Thread: Affiliate or Adsense?

Where can I make more money? I've tried some expirements with affiliate banners but so far no luck. For instance, the other day I added an affliate banner to a site making $20-$30 a day adsense and the revenue dropped to a few dollars, but no affliate sales.

Why not try both. And the affiliate banner should be related to your site. 20-30 $ a day from adsense is great. Is this a targeted niche site? If so why not use some CPA offers as well. Is there any products that you can get from ebay or from amazon. If so why don't you add those to your site as well.

Originally Posted by Bizzoyce

Why not try both. And the affiliate banner should be related to your site.

In my trial, I placed a CPA offer in the sidebar. Adsense revenue dropped 50%+ in a 12 hour period. The CPA offer pay 30% on the sale of approx $33 per item which is about $10 per sale. The issue is that I have no way to track the sales. I figure that I should have has one sale within 12 hours.

I placed an amazon banner on another site that is making about $4 per day. So far no clicks on it.

Originally Posted by Bizzoyce

20-30 $ a day from adsense is great. Is this a targeted niche site?

The site is a targeted niche site.

Originally Posted by Bizzoyce

If so why not use some CPA offers as well. Is there any products that you can get from ebay or from amazon. If so why don't you add those to your site as well.

Amazon isn't worth it. Products costs around $15-$30. At 4% commission, I would make $0.60 to $1.20 per sale.

I think banner is your main problem. People don't click much on banners, affiliate should be embedded in your content. I can tell you exact figures of different affiliate implementations: embedded in your content $1k a month, search for affiliate products $100-$150 a month, banner conversion $50-$100. So I would really not advice using banners for affiliate, that's like the old school way which doesn't work anymore. Place the offer within your content, but only if it is highly related to your topic.

edit: if it's done well, you will not see drop in Adsense revenue at all.

Originally Posted by tetrapak

So I would really not advice using banners for affiliate, that's like the old school way which doesn't work anymore. Place the offer within your content, but only if it is highly related to your topic.

How do you recommend placing the offer within the content? i.e. 1) graphic banners and affiliate links 2) Text links in your header or menu or 3) Reviews and content plugs

Would be very useful to know the niche to answer this!

Originally Posted by tetrapak

Would be very useful to know the niche to answer this!

Supplements

I agree with tetrapak. I've been doing affiliate marketing since 2005 and have never found affiliate banners to be effective. It doesn't seen to matter whether they are banners in the header or the sidebar. I see lots of clicks, but few sales. An affiliate link has to be directly related to the topic on the page.

My best bang comes from writing articles about gift idea and then providing links where visitors can see the products. The links can be within the content or through merchant logos at the end of the article. I do use Amazon, but also about 50 other merchants that I have relationships with.

Ok, second go at a reply, last one disappeared when I clicked reply!
My experiences with CPA offers across a large number of niches:
- Relevant, in-context text links convert at rates 2-3 x greater than banners.
- CTR is very niche dependent like Adsense. In many niches, customers are curious which may explain your 20-30 a day Adsense income....in CPA-land, you want offers than provide cookie tracking if possible (even though current Antivirus programs slick these cookies, you still have like 60% of the non-tech audience without antivirus protection or it is turned off....).
- Free Trial offers generally don't offer cookie tracking, but free trials generally convert higher than other offers.
- I've always found Amazon strange...I'll have an article up on say blue widgets and make a conversion on pink wood cutters from the site...
- My personal rule has been to get rid of offers that convert under 2% if its an Adsense vs CPA debate. Some niches work well with both (if they have curious clickers), others don't.
- For niches/sites that convert on CPA, the earnings have typically be 10-30 times greater than the Adsense returns. You just have to be willing to test. My best Adsense site though was horrible at CPA. A site ok at Adsense is excellent at CPA...kinda drives me batty at times!

Best of luck,
J

I've been experimenting with Amazon this month using a combination of in content text links and a below post product banner using WordPress › Amazon Product In a Post Plugin « WordPress Plugins've sold about 12 items so far this including two for $39 yesterday. So, i think that it's going good so far. I just added a few more ads and will see how it goes. None of the Amazon ads are on the high traffic pages though. Adsense is paying better on a per click basis.