Affiliate marketing and Google AdSense are two popular ways to monetize a blog and a youtube channel.
Below is a quick review of Affiliate marketing vs Google Adsense. The aim is to place these models side-by-side and show you how they stack up against each other.
We’ve also taken time to review the pros and cons of each model and provide you with our views on them.
In the end, we hope you’ll have enough information to help you make the best choice in your quest for a decent internet income.
Affiliate Marketing vs Google AdSense: Which One is the Best?
| Affiliate Marketing | Google AdSense |
| Higher earning potentially | Limited earning potential |
| Require lesser traffic to earn a sizeable income | Require higher traffic to earn a sizeable income |
| Requires technical skills to get started | Require no skills to implement. |
| Experiences intense competition, which reduces earning potential | Competition does not matter |
| Offers more flexibility over earnings | Much more rigid earning program |
| Offers much control over activities and choices | Limited control and choices are determined by ads network |
3 Benefits of Affiliate Marketing Over Google Adsense
1. You Don’t Need Huge Traffic
With affiliate marketing, you can earn thousands of dollars per month just from a handful of site visitors. The most important thing is to find quality products to promote.
And, ensure that your content does a great job of selling the product without appearing salesy. You also need to learn the techniques of getting the data of visitors so that you can remarket them down the line.
When you are dealing with Google AdSense on the other hand, you’re going to have a hard time making so much money from a few visitors because Google pays you for a fraction of people that visit your page.
Unfortunately, you can’t remarket your visitors with a Google AdSense model. Adsense has stipulated terms and conditions guiding how you display ads. You may get penalized if there is too much activity with the ads displayed on your website.
2. You Can Promote “Relevant Products”
Affiliate marketing gives you total control over what you promote on your page. You consciously choose products that you wish to show to your audience and visitors.
However, when Google displays ads on your website, it takes cues from the most used keyword on your page.
The bulk of the time the ads shown on your page would have little relevance to the content your page or your website stands for.
On some occasions, the ads could infuriate your visitors, causing you to lose the traffic you spend so much time and resources to generate.
3. You are Your Boss
Most people don’t realize that being an affiliate is almost similar to owning your own business. Most brokerage firms on Wall Street operate like affiliates.
They promote stocks for investors to buy into and take a commission on the investment. It’s the same with affiliate marketing.
You convince your audience to use a product you believe in. You get rewarded for sharing the information with them. Interestingly, you are not forced to do anything. You work on your terms.
You can promote any product you want. You can pull down any product you no longer support. You can decide to write content denouncing a product you previously supported.
However, with AdSense, your activities are subject to google’s terms and conditions. Whenever you violate these terms and conditions, you get penalized immediately.
Adsense could go as far as permanently disabling your account. Your activities and choices are subject to the decision of AdSense. Unfortunately, policy changes mean that you may have to adjust all the content on the pages linked to your Adsense account.
3 Benefits of Google AdSense Over Affiliate Marketing
1. Google AdSense is an easy monetization method
Google Adsense is often the first option that comes to mind when you think of monetizing a blog or a youtube channel. In most cases, it is because the Google Adsense earning method is easy to kick off.
All you need is a web page (blog or user-generated content). Once you have your website set up, you are ready to earn. This process makes it much more appealing to first-time internet marketers than affiliate marketing.
The only speed bump you may experience with Google AdSense is the part where you apply for it.
If your webpage does not align with the terms and conditions of the network, you may get rejected multiple times. It’s best to review what they want and ensure your web page aligns with it. Once that is done, you’ll have a smooth sail to income.
It’s much easier than affiliate marketing when you have some learning curve to overcome before you record any income.
2. You Don’t Need Any Products
With Google Adsense, you generate income from advertisement, not commission. While affiliate marketing and Google Adsense focus on the promotion, Google bears the cost and burden of the advertisements they show on your page. Your responsibility is to ensure that your page is always online.
It makes it much better than affiliate marketing where you need to convince visitors to your page that they need to purchase the product you’re promoting.
If not done properly, it could quickly make your website, blog, forum, or webpage sound salesy.
Remember that most visitors to your website are there to get information and not to read salesy posts.
3. You Don’t Need Any Special Skills
Google Adsense only requires you to know how to set up your webpage and maintain it. You don’t need any special skills.
However, there may be a need to master SEO, to enhance your chance of ranking at the top of the SERP page. It helps you drive traffic to your page.
Besides that, you don’t need any other skills. When it comes to affiliate marketing, your number one challenge would be how to write content that sells the product.
