The conflict between Google AdSense and affiliate programs

Google Adsense is a structured way to earn good money out of what Google makes from its advertisers on Adwords. The way it works is that advertisers pay top dollar to get their ads listed on Google. Google gets paid on every click that happens on the ad. By distributing the ads on your website and mine, they stand to gain more exposure, regain advertising funds quicker and also pay us good money!

Why you benefit?

The reason Adsense has become so popular is because it allows websites like ours to earn good money from the commissions Google receives from advertisers. By just placing a couple of ads on the site, you can earn a good commission percentage. However, there are certain drawbacks that an Adsense program has.

What it can do for your site

One good thing about Adsense is its immediate ability to boost your page ranking and popularity on search engines. That way you tend to receive a lot of traffic to your affiliate site. Also, people with affiliate programs on their site can actually look at Adsense as an alternate way of supplementing their income. Adsense lets you monitor which ads are performing and earning you most income. They do this by placing some Javascript code into your site which monitors the performance. Most of the time the traffic that comes to your site will most likely not find what they are looking for, on your site alone. That's where Adsense helps you. Even if customers don't find what they're looking for on your site, they can still visit the ads sponsored by Adsense and help provide you additional income. It basically provides you an alternate path to earn money online.

The context

In order to make your Adsense program most profitable as part of your affiliate program, you need to ensure you have contextual and relevant ads placed on your site. Else it defeats the very purpose. You want customers to click on these ads if they don't find something on your site. Hence it needs to be closely related to your website theme and your own products. Most contextual ads are characterized by lots of clicks but poor conversion rates. So make sure to test these ads out before placing them on your site. Pros and cons Both affiliate marketing and Google's Adsense have their own pitfalls and benefits. Here we explain the pros and cons of each.

Google Adsense:

Pros:
- Good for informational sites which do not have associated affiliate products to sell

- It allows you to create a content page without worrying about updating the content

- Very scalable. Adsense sites are low maintenance which make these good for the upkeep of multiple sites.

Cons:
- Not a good income generator when considering long term opportunities. It's because mailing lists are best for building customer relations. In Adsense you aren't asking for a subscription, instead just asking customers to click on ads.

- Search engine dependency. Adsense sites predominantly depend on the search engines to divert traffic. Hence if by chance an algorithm changes on a search engine, you risk losing a lot of income and traffic in the process.

Affiliate marketing:

Pros:
- More long term in nature which allows you to build on assets and customer relations

- Main focus is on creating and building email lists since they are the backbone for all promotional efforts

- Allows you to focus on a niche segment you like. This is unlike an Adsense program which tends to focus on only high paying keywords.

Cons:
- Involves the use and skill over persuasive tactics in order to coax customers to visit the site and buy products. For novices, this can be a difficult aspect.

- Every site needs plenty of effort. You need to spend time in creating product reviews, email list creation as well as web content creation - which can take up considerable time.

Balance it out

Both Adsense as well as affiliate marketing have their own advantages and disadvantages. Therefore, the best approach would be to balance the two to maximize your income potential online. You could have content on your site which you are interested in, while combining it with Adsense revenues