affiliate programs vs Adsense

video games affiliate programs vs adsense advertising

[gameborder]

Hi
I have a small website about pc video games (1,000 pviews/day). I added Adsense in the most visited pages with acceptable results (average cpm more than 1$). I thought that a video game affiliate program should perform better than Adsense, since the web site target is very specific and I can use videogames specific ads. But I didn't have much success with affiliate programs: I tried with some cj programs (buy.com, gamefly, ebay) and also linkshare (EBgames, wal-mart) but I didn't have any sale. I tried with "video games purchases" banners, video game rental, electronics and some other topics, but I found that it's very very difficult to get sales. I only got some money from ppc programs like pricerunner.
Besides, most banners (especially eBay banners) have very low CTR.

So now I've switched back to Adsense and I'm using only affiliate banners in my newsletter, and affiliate text links on the website.

So, here is my question.. Is Adsense always more profitable than affiliate programs? Or it's just affiliate programs banners that don't convert? What would you suggest? Any idea?

Thanks!

[Beagle]

Affiliate programs are usually more work than Adsense, because you need to think of yourself as a pre-seller - target your products as distinctly as possible to your customer base and let them know why they should go buy something.

That's why affiliate banners are notoriously unsuccessful (I'm sure there are some exceptions to that, but I haven't met any). When someone clicks on an affiliate link, you want them to be seriously interested in buying something - not just clicking on the link.

Most people find text links (which I note you're using) the most successful, especially when they're included in a review of the product being linked to, or on some other page with a clear connection to that specific item. If you review games on your site, that would be an opportunity to do some pre-selling. (I even put links on negative reviews - some people will want to buy it anyway!) You might do some testing and track how well your text links do as compared to the banners, especially if the text links are to specific items.

I don't know if you have games on your site that people can come and play there for free. Affiliate programs are very difficult to monetize on sites where people come looking for something free, because they don't have buying on their mind.

[gameborder]

I think you got one of the problems: if a user wants to download a game demo for free, he just wants to play the demo, he doesn't want to buy the game.
But in any case I thought that a banner related to videogames should perform better than Adsense on a videogames site. If you go to gamespot, or fileplanet, or sites like these, you always see banner promoting videogames or at least hardware stores (graphic cards, game accessories and so on). That's strange, unless they have a much better traffic than me (and this is probably true), or they are not paid per sale.

[Beagle]

But in any case I thought that a banner related to videogames should perform better than Adsense on a videogames site.

The main thing here is that Adsense pays you when people click on an ad, where most affiliate programs don't pay you unless someone buys something. A lot of people will click on an ad out of curiosity, but won't end up buying anything. Your audience might be more that way than most. If you have a lot of young visitors, you also have the drawback that some of them won't be old enough to use credit cards. I'm usually a big defender of using affiliate programs, but in your case it might not be the best thing. Of course, there's nothing that says you can't do both - or even something else. The large sites you mention (I'm assuming they're large sites) probably have several different income streams going. And if they're large enough, some of the banners you see might even be ads for merchants who actually pay them for the space on the page, rather than for clicks or purchases - but it takes a high level of traffic to convince someone to buy ads in that way.

The fact that, for most affiliate programs, someone has to purchase something through your site is also why affiliate ads for specific products do better than affiliate banners. If someone follows a link to a specific product they're more likely to be interested in actually buying that product than someone who clicks on a more general banner ad.