How Adsense works
Adsense are Google ads. You go to Google and sign up for a free Adsense account. You get the code from your Adsense account, put in the code on your site and the ads will show up. Google detects the topic of your site and shows related ads.
You can still make money with Google Adsense. To get the best pay, you need to do keyword research and you want to use keywords that pay well (find advertisers who spend decent money on PPC). However, these are likely in competitive niches.
Advantages of Adsense Ads
- Easy and fast to set up.
- You don't have to sell anything. You get paid when people click on your ad.
- You can use Adsense for about any topic.
- The ads run automatic after adding the code. Google automatically displays ads that are related to your content.
- There is little maintenance.
- Good for high traffic sites.
- Provides variety as the ads change all the time.
Disadvantages of Adsense Ads
- The commission payments are small amounts (but they can add up if you have high-traffic sites).
- When visitors click on the Adsense ad, they are leaving your site.
- Ads have to load and this can slow your page down a bit.
- You have less control over the ads (Google looks at the keywords and content of your page).
Affiliate marketing compared with Adsense
- Affiliate programs pay higher commissions (e.g. $10 or 20 or 1000+ commissions).
- You select one or more specific affiliate products and recommend them.
- You can choose which products you're promoting.
- By choosing what you're promoting, you can select products that are focused on your topics and niche so your site is more focused.
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Disadvantages of affiliate marketing vs Adsense
- With affiliate marketing, you have to sell something to get paid unless you do CPA marketing where you get paid when people perform a certain action, e.g. provide an email address, address, zip code or other.
- You'll find more or less products depending on your niche.
- It's more time consuming to sell affiliate products. You have to research and select products and set up affiliate ads. You should be selective, spend time finding good, targeted products to promote, do reviews and write some copy to presell/recommend the products.
TIP: You can use Google Adsense for research. If you run Adsense ads for a little while, you can look at what ads are showing up to easily find products that are available in your niche.
Should you monetize your blogs with affiliate ads or with Adsense? You can do both. Your decision on whether to use affiliate ads vs Adsense ads on your site will depend on your preference, what type of site you want, the amount of traffic you have, your topics and the amount of work you want to put in. And, of course, the best way to find out what works best in your niche is by testing.