Adsense vs Affiliate Marketing

Today, I have a question that has came up from a blog reader - making money with your blog. First, as a full disclosure, I don't make money from this blog. So I'm not exactly the most qualified person to talk about it. I spend far more on products I write about than I ever get back. Ads help to offset expenses, they don't even come close to covering them yet. Hopefully, that'll change eventually. My traffic is growing rapidly and I'm gaining interest in my sites, if one of them takes off in a viral way, I may even make some money. We shall see. I make no claims that what I'm about to say here will scale. As for now, I'm really only comparing Adsense to affiliate marketing. Adsense displays ads and you get paid a few cents when someone clicks your ads. Affiliate marketing pays you only when someone actually buys the product, but you have more freedom to customize it to your site and you get paid a larger commission. I have ran Amazon Associates affiliate ads for months now, and have just added some Google Affiliate Network links (though I got rejected for most GAN programs I applied to, presumably for lack of traffic, which - as I said - is quickly changing). For anyone wondering, lets cut to the chase. I earn money off Amazon Associates, not a ton, but a reasonable amount - around $60 last month, though that was my record high, not an average. Definitely enough to make it worthwhile though. I don't earn money off Adsense. In the under a month I've been running Adsense, I've got... oh, right around zero clicks.

Now, obviously for me, affiliate marketing has proven much better, though I will keep Adsense on, I just need to figure out how to use it in a way that's beneficial for me. I'll tell you the biggest problem I have noticed, not just on my own site, but on others, with Adsense. It's context-sensitive ads are often the opposite of what the page is saying. Right now, ads displayed right against an eyebrow waxing article are... "eyebrow restoration" & "clinically proven longer thicker brows"... um, okay, but I think people reading about eyebrow waxing are having the opposite issue! My own rant on refilled ink cartridges is getting some wonderful ads for ink refills running beside it. Yeah, okay, Adsense isn't quite smart enough. I can't pick the ads I think my readers would be most likely to click on. And that costs me. Adsense is quick and easy. Affiliate marketing is better targeted, and more likely to do well.

Also, I'll note two things - one, I rely on peoples' trust. I don't post affiliate links unless I believe they're the best deal. If I believe a better value is out there to be had, I'll give people that link instead of an affiliate link. I also don't make my sites look like a pure ad-fest. I want repeat visitors, not short-term spamming.