What Will Earn You More Affiliate Schemes or PPC Ads? by Paul
Middleton
Firstly a quick explanation making money via affiliates is where a visitor to
your website or blog follows one of your links and makes a purchase. You then
get a percentage of this purchase. Examples of affiliates are the merchants
found in affiliate networks such as Click Bank and Commission junction.
PPC (pay per click) is where you get paid for a visitor to your website or
blog clicking on one of the ads - there is no sale required. Examples of this
are Google AdSense and Yahoo Publisher network.
Benefits of Affiliate Schemes
Higher Commission
Firstly the commission is usually greater than from PPC ads. This can run up
to big 3 figure sums per sale depending on the product.
Recurring Commission
Some affiliate schemes have recurring commission an example of this is a
membership site that pays a percentage of the monthly membership fee to the
affiliate every month the customer remains a member. This can bring in a steady
stream of income.
Multiple tiers
Some affiliate schemes have multiple tiers. Not only do you get a commission
on people you refer but you get a commission on people they refer too.
Downside of Affiliate schemes.
Loss of commission through time lag of purchase from first visit.
Most affiliate schemes have a time limit from when the referred visitor
arrives and when the product is purchased. If time limit this is exceeded then
no commission is paid. People usually take their time to purchase something so
if this time limit is low there is a high risk of losing commissions.
Commission theft.
As more and more people are becoming internet and affiliate savvy they are
realising that instead of paying for a product they can make a saving by joining
the affiliate scheme and earning the commission back on their purchase. You lose
all the commission even though it was your hard work that created the lead.
Relationship management.
If you are part of several affiliate schemes it can take time and effort to
manage the relationship with these different schemes. Things such as managing
usernames, passwords plus tracking what is and what isn't working for each
scheme take time. Time that is increased with each new affiliate scheme you
join.
Benefits of PPC
No Sale required
With PPC schemes like Google AdSense and Yahoo Publisher Network you only
require a click to get commission. You don't require a sale. Once the surfer has
clicked on the ad the money is yours and there's no way you can lose it.
The PPC network sells the advertising space on your site for you.
The network does the work of getting 1000s of advertisers signed up. Using
content targeting-technology they then display advertisers relevant to your web
page. This means they do all the hard work - all you need to do is provide the
content and the traffic. This saves you a hell of a lot of time and effort.
Downside of PPC
Payment for click can be low.
Payment on ads can pay as little as 1 cent so it would obviously take many
clicks to earn major money with this. You can however earn around $2 a click (in
some cases more) it all depends the subject of your web page and how much
competition there is from advertisers for it.
Being banned from the scheme.
To protect its advertisers PPC providers such as Google are very strict on
click fraud (where publishers click on their own ads to make themselves money).
If they find any of their publishers clicking on their own ads they will quite
rightly ban that publisher from the scheme for life.
However there have been some instances where innocent publishers have been
banned either by malicious attacks or mistakes. In these instances the publisher
can lose a major revenue stream.
Conclusion On average I think that the PPC model is the best way to
earn money from your visitors. It saves you time on managing multiple schemes
and means you can concentrate more on content creation and marketing. You also
don't stand to lose commission via theft.
However if your website is in an area that only attracts small sums for the
PPC ads it's definitely worth looking at what affiliate schemes out there
compliment your site.
What I do is have a split of around 90% of my pages serving PPC ads and the
remaining 10% promoting carefully selected affiliate schemes.
About the Author
Paul Middleton is a successful Internet entrepreneur. He shares some of his
secrets on his website where he shows people how to make money online
working from home. Included are details of how
you can have an adsense business. |
