Adsense and Affiliate Marketing

If you are a webmaster, then using Google Adsense and affiliate marketing are great ways to monetize your website.

Affiliate marketing can bring you additional cash for little extra effort, and ensure that your business keeps running profitably. Another great way to make extra money from your website is through the use of Google Adsense. Both these methods are excellent, and by using them you can make sure that you will not need any other kind of advertising on your website.

So what is Affiliate Marketing and How Will it Benefit You?

Affiliate marketing is a very simple agreement between two parties – a merchant, who intends to sell some product or service, and an affiliate, who agrees to market the merchant's offerings on his website. All that an affiliate needs to provide is some advertising space on his website, and the merchant pays him in return according to a pre decided method.

A number of methods are used to decide on what basis the merchant will pay the affiliate. Pay-per-click (PPC) is the most common method, though there are several others as well. In PPC, the webmaster or affiliate earns money when a visitor to his site clicks on the merchant’s ad to go to his site.

Pay-per-lead and pay-per-sale are the other common methods. Out of these, pay-per-sale is usually the most rewarding, as it involves the merchant paying the affiliate a significant amount when a visitor buys something from the merchant's website. However, this is also the toughest to achieve. If you can get your visitors to actually buy stuff from the merchant's site, then pay-per-sale is the best option.

Profits from affiliate marketing are usually in direct proportion to the number of visitors to your site. So the greater the number of visitors you can generate, better your earnings will be.

And what about Google Adsense?

Google Adsense is the most popular and most successful advertising program on the internet. The ads always contain a link to the merchant's site through which the visitors are routed to a desired page.

Google Adsense and affiliate marketing programs have a number of similarities, yet there are many differences as well. Most importantly, in the case of Adsense, Google manages the partnership on both sides, i.e. the merchants and the affiliates, which considerably reduces the hassle that you have to take in managing the whole arrangement.

Secondly, Google Adsense is contextual, which means that the ads it displays on a website are related to the content on the website. This gives ads displayed through Google Adsense a better click-through rate, and a better chance for the merchant to get a sale. For you as a webmaster it means greater revenue. The earnings from Adsense are accrued on a per click basis, however, you get the money only after your unpaid earnings have exceeded $100.

So Which One Should You Choose?

The answer is both. First of all you will have two entirely different kinds of ads, thus addressing a wider audience. Moreover, even if your are unable to convert a sale for the merchant through affiliate marketing, you will still keep getting paid through Adsense for all the clicks that your site generates. The combined effect of Adsense and affiliate marketing is your best bet to earn good returns from your website.