Affiliate (....Blog) Revenue

One of the longest ongoing debates in the affiliate industry is "how much can a person make", and there are lots of sites made by people claiming to have made millions, presenting fake checks while they attempt to suck money and life blood from unfortunate web marketeers who are looking for ways to kick start their revenue. Ask any serious affiliate how much money they make and you'll likely get one of two answers "Not Enough" and "Could be more", no dollar figures. Yes we're all capitalists and looking for ways to get beyond earning "enough". There are also many many ways for people to earn money on line now a days, the advent of blogs making it even easier for more people to try to make money too.

Being as we see a lot of the checks we issue to affiliates we have a good idea of what affiliates of all sizes can and do earn, but no I'm not going to be publishing those numbers. What I did come across and found interesting and something I'm going to follow, was the revenue post by the folks who own General Marketing Blog where they are posting their on going monthly revenue for everyone to see and follow, along with related traffic and ranking reports. Here's a slice of the revenue info :

Blog Income

• Pepperjam: $123.00 (Up $26.00)
• Adsense: $26.51 (Down $10.81)
• Bannermall: $0.00 (Down $20.00)
• Banner ads: $172.00 (Up $40.00)
• Paid Posts: $245.00 (Up $115.00)

The blog has been live 6 months and the owners made just over $550 in April. I don't believe that's a bad number for just 6 months live. They also list their site data, rankings and traffic reports. What I found interesting though is that the revenue has not come from any traditional affiliate networks, other than PJN, or even PPC, but more from the growing business of paid posts.

For people looking to launch a new site and earn some money, this certainly shows, that with effort and focus you can start to get a reasonable income within a few months, and that Pay Per Post Marketing is becoming a large factor in making that possible.

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Affiliate Links vs. Adsense

Mark over at 45n5.com asks a very common question we hear; which is better, having Adsense on a page or utilizing affiliate links? My advice would be that it completely depends on the type of page you are designing. If it's a topic that people are gathering information, or doing some research, then Adsense would seem to fit.

One of Mark's commenter's noted that they had a luxury homes page up where affiliate links didn't do very well, however Adsense earned quite a bit of money. This would make sense, as I don't imagine many people would click on an affiliate link and make any purchase related to luxury homes just from a website.

Now, if you are designing a page targeting people who are in a buying mood, well this is where the affiliate links become very powerful. If you design your site as a funnel, directing people to make a purchase through affiliate links, this should be more effective than simply putting up Adsense ads. If you have a page with a bunch of informational content and articles, then try out Adsense. Give people something to click on in their search for more information.

In either case, if one isn't working out well for you, nothing other than a little effort prevents you from trying out the other.

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