Without sales, you’re not going to earn any income as an affiliate marketer. But if you leverage Google Adsense and post quality content regularly, visitors will flock to your page, and google pays you accordingly.
Cons of Google AdSense
You need large web traffic
The most obvious downside of AdSense is that your earnings are determined by the number of users visiting your website.
Most newbie bloggers often get frustrated when they don’t start getting immediate earnings from their google AdSense efforts.
The first thing to keep in mind is that it takes time to build the traffic that brings the money home, especially when you using Adsense.
Adsense pays you $5 – $30 CPM or $0.01 – $1 CPC. It means that you need thousands of visitors to earn a sizeable income from your Adsense venture.
If your financial target for the month is thousands of dollars, you may have to invest so much time and effort to earn up to that.
CPC varies by niche
Another key downside of AdSense is that the amount you can earn per click varies from one niche to another.
No matter the amount of work you put into driving traffic to your site, if you are not in a niche where you can earn sizable income from the ads showing on your site, you won’t earn much.
Sites in finance niches can expect to earn much more than sites in education even though both sites have an equal number of visitors per month.
It implies that you can’t expect to earn much from AdSense if you don’t take enough time to research the earning potential of your niche before kicking off your websites.
What this means is that creating content around your passion could limit your earning potential.
Adsense force you to do things for money than for values, unlike affiliate marketing where you can do what you love and find a company in your niche that would pay you well to promote their product.
Limited streams of income
Adsense may penalize you if you use other ad networks on your site that require actions that don’t follow stipulated terms and conditions. Google Adsense may prevent you from diversifying your online earnings.
However, models like affiliate marketing or personal products allow you to promote products from several sources. It gives you the flexibility of earning from other sources if your product is not performing well.
Rigid Payout
No matter how much you earn, you can’t get your money out of Adsense until after a particular day of the month. It limits the control you have over your income and forces you to act like an employee rather than a business owner. Though there are affiliate programs that have similar arrangements.
But the fact that you can have more than one affiliate program running on your site simultaneously, you still have more flexibility than you do with Adsense.
With affiliate marketing, if one of your products holds your funds for a particular duration of time, you can leverage others to get cash flowing from you.
Unfortunately for beginners too, you won’t be able to withdraw from your AdSense account until you get past the hundred-dollar mark. It could be a tough milestone for sites with little monthly traffic.
There are better alternatives
Adsense is not the only ad network available on the internet. There are scores of other ad networks that even pay better and offer more flexible terms and conditions. Below are some of the most popular AdSense alternatives.
1. Ezoic
Ezoic is an ads technology company that helps brands and established organizations optimize their digital advertisements through research and artificial intelligence. Ezoic pays you to place show ads on your website.
The aim is to test the performance of these ads based on their positions on your webpage. The information they gather across the websites where these ads are displayed and other intel on the ads helps them provide valuable reports to the companies sponsoring the ads.
When it comes to ads network, Ezoic has much more flexible terms than Google. They need your partnership.
Therefore they are more empathic with their terms and conditions. It’s also essential to mention that Ezoic is a partner with Google. Ezoic pays 3 – 4 times more money to you than AdSense.
2. Adthrive
Adthrive is another ad network similar to Adsense. They are focused on providing optimized advertisement services to their clients. The platform pays considerably more than AdSense.
While Adsense pays as low as $5 CPM, Adthrive pays as high as $15, which is about three times larger. However, the downside with Adthrive is that your site audience must come from a specific demographic, and you must have as many as 100 000 monthly page views.
This term sidelines beginners from making money with Adthrive. However, as your blog grows, it may be a better alternative to Adsense.
3. Mediavine
Mediavine is a niche-based ads network that prioritizes travel, home, finance, lifestyle, and food niches. They are one of the best you can find. The pay is up to two times higher than AdSense, and the terms and conditions are more flexible.
There are some stipulations you need to abide by to join the platform. First, you need over 50 000 page views per month.
Your content must be original and fall in the niches they prioritize. You also need to have a good track record with google Adsense. Also, Mediavine favors long-form informative content rather than short idea posts.
Cons of Affiliate Marketing
It requires the necessary skills
Affiliate marketing top-level internet business requiring you to master some tools and sales methods. As an affiliate marketer, you’ll need to learn how to write sales copies that keep your audience engaged without appearing like it’s selling anything.
You’ll have to learn how to pick the products that sell best. These steps would frustrate your chance of getting up and running within a short time. Unlike Adsense, you’re ready to earn as soon as you’re approved.
