CalArch90 - 5:10 pm on Oct 24, 2004 (gmt 0)

Interesting to hear the number of people who say they do well with affiliate programs. I personally have not had any success with them, and have found them to be a complete waste of my time and effort in the past.

It probably depends on the type of site and the audience it caters to. My site is informational and geared towards a professional audience. Adsense is ideal in my case because it delivers targeted ads based on the content of my site.

An ecommerce site may do well with affiliate programs if they offer merchandise that is complementary with what they are selling.

The problem with most affiliate programs is that they are based on a pay-per-conversion only model. This is great for the advertiser, they get free advertising, marketing benefits, free traffic to their sites, etc., but it exploits the publisher who gets nothing unless a sale is made. Amazon, for example, used to even penalize you if you did not complete a certain number of sales to reach the second tier in their program!

I'm not trying to bash affiliate programs, I'm just saying they definitely have not worked for me. Believe me, I would welcome the opportunity to make more money on my site through good affiliate programs, I just have not been able to find any worth my time. If I add up the dollar amount I make on affiliate programs, it ends up being a tiny fraction of what I earn with adsense, so much so, that it is not even worth it for me to keep them.

Adsense, as far as I'm concerned, has provided web site owners with a fair share of the market and eliminated the exploitation of publishers through the traditional affiliate model.