Digital Marketing

Comparison of Google AdSense and Affiliate Marketing

Google AdSense and Affiliate Marketing

Advertising and marketing are an ever-growing industry and the value of which is increasing with each passing day. The websites on the internet help in marketing various products through different methods, AdSense alternatives and affiliate marketing being two of the most important ways to do so.

Introduction of Google AdSense

Google AdSense is a program run by Google. This is a program by which the website owners and publishers in the Google Network of Content sites can serve text, images, video, or any other form of interactive media advertisements that are targeted to the site content and the audience.

All the advertisements done through this are administered, maintained, and assorted by Google itself. They can generate revenue by a per-click model or per-impression model based on the circumstances. Google had initially tested the cost-per-action model as well but discontinued in favor of the “DoubleClick” offering which is also a part of Google. In the first quarter of 2014, Google went on to earn a whopping sum of $3.4 billion which was 22% of its annual revenue, by the offering of Google AdSense. This operation takes place using HTTP cookies. As of 2021, over 38.3 million websites use AdSense.

How to Use and Processing of AdSense

Google makes use of its technology to serve advertisements on the websites depending on the geographical location of the user and various other factors. Those website holders who want to use Google’s targeted ads program may enroll. They have become one of the best programs available in the market specializing in the creation and placement of banners and responsive ads on various websites and blogs. Responsive ads tend to adjust themselves according to the size of the device on which the site or the blog is loaded.

These advertisements tend to be very less intrusive with the content of the websites being very relatable to the content of the website. There are a lot of websites on the internet that make use of the AdSense program to generate revenue for their website. This program has been particularly useful for the really small websites that have really limited resources and are in dire need of resources to work on.

To display a relevant set of an advertisement on a particular website, the developers and webmasters place a short piece of JavaScript on the pages of the website. The content-rich pages have proven to be a successful push for the ever-growing reach of the program. Google in recent times has also removed the limitation of having only 3 ads per page of the website. Now they have the liberty to add as many numbers ads on their website depending on the volume of their content.

Introduction to Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a basic form of marketing model wherein a company compensates the third-party publishers instead of generating traffic or leads to the company’s products and services. The third-party publishers mentioned here are the affiliates and they are incentivized by a commission fee for them to find ways to promote the brand and its products.

The internet has become receptive to the practice of affiliate marketing in the past few years. Amazon had initially given the practice a huge prominence by creating an affiliate marketing program. In this program, the website and blogs put up links to particular Amazon pages to be promoted for an already reviewed or discussed product. They are given incentives and advertising fees for showcasing a particular product when a purchase is made. This makes the whole process a pay-for-performance marketing program where the whole process of selling is outsourced across a huge network of advertisers.

Mechanisms of Affiliate Marketing

The whole thing of affiliate marketing predates the era of the internet. It has transformed into a whole multimillion-dollar industry due to the advent of the internet, digital marketing analytics, and cookies. The company which is running an affiliate marketing program now can track the links that are bringing in the leads with the help of internal analytics and analyze the number of leads that convert into final sales.

An entrepreneur on an eCommerce website wanting to reach a wider base of shoppers and internet users may go on to hire an affiliate to increase their reach. An affiliate can be the owner of a multitude of websites or email marketing lists, the more the number of contacts of the affiliate, the wider the network. The hired affiliate then goes onto promote the products that are offered on the eCommerce website by communicating with its network. The affiliate may do this by the implementation of banner ads, text ads, links, or by sending emails to the clientele. Firms usually make the usage of advertisements in various forms like articles, videos, and images to draw the attention of the audience to the service or the product.

The Affiliate simply redirects the visitors who click on any of these links or the ads to the initial eCommerce site. If they end up purchasing any product or any service, the merchants of the eCommerce website simply credit the affiliate account with the pre-decided commissions which could be around the 5% to 10% mark of the total sale amount.

Google AdSense or Affiliate Marketing: Which is better for Bloggers?

This is quite a tricky question and the answers are very variable depending on various factors at hand. If one is a blogger like I am, you are surely someone who cannot pay with your recurring income, then you may not want to miss the opportunity offered by the prospects of Affiliate marketing. For a professional blogger who is trying to monetize their blog, earning through AdSense can be around the $50K mark if your blog has got a bit of recognition in the market. For the same period, you can expect an earning of $650K the same period. It is quite clear from the figures that Affiliate marketing proves to be quite effective.

There is quite a misconception in the common world that Google is against the concept of affiliate marketing but this is not true. Google lets you keep the affiliate link but gives strong insistence that it is placed only on quality blogs. If someone publishes low-quality content and fills it up with a dozen affiliate links in the low-quality content, none of the search engine bots will be willing to accept this shoddy work.

There are quite several things one needs to note while comparing AdSense and Affiliate Marketing. It is relatively easy to get into an affiliate marketing network than to get an approved AdSense account. Most of the Affiliate Marketing options offer PayPal or Payoneer as a payment option. AdSense does not give the same option. AdSense is not allowed for certain types of niches, whereas affiliate marketing networks can be found for all niches. AdSense is managed only by Google whereas there are a huge number of large and small affiliate companies.

For obvious reasons, affiliate marketing appears to be the more lucrative deal among the two but before drawing any conclusion one should keep a few finer points in mind. Affiliate Marketing does not work on every page of your blog, so all the pages will not be made for you. AdSense works for every page so this makes the whole money-making process flow although payout per day is lower than a single affiliate sale.

One thing can be done very easily to increase your payout but it can be a really risky step to take. You can replace one of the prominent AdSense spots and replace it with an Affiliate Marketing banner from the niche available. It may end up performing well, it might not. If the banner ends up making 5-7 sales over the next month the payout can be a lot high but if it does not work out, it might end up earning you no money at all.

It is always advised not to lean on a single form for your income. Using a balanced and optimized combination of both of them can end up being the best for both you and your blog. This will also make sure that you do not end up becoming an affiliate marketing blogger. With the usage of good content, you will end up making a pretty good amount of cash when the end of the month comes around.

You need to make sure that most of the clickable areas on your page are covered by AdSense ads. These include the areas above the post, and the sidebar 350 block. The best areas for affiliate marketing placements are the 125*125 sidebar, the 728*90 header, and footer, and lastly the 468*60 below the post and above and below the comments.

Always keep in mind that using the maximum AdSense units may not yield the maximum revenue. Using 1-2 units mixed with links and search units tends to provide the best results.

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