Affiliate Marketing is so much harder than Adsense

[Farmer77]

Hearing all the hoopla about money being made in Affiliate Marketing, I designed a site around a certain line of product, put up good content and did my SEO. All this took close to a month working insane hours. I made sure it's a quality site. Probably one of the best sites I have ever done. The long term results of the site is yet to be determined, but I did some targeted PPC for some fast traffic to get an idea of how well it might convert.

The results have not been good.

Perhaps I'm going about it all wrong, but looking through my short experience in affilliate marketing, it seems much harder than to a build a page around adsense. With adsense, if you have an average of 2 percent clickthrough rate for a page, that's good. You might not make too much, but you made something right there and then.

But say you built a page promoting an affiliate product instead of adsense and you promote the hell out of the affiliate link on the page and the link gets a generous 30% click through rate. Afterwards, it's not over, the visitor would then have to buy or perform an action to get the commission!

A 2 percent conversion is on average with most targeted affiliate sales, correct? So if it takes 2% of the 30% to make a sale, then that would mean you would need about 167 visitors to make one probable conversion! And on top of everything else you have to factor in the other variables like how targeted the visitors are, if it's the right season for the niche, the final destination landing pages that you have no control over, etc. The affiliate commission might be 10 dollars, but how often will you be getting it? You can count on Adsense to get you something and accumulate.


As you can tell, I'm a bit jaded about affiliate marketing at the moment.

[Chris]

PPC marketing like that is something I also do not really do. You'll often be spending $10 to make $11 so your revenue/expenses are high, but your profits aren't. This is due of course to competition.

You also don't build any sort of long term value in your site. The second you stop advertising your traffic dries up.

[allout]

The problem with what you hear and what is reality is not always the same. People do make money on affiliate sites but it is rare that you make as much as some people claim. I have not had much luck with affiliates but I do make a little on Adsense and I do reviews on my blogs and sell links. These are much better to make money in my opinion.

I signed up for Commission Junction twice and both times my account deactivated for no sells in six months. I now only do affiliates directly with companies but I have yet to make any real money with affiliates.

[Farmer77]

PPC marketing like that is something I also do not really do. You'll often be spending $10 to make $11 so your revenue/expenses are high, but your profits aren't. This is due of course to competition.

You also don't build any sort of long term value in your site. The second you stop advertising your traffic dries up.

One thing I learned about adwords and affiliate marketing is how much number-crunching there is and I suck at math. You have to be a human calculator plus also have a creative side in order to make good profit margins. Come to think of it, people with both of those attributes would be successful in most job fields anyway.

[Farmer77]

The problem with what you hear and what is reality is not always the same. People do make money on affiliate sites but it is rare that you make as much as some people claim. I have not had much luck with affiliates but I do make a little on Adsense and I do reviews on my blogs and sell links. These are much better to make money in my opinion.

I signed up for Commission Junction twice and both times my account deactivated for no sells in six months. I now only do affiliates directly with companies but I have yet to make any real money with affiliates.

Adsense is a breeze compared to affiliate sales. My SEO skills are pretty good thanks to Chris, it just take a long time for the traffic to build up. This is why some people are put off by web publishing. They build a site and don't know what's going to happen and if they should make another one right away. I still feel like that sometimes with the uncertainty of it all and while PPC affiliate marketing is a pain in the ***, it gives you instant feedback. So far I made about 35 dollars since my affiliate site went live in the beginning of March, but maybe only 7 dollars coming from PPC.

[agua]

One way I have found useful is to write a review, or get a review of the product written - of course it depends upon what your promoting - these pages work best for me...

Its not just a case of slapping up and link or banner (like Adsense) because you have to sell to the surfer in order for him to take action, not just click.

[Mr.Bill]

I myself find that Adsense works better than affiliate marketing. Farmer77 cracks me up with his comments. :-)

[cpc]

Hey, I know I'm reviving an old thread but wanted to throw out my 2c :)

I actually thought PPC affiliate marketing was easier, possibly because I'm impatient. I stumbled upon PPC when creating a content site to be promoted with Adsense. Now keep in mind I basically diverted to AM/PPC and stopped any SEO...but, my content Adsense site has made maybe $30 in the past 6 months but I netted over 3K in about 2 months using PPC.

You're right though, it essentially becomes a numbers crunching and a data game. You can eventually research and get competitor ads, landing pages, sites, keywords, etc - so you simply need to be slightly better. You also need to be willing to spend a lot of money (I probably spent 9K to make the 3K). It is also not a "set it and forget it" (well nothing is these days) - you are constantly looking at data and evaluating the market. If you hate data evaluation, you won't like AM. Instant feedback is great though :)

That said, I find it pretty fun and challenging so far. Ultimately, those who master SEO and PPC can dominate a niche.


Adsense is a breeze compared to affiliate sales. My SEO skills are pretty good thanks to Chris, it just take a long time for the traffic to build up. This is why some people are put off by web publishing. They build a site and don't know what's going to happen and if they should make another one right away. I still feel like that sometimes with the uncertainty of it all and while PPC affiliate marketing is a pain in the ***, it gives you instant feedback. So far I made about 35 dollars since my affiliate site went live in the beginning of March, but maybe only 7 dollars coming from PPC.

[Farmer77]

Hey, I know I'm reviving an old thread but wanted to throw out my 2c :)

You also need to be willing to spend a lot of money (I probably spent 9K to make the 3K). It is also not a "set it and forget it" (well nothing is these days) - you are constantly looking at data and evaluating the market. If you hate data evaluation, you won't like AM. Instant feedback is great though :)

That said, I find it pretty fun and challenging so far. Ultimately, those who master SEO and PPC can dominate a niche.

That's one of the problems, I don't have a couple of thousand of dollars laying around for me to "test" it on PPC. I heard from someone else as well who has excellent PPC knowledge, that you need large amounts to make money through PPC, and that is something I can't afford to do. I pretty much get the idea though: that you try and outbid most people at the beginning to build a good CTR history and then lower your bidding price while still maintaining position and hope to gain a good ROI a month or so later.

[mails]

There are many ways of how to approach affiliate marketing, I like this guide:

www.thelazymarketer.com

~Mails

[isrealh]

I have recently purchased the e-book advertised on this website. There is good information contained in it. He talks about targeting desperate searchers or people that are prepared to buy now.

It is worth a read in my opinion.

[bermuda]

I have seen many of the websites and companies that are some ages fixed among the top ten Google and Yahoo rankings are using the Google AdWords very wisely and this way, continue having new clients everyday, even more than from their organic search rankings and traffic.

You know, a combination of the methods works best and not single factors.