AdWords advertiser, advertising on my site ( adSense) Suggests

I subscribe to his affiliate network,,

[Green_Grass]

One of my niche sites seems to convert very well for one company ( product). They suggest, I subscribe to their affiliate network and get paid on CPA ( sales, basis) and they get to free their advertising dollars for some other sites..

Does this make sense? I am getting a very good EPC on this niche. The tradeoff seems to be .. adSense VS. CPA..

If I take up the offer, I am afraid I will lose out on sure shot money ( adSense) vs. maybe bigger money.. Totally confused.

Any suggestions will be appreciated.

Edited for spellings.

[edited by: Green_Grass at 3:02 pm (utc) on July 21, 2009]

[farmboy]

...and they get to free their advertising dollars for some other sites.

If they are planning on you generating a lot of sales, they would be better off staying with the current advertising model rather than having to pay you a lot of CPA commissions. It sounds like this is a better deal for the merchant than for you.

I would think a lot of merchants would rather pay on a CPA basis if they are setup for it rather than paying via AdWords advertising. Which leads me to ask this question - are AdWords advertisers allowed to contact publishers direct under the AdWords Terms?

FarmBoy

[Green_Grass]

I guess not many posters have faced a similar situation. I think some testing may be in order. Now, I am wondering if there can be a problem, if I put up some affiliate links from the company that is also advertising using adWords ( adSense).

Thanks Farmboy for your reply. I do not know the adWords policy regarding this subject. Been a while since I read up on the TOS. I guess the advertiser should do some reading..

[successlieswithme]

a simple question.

what is avg CPC of this advertiser?
if CPA = 10xCPC then its a better option.

[londrum]

without knowing how many of your clicks actually convert into sales, and in what timespan, then it's difficult to know which is best.

it may be that that the affiliate scheme only offers a session cookie, rather than something like 30 days, so you might continue to send them the same amount of clicks but get no benefit if the user doesn't buy in the same browsing session.

the advertiser won't lose out, because he'll still get the sale in the end, but he won't have to pay you a penny.

[chrisv1963]

Don't take the offer. My guess is that they want free advertising isntead of having to pay for Adwords.

[Green_Grass]

They do have a 30 day cookie.. and the site is reasonably well designed with a good list of products relevant to the niche.

still thinking..

[netmeg]

So tell them you'll try it out for two weeks to 30 days - if it doesn't work, remove the ad and if they want to be on your site, they'll have to go back to AdSense.