The most well-known sources of income from digital monetization are affiliate marketing and Google Adsense. Which is the most profitable, easiest way to monetize? Is it Affiliate or Adsense?
The advantage of affiliate marketing is that the earning potential is large and does not depend on traffic from Google. However, earnings in Affiliate are more difficult to achieve because they are earned from people who have to buy products, and building an affiliate audience takes time and investment.
Meanwhile, Google Adsense is easier to generate because visitors just click on ads, and there is no need to build an audience like in Affiliate Marketing.
However, the disadvantages of Adsense include smaller earning potential, high traffic dependency on Google’s algorithm and the possibility of getting banned.
We will discuss what Affiliate is, what Adsense is and how the two compare.
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What is Affiliate Marketing?
Selling other people’s products through promoting links. That’s affiliate. Maybe in the offline world, an affiliate is a realtor.
Since it’s online, it’s pretty easy, we just put a link on their blog and expect visitors to click on the link and make a transaction.
Some of the affiliate benefits are:
- Free. No need to pay to join the affiliate program.
- No need to create products. The product is provided by the affiliate owner. Creating a product takes extra effort, not everyone can and is able to
- No need for logistics & delivery and CS services. Everything is handled by the product owner, from shipping to serving complaints.
- Become a long term income. Because the affiliate method is quite simple, it can be a source of recurring passive income
Content is key in affiliate. The right content will attract visitors that bring conversions.
If the content created is not appropriate, the chances of conversion will be small. The visitors who come are not in line with the affiliate’s goals.
How to create content that can convert to affiliates?
Understand the affiliate product well. As much as possible from the beginning, it has been planned that the affiliate to be promoted is in line with the topic of the blog.
For example, if our blog talks a lot about finance, then choose finance affiliates. Not technology affiliates.
With like-minded affiliate products, the content will be easier to customize. Readers will also read it more seamlessly, not hard-selling.
What is Google Adsense?
The way google adsense works is that if adsense ads are installed on the site, then we become a publisher and will be paid if visitors click on ads that appear on the site.
Becoming an online publisher is an online business opportunity that is most often utilized because of tens or even hundreds of millions of searches every day via Google.
We need to register with Google, either through the website or android, to become an online or youtube ad publisher.
As a publisher, you must learn to understand the terms and workings of Adsense ads set by Google. Read the Google TOS to understand what is allowed, and what is not allowed.
One thing that needs to be known from the start is that Google is strict about TOS, it can even be said to be super strict.
Based on many testimonies that I read on the internet, if a publisher is found to be in violation, Google uncompromisingly disables the publisher’s adsense account, so that the ad immediately disappears from the site, aka your ad revenue is lost.
Getting adsense displayed again is not easy. You are given the opportunity to ‘appeal’ but the process is lengthy and must be outlined with reasons supported by strong evidence.
Differences between Affiliate Marketing and Adsense
These two ways of digital monetization have many differences.
| Affiliate | Adsense | |
| Difficulty | High | Medium |
| Yielding Speed | Slow | Quick |
| Investment Costs | High | Medium |
| Time Period | Long | Short |
| Competition | Medium | High |
| Stability | High | Low |
| Income | High | Medium |
| Skill | Copywriting | SEO |
| Choice of Provider | Many | A little |
1. Difficulty
Google Adsense is easier to start than affiliate marketing. As long as you have a blog that has been registered with Adsense, there is traffic then income comes from visitors who click on ads.
Meanwhile, affiliate is more difficult because people have to buy something first, and then we benefit from the purchase.
So, the difference is quite clear, that is, if affiliates earn if people buy goods, while adsense earns enough people click on ads.
2. Yielding Speed
The process in Affiliate marketing to earn is longer than in Google Adsense.
We have to build an audience, then develop a database and only then can we sell products to the audience to generate income from Affiliates.
So, the process in Affiliate takes time and cannot be instant.
In Adsense, the process is also not instant as we have to build traffic in order to earn from ads.
However, the process of building traffic in Adsense is not as long as building trust in Affiliate.
3. Cost and Investment
The cost to invest in Affiliate marketing is greater than in Google Adsense.
It’s true, in both, we have to build content. However, in affiliate, in addition to content, we have to maintain a database, which costs a lot of money.
In Adsense, apart from regularly updated content, we don’t need to maintain an email database or Whatsapp number. We just need to make sure that traffic comes to the blog more and more every day.
4. Long-term vs Short-term
Affiliate Marketing takes a long time to grow and is a long-term investment, while Adsense is quicker to deliver results and shorter term.
5. Competition
Competition in Google Adsense is tougher because it is a race to attract traffic with other sites. Meanwhile, in affiliate marketing, the competition is not as tight as in Adsense because the focus is on how to build a database.
6. Stability
Affiliate Marketing if you are already earning will provide more income stability than Adsense.
Because in Adsense the main source of traffic is organic from Google Search. Meanwhile, Google’s algorithm often changes, which may have an impact on the traffic coming to the site.
7. Potential Income Amount
Affiliate Marketing provides greater earning potential because the ticket per item spent by visitors is greater than people clicking on ads.
In Affiliate, you don’t need many clicks, just a few but the important thing is that people make purchases. While in Adsense, we need a lot of people to click on ads in order to generate a decent income.
8. Required Skills
The main skills in Affiliate Marketing are copywriting and building content that is relevant to the target audience. Although the amount of traffic is important, it is not as important as copywriting skills and creating content that meets the needs of visitors.
Meanwhile, the main skill in Google Adsense is SEO, which is to bring in a large number of organic visitors for free. The more visitors, the more likely the ads are to be clicked by visitors.
9. Cooperation Options
Affiliate Marketing provides a lot of cooperation options because there are many products that can be sold through the affiliate system. Meanwhile, publishers have limited advertising cooperation options, the main one being Google Adsense.
10. Possibility of Account Banned
Google Adsense applies strict conditions which, if violated, make publishers prone to being banned and unable to make money from advertising. Meanwhile, the terms of Affiliate are not as strict as Adsense.
