Yes, there's an attraction to Adsense that is nearly palpable on many forums. Did you ever wonder... WHY so many people are so excited about building an Adsense empire? More so than building an affiliate marketing empire, or a targetted list empire? I believe the Adsense Allure can be explained as follows: The challenge in any business is to convince the potential customer to part with his/her money. In the Adsense business model, that challenge has already been dealt with by Google. It seems that people are in love with the Adsense business model precisely because they fear the aspect of taking money from a customer. Let's face it- the work involved in establishing a quality adsense site and a quality affiliate site is pretty similar. Yet the affiliate site requires that you write effective copy so that your visitor actually reaches into his/her wallet. Are people lacking the confidence to ask their visitors for their money, or lazy? What do you think?
Well personally I always think it's a little embarassing, not to mention somewhat pathetic, to have to ask people to 'support' you, i.e. by leaving a donate button on your page, etc. So if I just put up Adsense ads -- there, they can click it if they want, and I make some money. And really, when you think about it, the time it takes the surfer to click on your ads and hit the back button if he doesn't like what he finds is negligible. So this makes Adsense an incredibly easy way to make money. But having said that, whatever money you can make with Adsense, it's nothing compared to the money you can make with affiliate marketing. There's just no comparison.
Most may not agree with me but I think that by choosing to make money with adsense, many people don't realise that all the traffic could be used to buy their own products or even affiliate which probably would result in much more income than current adsense income of theirs. Adsense publishers "optimize" their pages for CTR, work really hard in putting up content and so on... If they use all that optimization and hard work in selling some affiliate product which has a fairly good sales page, they might make more without a risk of getting "banned from adsense".
I'm losing faith in Adsense more & more every day tbh, I'm spending more time promoting products & affiliate programs. At least with those you don't get smart priced when you send a load of traffic through & it doesn't convert
Well most people here (the Adsense forum) will probably disagree with you, but I don't. Affiliate marketing is potentially many times more lucrative than Adsense.
- Whoops, that was NOT my intention, having a 'tip jar'... I meant, by being engaged in affiliate marketing or marketing your own products- you are asking your visitors to spend $$$, which is not the case with Adsense. (Can anyone think of another business model where you, the business-owner, need not ask your prospects to separate from their hard-earned-cash?!)
In any business you have people that Create, people that Sale and people who Collect. I would much rather Create and Sale than Collect and I don't think I am alone. Adsense can do the collections.
Is like the frosting on the cake. Lots of my visitors may or may not click on one of my affiliate product links, but may click on an adsense ad that has a similar product advertised. So I may money on visitors who do not want to spend money with me, but who do make me money by clicking on those adsense ads. But the vast bulk of the money I earn is through affiliate links and my own products for sale.
You're looking at this all wrong. When we're talking about having affiliate links on a content-based site, rather the surfer buys anything or not doesn't affect their access to the contents on the site. It is 100% their choice. I present them with a product, and they alone decide rather they wish to have the product or not. But content site affiliation isn't really where the money is. The big money in affiliate marketing is with PPC, where the only people who will click on your ads (via Adsense, Adbrite, etc.), which takes them to a landing page/site, are those who are laready looking to buy. And once again, I offer them the product, and it is their choice to buy or not. True, the conversion is less with pure affiliate marketing, but the potential profits are much, much higher. Depending on what kind of product you are selling, sometimes you only need ONE conversion to make back your daily budget and turn a profit.
Nope.. instead if you send affiliates a load of traffic through & it doesn't convert.. you make absolutely nothing.. zilch..zero..nada. Even with adsense' smart pricing at least you still make something And that's the reason I prefer adsense to affiliates. On every affiliate site I've made, it could be making 20 sales per month... but as soon as I tested adsense on it, the adsense money was double or more what I'd ever made on the site with the affiliate. It's just an easier way of getting paid for your effort.
To me AdSense is simply a way to outsource the the selling of much of my ad space "inventory" allowing me to focus on the core mission of my website which is to provide really useful information. My website is in a very niche market and Google has a lot better ability to attract advertisers who would want to advertise on my site than I do personally. If I had to spend my time selling my inventory, I'd never have any time left for producing new compelling content and I probably wouldn't have as much revenue available to me to pay writers to write new articles. My objective is not to sell stuff to people, rather it is to produce a news and information website based on topics I know reasonably well.
I often wonder since I run affiliate sites with adsense on them.... What percent of affiliate sales get lost to adsense.
I too believe that Affiliate marketing is potentially many times more lucrative than Adsense but there are so many products and services to be promoted that one tends to get lost and prefer instead to stick to the easy method - Adsense.
You can't be sure without some testing... but from my own personal experience on more than 30 affiliate sites... they have always made me more money when i have adsense on them than without... Recently I've had an affiliate site go from making roughly 25 sales per month ($10 earnings for each) to about 10 (summer time)... so it's making roughly $100/month with the affiliate. I put adsense on it and it's average about $5/day on adsense... so even if I don't make a single affiliate sale... i've still made $50 more than I would have without it...
That's a very noble idea and I congratulate you on it. Of course you probably have a real 9-to-5 job to be able to think like that. On the other hand, this IS my job.
I agree that it takes the work out of finding suitable advertisers to buy up available ad space. The type of content that my sites have make it hard to find quality($$$) advertisers. Adsense takes care of that...
Shawn is spot on imho. You don't have to mess around testing (or even finding..) various programs and tweak copy or run tests and get all technical. When you have multiple sites or multiple sections in sites that require different affiliate programs AdSense does it all for you as it's contextual. It's easy. You aren't required to convince anyone of anything - that's the advertisers job. All we as AdSense publishers do is broker the traffic we have available and that's a hell of a lot easier then getting involved in the affiliate world. Pete
Shawn IS right, it is easier, but "easier" doesn't always get you the most maximum money. I see no trade-off in running quality sites and doing affiliate marketing at the same time, rather in conjunction with those sites are separately altogether. But it comes down to contentment; if you are content to make your bucks off Adsense, and strive for nothing more, then you should stick to Adsense. There really is no right or wrong here; it's entirely up to you and your current level of comfort.