Adsense and/or Affiliate?

managing both adsense and affiliate links

[NickMNS]

I have an informational site that runs adsense ads. I have noticed in my Adsense ad review center that there are a few advertisers that are always present on my site. These advertisers sell products in the niche that I cover. While going through some of the CJ advertisers I noticed that some of these companies are there too.

Adsense or Affiliate?
CJ's EPC seems higher than Adsense's CPC but not by that much. In fact it is hard to tell since in Adsense I am unable to know exactly which advertiser pays for clicks. So it is even possible that I am receiving clicks in Adsense that are equal or close to what I would get from the affiliate.

Adsense and Affiliate?
The affiliate links would be added in addition to the adsense code. The question is how do you manage Adsense ads that are from the same or competing companies as the affiliate links? Do you block the affiliate in Adsense, and the Competitors? Since these ads make up a big chunk of my inventory, doing this could devastate my Adsense earnings? If I don't block the affiliate in Adsense the what happens if a user clicks the Adsense ad instead of the affiliate link?

At first I thought this would be simple, I'll just ad some links and bingo, make more money. But I see this as having the potential to leading lower earnings if not done correctly.

Feedback from those with experience would be greatly appreciated?

[LifeinAsia]

I've used AdSense and affiliates on the same sites (often on the same pages) for years (started with affiliates, later added AdSense).

If I don't block the affiliate in Adsense the what happens if a user clicks the Adsense ad instead of the affiliate link?

You get paid for the click, regardless of whether or not the clicker ends up buying anything.

I wouldn't bother blocking advertisers or competitors- it sounds like a lot of work and I don't really see any upside to it.

[NickMNS]

You get paid for the click, regardless of whether or not the clicker ends up buying anything.

That is not excatly what I am worried about, I see it from a more nuanced perspective. I spend money to promote a page gain ranking bring traffic. The page has both an Adsense ad and an affiliate link. The user comes to the optimized page, says "great I love it!" clicks the Adsense ad for the affiliate's website instead of the affiliate link, he ends up buying something, I get paid for the click, not the purchase.

If you assume that a user who has the intent to purchase probably has detectable history of interest in the topic, there is a high probability that Google will be showing ads for the affiliate. Considering that not only are there contextual cues, but also interest based cues. On this basis, the short change scenario from above could occur relatively frequently.

[NickMNS]

To demonstrate my point about adsense CPC at times reaching levels that are close to affiliate cpc, today I had $3.40 click. Unfortunately these are rare clicks.

[netmeg]

As far as I'm concerned, AdSense and affiliate require entirely different strategies. There's no reason they can't both exist on your sites, but you probably want to handle them differently.

I think of AdSense as "drive by" clicks - basically I just set the code where I think it will be effective, and leave it alone. No further action is required (in fact, we're forbidden by Google pretty much to even acknowledge the ads are there)

Whereas with affiliate links, you get to take a shot at actually *selling* the product. It's CPA, so you get fewer conversions, but in theory they should be more lucrative when you do get them. And not only are you allowed to mention them, you're encouraged. You can manage the message, and do all the persuasion yourself. It takes more work, but it also should gain more revenue if done right.

Affiliate marketing isn't for everyone. Not everyone can or wants to market like that. If you have a talent or desire for it, and if you can find good saleable products that match up reasonably with your audience, then by all means, go for it.

As for whether or not your AdSense ads will cannibalize your affiliate income - the only way to know is to test that for yourself. For the most part, I don't ever put AdSense on a page where I'm selling anything else (whether it's affiliate products, or an ecommerce site) I want the user to focus on my main offer and not get distracted. But you need to test what works for you and your audience. I have, on occasion, put an AdSense ad at the bottom of a product page, just to see if I could capture a click if the user was leaving the site anyway. But those were never all that successful, and I ended up removing them all.

[NickMNS]

Netmeg thanks for the input. What you describe is basically how I understood it. The site has to be very targeted towards a specific product. My site is not targeted, it is general, with a wide audience, of which a only a subset would be interested in the products of the affiliate. Targeting the affiliate's products will likely alienate a good portion of my audience.

I am not sure that the affiliate route is the right option for my site at this time.

[netmeg]

Depends on how you do it. Sometimes you can just add a page of auxiliary content, and drop an affiliate link there - it doesn't get in the way of the main purpose of the site, but it's there if someone seeks it out. For example, I have sites telling people where certain types of events are held. A common question I get is whether or not it's okay to take one's dog to the event. (I happen to think it's not) So I wrote a page about that and why it's not a good idea, and while I was in there, I offered a few aff links to products that help with anxiety and noise-stress in dogs. It's not the main purpose of the site, but the information is relevant and in case anyone decides to read it and/or purchase, everyone's happy.

[IanCP]

I've used Affiliate links almost since day one - without that I could not have afforded the escalating hosting costs in the old days.

Amazon was always my primary programme, that was in the "books only" days. I joined the old CJ from the start - aggregating your commissions for payout was a terrific idea. CJ has quite different owners/policies now days.

One lesson I did learn after AdSense came into being was to be alert to AdSense ads competing against your own affiliate commissions.

Then when Amazon begun accepting third party sellers, I became alert to the fact my Amazon commission rate in some cases for certain vendors in my genre - was better than the same programme over at CJ.

As they say - "Sometimes you need more eyes than a potato"..

[NickMNS]

@netmeg, I'm just thinking out loud.

I saw you posting responses in a thread about DFP, I am assuming you have some limited knowledge of DFP. Do you think you can run affiliate ads using DFP. By setting a limit relatively low such that you would replace low paying Adsense ads with affiliate links, and possibly, marginally increasing CPC for the Adsense ads (by limiting supply). All this at the cost of loosing CTR. But hopefully with a few affiliate sales and an increased CPC it will result in a net increase in revenue?

This would solve or minimize the impact of cannibalization, since the affiliate's Adsense ads would only appear if the CPC would be higher than the DFP limit.

[nomis5]

You'll only know for your specific site if you try it. It doesn't need to be site wide, just a few pages to test the water.

I have used affiliates (direct through the company advertising) and Adsense on the same pages with no problems but I've never analysed which does best. My gut feeling is that where the affiliate product is well matched, the affiliate returns are better than Adsense.

However, finding direct affiliates who run their own ad schemes is not easy. That's where Adsense comes in, they are used on my sites as the major source of adverts.

As for Adsense competing with ads I place on the page, I think my ads look better so I'm not worried about Adsense pinching traffic from an affiliate ad.

[netmeg]

Do you think you can run affiliate ads using DFP.

You probably could, I dunno why you would. If I go to the trouble of creating content for an affiliate offer, then I want to get that affiliate offer. I can't control whether AdSense is going to show the right thing (and I can't even use the same language to "sell" the product) Not something I'd likely spend time on.