Stick with adsense or try affiliate programs

Should I stay with adsense or try out some affiliate program?

[sgsurvey]

Hi all,

As indicated in the title, I have some MFA sites which are doing pretty well from relatively little traffic.

I know that it depends on the industry, but generally, shall I try affiliate program to get better return or just stay with what I have now since 'it is good enough' (- said my partner)

[edited by: eljefe3 at 2:46 am (utc) on July 3, 2006]

[mykel79]

I think the best way is always to test. Try split testing - randomly display either adsense or an affiliate program - and see what performs better.

[eljefe3]

Yes, try split run testing to see which brings in the highest revenue. Always be testing!

[Marcia]

I have some personal sites that run both Adsense and affiliate programs - but they're actual product oriented affiliate sites with content added (but not predominant), not MFA.

There's always been more Adsense income than affiliate income for the most part, since actual purchases aren't required with those; but this year I decided to concentrate major efforts on methods for increasing conversions, the primary reasoning being that it's better to diversify and have fewer eggs in the same basket. The goal was for affiliate income to be greater than Adsense income, and in a case where a good sales presentation is given and it's a good merchant for conversions, it really can be done and it's kind of excting when it does happen. If the merchants are lousy it doesn't happen, but going the affiliate route is a good way to find out who's good and who isn't and how good different niches are, so it's definitely worth a go if only for the learning experience.

My thought is that if Adsense is abandoned or given second or third place to affiliate ads and links, there should probably be some serious pre-selling effort made to encourage clickthroughs by visitors motivated to buy, sending them to affiliated merchants who have a good likelihood of converting them.

[gamiziuk]

The problem with many MFA sites is that webmaster run out of ideas and start scraping SERPS to make pages.

Most of my sites are about travel and promote hotel reservations. When hotels.com gives me a database of 50,000 hotels in the world to work on - I have plenty of pages I can make before I will run out of ideas.

So my sites usually have affiliate links along with Adsense.

[sgsurvey]

The problem is,

my ROI on adsense is around 300%.
shall i try affiliate for better return?

Actually, is there any good affiliate program can generate 300% ROI with PPC?

thanks.

[BriGuy20]

If your MFA sites are product-targeted and you have a reliable partner (like, say, Amazon), there's a chance you can get 300% return. My ROI has been closer to 1/10th that, though, with affiliate marketing. Affiliate success depends on your AdWords CPC (and/or natural traffic), search terms for the natural traffic, your affiliate, preselling on the page, and product popularity.

[sgsurvey]

BriGuy20:

Well, my MFA is product-targetted.
So you mean that the best ROI for you on affiliate marketing is around 30%? if this is the case, I think sticking with adsense would be a better choice...

Put it in another way, I consider that I am also in affiliate marketing - instead of selling a product, I am selling advertisement place :)

BriGuy20, thanks for your reply!

[kassius]

With me sgsurvey i started with affiliate programs then added adsense which worked out great as the adsense know pays for 75% of my adwords monthly cost, so try it out mate ; )

[sgsurvey]

so you mean I put adsense and affiliate links together, then i could get affiliate sales, at the mean time, adsense income pay for the adwords...

SOunds like a brilliant idea! Thanks for the sharing!

[kassius]

sgsurvey adsense only works if you got a high traffic site or a niche site with ads over 0.50c a click.