people to click on adverts selling products you could sell yourself as an affiliate! Affiliate Marketing Vs AdSense – the choice is yours.