Forum Moderators: skibum
In fact has anyone done this?
And couldn't you try them out on some pages first?
Go with whichever gives you a better return.
Why not do both? Keep AdSense and also put affiliate banners.
HOWEVER, it would be for a specific set rate, and not a CPA or commission rate. I would have to be guarnteed a certain amount of revenue as I know how much I already earn each month for a given slot from AdSense.
Their commision rate is 3% of a sale. Using their standard rate, one basic sale that would work out at just under 3 times what an adsense click produces (which seems to vary for some reason)
bear in mind that their conversion per lead has a big impact
so if each sale is worth 3x adsense click
but if they need 10 leads to make a sale?
Affiliation is rarely what it claims; have you actually seen a check?
And if you did do it, that's the day you stop developing the site and start building a new one: a 'sponsored site' has peaked.
But as others have said, a much better solution is to mix and match. Use one site for the sponsor, others for adsense. If - and only if - your site has a transient readership, with few returners, then the risk is low, you can always go back to adsense when it fails. But You'll likely lose regulars if you look 'bought'; they'll end up on the sponsor's site, won't they?
Putting all your eggs in someone else's basket is not usually a good idea.
[edited by: Quadrille at 10:42 am (utc) on Sep. 30, 2006]
affiliate marketing is completely different from making money with adsense. however, it offers better return than adsense for a small guy. i guess it is tough to get more than 10k a month from adsense for a one man website.
I would just keep on working on my newer sites with Adsense.
one basic sale that would work out at just under 3 times what an adsense click produces (which seems to vary for some reason)
You would need to get a better than 33% conversion clicks to sales. This sounds very unlikely, but as said above; if you like the idea test it.
Many times I think of something, then don't do it "to be on the safe side". Then that works for many others and I regret no having done what I wanted. If I test something and I doesn't work, I know it doesn't work (and that knoledge is valuable in and of itself), but if I don't test things, I will never know what the posibilities were.
That being said, I also believe "if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
As noted, this situation is never really "mutually exclusive" -- you can often add a second ad unit, either as an image or text link. Even if the available space is quite fixed, as you insist we assume, you could use a smaller Google AdSense unit and a small affiliate banner or link.
As noted, rotating different ads makes sense, so that (at least) the second and later adviews are different from the first. In general, the clickthrough rate drops dramatically for the second and later adviews of the same ad (with the exception of certain "process" web sites, where the "end of process" page will experience a very high clickthrough compared to earlier pages viewed).
But even if I decided that the "direct" advertiser would generate significantly more revenue, I would still consider keeping AdSense: first, because I am very confident that Google will pay me as promised, while I am not certain about the direct advertiser (and I've seen MANY advertising-payment defaults in the past 10 years); and second, because keeping I'll almost certainly generate more total revenue if I rotate some Google AdSense ads along with the direct advertisement. (On some of my sites where a direct affiliate advertisement is more effective, I still show AdSense ads 10% to 33% of the time.)