You have no control over the affiliate programs
Earnings from affiliate marketing are subject to the decision of the product owners. If they decide to shave your commission by some percentage, you may lack enough power to influence such a decision, unless you are the one bringing in 90% of the total sales, which is unlikely.
Recently, Amazon decided to cut affiliate commissions down by almost 20%. It is a typical example of how affiliate marketers are subject to the decision of product owners and the management of organizations.
Intense Competition
The most pronounced challenge you’ll face with affiliate marketing is intense competition from other marketers in your niche. Affiliate marketing is an example of an online business with a low barrier to entry.
It means anyone interested in the venture can get started without restrictions. If you’re not as talented, experienced, or funded as the new guys joining your niche, they can easily take over the traffic coming to your site and leave you with pennies.
Volatile Companies
Several companies offering affiliate programs are often unsustainable. Some of these companies end up bankrupt or out of the market within a short period. It causes instability in the affiliate marketing industry.
You need to keep changing from one company to another to stay on top of the game. The constant change from one company to another makes it hard to build a solid foundation for your affiliate business. Unlike Adsense where you can stick to one ad network and focus on building your website for the future.
FAQs | Affiliate Marketing vs AdSense
Which is better Google AdSense or affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is much better than google Adsense. However, the decision is up to you. The reason you’re starting your online or internet marketing business should influence the model you’ll choose.
If you want to set up affiliate marketing as a side hustle that you’ll only do in your spare time and you’re not ready to commit a lot of time to learn all you need to succeed, affiliate marketing may not work for you.
While some people may want you to believe that affiliate marketing is easy and passive, you need to realize that there are some tools, methods, and techniques you’ll have to learn to reach the status of affiliate top earners.
In these cases, you can opt for an AdSense that’s more controlled and can operate without much interference. However, your earnings from Adsense may be much less than your potential with affiliate marketing.
Can I use AdSense and affiliate?
Yes. However, there are terms and conditions guiding product promotion on pages showing AdSense. You may need to take time to study AdSense terms and conditions to have a clear understanding of what your affiliate site must have.
Also, it’s critical to mention that if you create a dedicated affiliate site solely focused on product promotion, you may find it hard to get AdSense approval.
It’s best to start with casual content that would get you approved by the AdSense team. Afterward, you can continue as a full-scale affiliate marketing website.
How much does AdSense pay per 1000?
Adsense pays you an average of $10 – $12 per thousand views. The number may vary with different niches. You can expect to earn more, up to $20 or less than $5. Your content, audience quality, and location also determine the value of your CPM.
Is affiliate marketing really paying?
Yes. Some of the wealthiest internet marketers are affiliate marketers. Virtually every business that offers online sales or operates affiliate programs. From Amazon to web hosting providers, legal organizations, real estate businesses, major brands globally, health and wellness experts, etc. Hundreds of thousands of business online offer,
Who pays more than AdSense?
Following a survey carried out by income school, results show that absence is not the network with the highest payout. In reality, it pays the least.
Income schools carried out a survey where they asked their community members how much they make from each ads network. They grade their results according to the amount from minimum to maximum. They discovered that
- Adsence pays an average of $0.01 to $36.00. rpm.
- Ezoic pays an average of $0.61 to $43.23 rpm
- Mediavine pays an average of $12.41 to $47.00
- Adthrive pays an average of $4.79 to $37.00
Which affiliate is best for beginners?
It’s best to start with simple programs offered by established companies. Examples are amazon affiliate programs (Amazon associates), Webhosting Affiliate programs, etc.
These companies have proven records of paying well. Starting with them helps you learn the ropes and condition your mind for what’s coming. You don’t have to face the technicality of launching a full-scale affiliate venture.
The platforms have handled all the backend processes. You only have to plug in the link on your site and ensure you monitor your progress and optimize users’ activities. It helps you earn more from your affiliate effort.
As you develop your marketing skills, you can diversify into more professional levels and increase your earnings.
Final Thoughts
There’s a vague idea that online businesses have reached a plateau. The truth remains that there’s no truth in such an argument. If online ventures are dying, then business tycoons like Elon musk shouldn’t be wrestling to gain ownership of platforms like Twitter.
The question is, “why would giants fight to own dying industries?” As far as the internet is concerned, the world has not seen the beginning of it yet. There is immense opportunity in a connected economy, and adventurous people are taking advantage of it.
Rather than allowing fear to hold you back from making the most of these opportunities, it’s best to learn how the system works and take advantage of it. We’ve provided you with some of the lucrative models of making money online. You can jump on board the opportunities to create lasting wealth for yourself and your family.
