Affiliate Marketing Vs Adsense

No matter whether the blogger is famous one or not, he or she wants to earn money from his or her blog. There are multiple streams available for a bloggers to earn money but very few know how one can optimize the revenue. Whatever the case may be the most popular and effective ways to earn money online is Affiliate marketing and Adsense. That is why; we have decided to cover this hot issue of Affiliate Marketing Vs Adsense in this article.

The Debate

There has always been a debate between the proponents and detractors as which option is best. But, in order to assess this, we will cover each one in great detail that will enable you to decide which one is better.

Affiliate Marketing Vs Adsense in 2018

Google Adsense

Adsense is the most popular program among bloggers and provides blogger an easy to use method to monetize their blogs. But in order to use this network, bloggers have to apply for an Adsense account. It takes around seven days to get your application approved or rejected. We have seen many bloggers complaining about their Adsense account application is not getting approved. There are many reasons for the rejections. Most common reasons are:

Banned Previously – One of the common reasons of your application rejection is that you were registered with Adsense in the near past. But due to some fraudulent activities, Google banned your account. Now, you are again applying to the Adsense with similar name, address and blog. Then, imagine how they can give you approval. The other reason which is ignored mostly is that bloggers buy already established blog which was banned by Adsense in the past. So, the buyer of the blogger is not aware of this ban. When he or she applies for an Adsense account, his or her application gets rejected.

One common reason for not getting approval in Adsense program is that your site or blog must be at least six months old. Google has expressly announced this requirement. So, if you are generating majority of your content for traffic from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and other Asian countries, then you have to wait for at least six months to be accepted in the Adsense publisher program. However, if your content mostly targets visitors from UK, USA and other European countries, then there is a high chance that Adsense approval will be given even to a blog with just few days of age. So, it all depends upon which content you can produce and to which demographic region, you have the skills to target. The reason behind accepting blogs representing content for Asian countries is that majority of bloggers from this region of the world try to play with Adsense programs by doing clicks and increasing banner impression fraudulently.

Adsense largely depends upon the traffic of your blog and the percentage of it coming from USA, UK and European countries. Because these regions have advertisers which bid high CPC in order to outperform each other and get a top slots in the advertisement space. Advertisers bid for adverts in the Google Adwords program. If you are getting handsome amount of traffic, then you will definitely make good money from Adsense. So, number one factory for good earning from Adsense is awesome traffic. CPC (cost per click) and CTR (click through rate) also play key role in the calculation of the revenue of the blog. By CPC, we mean what you get paid for a single click on your Adsense advert. CPC can be from one cent to hundreds of dollars. It all depends over the competition of the keyword against which various advertisers are bidding. So, a high competitive keyword pays a great CPC (cost per click). If your content and Adsense ads are quite relevant, you will notice good CTR if Adsense has the relevant inventory in the stock.

Pros & Cons of Adsense

This mode of advertising is good if you do not have relevant or similar product in the affiliate marketplace. You will earn passive income from all your pages that display the advertisement. So, all the money earned from each of your page could pile up to huge amount. Apart from this, the installation of Adsense code is very simple and does not requires a lot of efforts.

On the other hand, as the income from Adsense largely depends upon the traffic. If your traffic is low, then you will earn very few amounts. So, it could lead to de-motivation. In order to bring massive traffic to your blog, you have to work very hard. You have to build links from guest posts and other constructive manner. At this step, you should focus on the quality of the links ant not the quantity. I have seen people selling 10,000 links blast for just $ 5. Imagine yourself you one can offer 10,000 links in this very low amount. You get what you paid for.  In order to bring traffic to your post, you have to invest sufficient period of time to attract social media fans and followers.

In order to drive traffic to each of your posts and pages from search engines, you also have to optimize them for search engines as well. This is called on-page optimization. The use of heading tags, bold text, keyword density and proper placement of keyword across the page all contribute to the good SEO (search engine optimization) score in the ranking positions. This requires a lot of time. So, earning money from Adsense is not an easy task. A lot of effort is required to accomplish the task of generating massive income from Adsense. The bitterest truth about Adsense is that it has very strict rules for publishers. A little mistake on the part of publisher, results in the violation of Adsense TOS (terms of service) which results in the account suspension. I have seen many publishers complaining about this. All the money they have earned also forfeited under such ban. So, they find themselves in hot water and they have nothing left to earn from their blogs.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing might be new to various bloggers. However, this is as old as the CPC (cost per click) concept. This method of advertising has great potential for bloggers, if it is used wisely. It is about selling products of other companies in such a way that middle man works for both parties. You, as the blogger, advertise the products of advertisers via affiliate link. Whenever reader or visitor to your blog clicks the affiliate link & purchase the product, you get the commission per sale. So, it has great potential to make handsome amount of money for bloggers.

