Affiliate Links vs Google AdSense: Which Pays More?

Affiliate links vs Google AdSense are two of the most popular and well-established revenue streams for a blog. But which one is right to monetize your website?

In this post, we’ll give you a clear comparison of Google AdSense and affiliate marketing. We’ll compare the pros and cons of each.

This should help you decide which way you should go to monetize your website with either affiliate marketing or Google AdSense.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular ways to make money online. In the affiliate marketing model, the affiliate receives a percentage of each sale so both parties benefit from the transaction. In fact, it’s a huge industry with tens of thousands of affiliate programs and affiliate networks.

Affiliate marketing refers to the practice of earning income by promoting other companies’ products or services. It’s a form of performance-based marketing in which affiliates are paid based on their performance, such as being able to convert a sale or leads.

What is Google AdSense?

Google AdSense is a program that allows publishers to earn money by displaying advertisements on their websites. When a visitor clicks on an ad, the publisher can get paid based on a cost-per-click rate. But publishers can also earn money on a per-impression basis when a visitor simply views an advertisement on their webpage.

Google AdSense serves various types of advertisements like text ads, images, videos, and interactive media on websites. The advertising revenue is shared between Google and the publisher. But Google does not publically state how much the shared portion is between publishers.

At a Glance: Google AdSense vs Affiliate Marketing

Here’s a quick look at the differences between Google Adsense and affiliate marketing using a Venn diagram:

Affiliate Links vs Google AdSense Venn Diagram

The Pros of Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a great way to make money if you have the right products. The affiliate marketing landscape is changing all the time, with new networks and services appearing all the time. But some of the most common ones are ShareASale, CJ Affiliates, and Skimlinks.

Affiliate marketing will be more suitable for you if you want to enjoy the challenge of getting results for offers marketed. You will reap the rewards of your time and effort should you end up earning a high commission. Here are some of the other advantages of affiliate marketing.

It is not necessary to own a website to do affiliate marketing. This can be a great advantage as the costs required to set up a website are very high and are better to be used for other purposes.
You don’t need to have your own product. Instead, you can promote other people’s products and earn money.
It’s possible to earn money with a small customer base with highly targeted affiliate marketing.

The Cons of Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is more about being the middleman. You are selling other people’s products. Although you can make higher commissions on sales, you don’t necessarily make a sale for each affiliate product click.

If you feel like you would be better at affiliate marketing, then you should start looking for products to sell in your website niche. But what if there are no affiliate marketing opportunities in your niche? Here are other disadvantages of affiliate marketing:

Affiliate marketing has more maintenance than serving ads because products and services come and go. Although most affiliate programs have a high number of products, those products are changing and you have to always stay informed about those changes.
Some affiliate programs have short cookies, low payouts, low conversion rates, and are niche-oriented.
Your ultimate marketing goal is to drive sales to the merchant. So, you need to promote the product in such a manner that it captures the attention of the potential buyer.

The Pros of Google AdSense

AdSense is more suitable for you if you will be working to make passive money. If you have a blog and a substantial audience, Google AdSense will provide you with a constant stream of revenue.

Google AdSense provides a flexible way to make money and is easy to integrate without a lot of technical knowledge to get started. The AdSense Ads are very targeted and relevant to the content on the website which makes the visitors stay on the website.

To break it down, Google AdSense is a great way of earning money through your website. You will always get a consistent amount of monthly passive income.
The Google AdSense code is easy to implement on a website and is from a reputable company with a lot of customization options.
It’s easy to add and remove advertisements from a website with the capability to fine-tune display ads.

The Cons of Google AdSense

Although Google AdSense is ideal if you are looking for a steady income, it can also be detrimental to your website brand. In particular, excessive advertising on a website can be considered intrusive to visitors.

Google auto ads bring several new types of display types like anchors, pop-ups, and automatic ad insertions. All of which can appear as spam, in comparison to basic affiliate links. Here are some of the disadvantages of using Google AdSense on your website:

Google AdSense slows down websites because they have to import and render resources for each page call.
Earnings are niche-dependent because some types of niches and visitor geolocation have higher RPMs.
Although Google AdSense can be placed on the website in various formats like a text link or image link, you don’t have control over which ads are displayed which can negatively impact your website’s perception from visitors.

As a result, some publishers have been looking into some alternatives to Google AdSense to find a better return on ad revenue.