I thought I'd toss this out to any marketing gurus who may be lurking out there.

I've been told by some that AdSense makes a lot more money than affiliate programs. Others have told me that affiliate programs are the only way to go to make serious money online.

Now, I have more experience with AdSense by far, and I know you can make good money with it, but has anyone here really done well with affiliate programs? What little I've tinkered with them hasn't paid off a lot (though affiliates for my own products seem to do well).

So which one deserves more focus: AdSense or Affiliate Programs?

Any opinions?

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Adsense for me, I have tried affiliates before never with any good luck .

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Image Freak

Well, It's a really tough call! Some keywords in adsense really pay well whereas in some segments they actually stink [it depends on the competition in the industry].

Another thing to consider is > How many visitors can you convert into sales???

If you have a high conversion rate and a high paying affiliate parter, then it may be a good strategy in longterm to go with affiliate programs as here you are just taking a share of what you help them sell, which is risk-free for them whereas in adsense your profits are directly proportional to the company's marketing budgets!!

BTW what is your target market?

As with anything "it depends". For adsense it takes about as much effort as pasting an affiliate banner code, but you are also now displaying your competitors ads, what if they click on that ad, and never come back to your site, is it worth the $.10-$.25 you just made? Not to me.

If you have a content based website, you could easily incorporate dozens of affiliate programs, without using even one banner. Yeah it takes more work but if your website is (or you want it to be) your "job" then don't cut corners and slap up unrelevant adsense hoping to make a dime a click, put some thought a research into it, and earn $10-$50 a click (based on CJ EPC's).

Affiliate marketing takes practice, testing, and nice long trial period but its well worth it, I am in the industry and talk to people everyday making huge amounts of money every day off of AM.

Have fun!

Ian

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Thanks for all the great feedback on this guys!

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Adsense = Easier way to make money with little traffic.

Affiliates = Easier way to make sustainable income, however it requires a lot of traffic. Roughly 1000 unique vistors per sale.

Wow, 1000 unique visitors per sale? Is that for high-ticket items ($100-$150+) only, or both high and low-ticket items?

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It should not be amazing. (1/1000)*100 = .1% Conversion!!! And, that's quite high!

And, it can be for both high and low ticket!!! It is just about the Product and the audience to whome you are targetting.

Most websites have a less than a 1 percent purchase rate so that is about the average. You can increase this with a good site. A good site will average about 2.9% in purchases among highly targetted visitors. Megasite will get better purchase rates. Amazon's purchase rate is probably around 70% but they paid dearly for it over the last 7 years.

You need to target the affiliates to your sites content to be successfyl. If you have a site on Fly-Fishing and you are trying to sell website templates, your sales will be non-existant. However if you sell rods, reels and flies through affiliate sales, you will be more successful. I am constantly seeing sites with non-targetted affiliate ads that really don't benefit them. The trick is to find your market, then find affiliates that match it.

The easiest way to make sales on the Internet is selling your own products but that has its own twists and turns.

Wayne, when you are promoting an affiliate program -- you have to calculate both CTR and Conversion. Right? When you talk about 1% - 2.9%, I take it that you are talking of Conversion from visitors on the landing page.

So, if your ctr is 1% and out of that 1% you convert 3% into sales that makes a net conversion of .03% for the publisher...

I absolutely agree with your point. In my opinion, this is where the main problem lies for publishers -- mismatch of product and audience. [I am thinking of getting listed in Forbes List of richest people by selling Rockstar Posters on PulseToday.com ].