There are various affiliate networks which you can join to earn decent amount of money. The most popular are:

ClickBank – It was founded in 1998 and is a private retail company which deals in physical as well as digital products. It is regarded as the pioneer in affiliate marketing. It is very easy to join & a newbie blogger can take the start in very short span of time.

Amazon Affiliate – It is one of the biggest marketplace & appeals to a vast portion of webmasters or bloggers from all over the world. This program has great potential & has a lot of products in numerous categories which you can sell via your affiliate link. As a blogger, you earn 15 % commission on each sale finalized due to your affiliate link. As I said above, there are numerous products available in the Amazon marketplace such as gadgets and DVDs of various movies which you can promote on your blog. Any sale made using your affiliate link will lead to a 45 % commission. If the product is high priced like $ 10,000, then you will be earning $ 1500 as commission from just a single sale. That is why; we say affiliate marketing has great potential & can make you rich in very short period of time.

Commission Junction – CJ is the most successful affiliate marketing program which is equally popular like Amazon among bloggers. Like ClickBank & Amazon, you have the freedom to choose products according to your niche of the blog. Relevancy of affiliate products with your blog content plays a key role in making a sale. So make sure, you choose the right products & display them at at prominent place to increase the chances of sale.

How to Improve Revenue

We heard from various bloggers that they are not earning good money from affiliate marketing programs. Actually, you have to work hard & try to make your blog visitors as repeat visitors. You have to create engaging & appealing content & try to offer some gifts in return of requiring them to join your email list. In order to enjoy benefits from email marketing, you need to invest some expenditure on a quality email marketing service provider. This is essential because the email list is your asset & you may not afford to lose such a precious asset. It is necessary that you communicate with your email list subscriber regularly with latest information & updates. Please keep in mind that does not promote affiliate products too much in the email sent to subscriber. Always insert the affiliate product whenever it looks natural & not spam, otherwise subscriber may decide to leave your list & may get unsubscribed.

Pros & Cons of Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is the golden opportunity to make great income from selling various products. Unlike Adsense, as a blogger you do not need huge amount of traffic to make the sale and earn the commission. What matters most is the relevancy of affiliate products with the content of your blog. Even low traffic blogs with too much similarity of products & blog’s content could give rise to massive income. Apart from this, you do not need to take any tension of getting banned from affiliate marketing network which is quite common in Adsense. The benefits in this type of revenue stream are limitless and long term and you can trust the generation of revenue every month without the hassle of controlling your CTR. No matter how much your CTR is, even if it is 10 %, you will face no issue in affiliate marketing which is quite common in Adsense. Unlike Adsense, you do not need to work on each page of your blog. Just work out on your high traffic pages and you are all set to go. As the commission income could be very high, you can drive traffic to your blog via some cheap CPC advertisement such as Facebook ads or Google Adwords.

The bitter truth about affiliate marketing is that it is a very time consuming process to write promotional content & you need to be an expert in writing exceptional high quality articles. You should think from customer’s perspective. After writing promotional stuff, read it from customer’s perspective and judge whether you are getting impressed to buy the product. It is always good to take second opinion before going to publish your content. You can take help from your family member or from your friend who are expert in the industry.

Comparison

Adsense

Affiliate Marketing

1.      You need massive amount of traffic to earn money. 2.      You need to SEO optimize each page of your blog to generate massive income. 3.      You do not need to be expert in writing promotional stuff. 4.      Adsense account is quite vulnerable to be banned due to some little mistakes. So, you cannot trust this program as your only source of income.

1.      You do not need massive amount of traffic to generate good amount of revenue. 2.      You just need to target high traffic pages of your blog. 3.      In order to impress visitors to your blog to click the affiliate marketing product, you have to be expert in writing promotional stuff. 4.      Affiliate marketing is not uncertain like Adsense. You could not be in trouble. So, you can trust this as your primary source of income.

Conclusion

As you have seen there are pros and cons of each method. It might possible that for some bloggers, Adsense works best but for others, affiliate marketing might be the number one solution. In our experience, combination of Adsense & Affiliate marketing is the right direction for earning massive amount of income. It is the right time to stop thinking and take the action to know which one is the right option for you.