Stuart McHenry - My Internet World

I see new webmasters ask the questions all the time about contextual advertising Vs affiliate marketing. New webmasters tend to think that Adsense is the greatest thing since the sliced bagel and at first… it sure does. What’s not to like with Adsense… you put some code on your webpages then make some money. Sure it’s easy and there is some decent money to be made but if you really want to make cash… get into affiliate marketing.

With Google Adsense our highest days have been in the $500-$600 range but with affiliate marketing our highest day is more than nine times that. Yep… our current single daily record is $4,674.15. (just affiliate income) Now here is the kicker… sure we bring in decent money for affiliate companies like Azoogle and CJ but we are nowhere near the top earners. There is currently tons of money to be made in the affiliate arena and some of the top earners are making seven figures per month.

Now don’t think just by putting some affiliate links on your site and BOOM your making tons of cash… it doesn’t work that way. First off you need a website with traffic.. second you need to market something your visitors might be interested in. I have got a few people that have contact me and asked why they haven’t made any sales yet in the affiliate world. They usually send me there URL and I take a look. 99.99% of the time the sites they show me would do much better if they choose the right affiliate programs to promote. People tend to get caught up in what others are making money on Vs what might work for them.

The most important thing is to test out different programs and keep in mind just b/c an affiliate has higher payout’s doesn’t mean you will make more money. Conversion is the main factor… we are currently running a program that pays 35% less than some others but we convert more and overall make more money with the lower payout program.

Anyway… if you are just getting into affiliate marketing read as much as you can and test, test and test again. You will find out you can make 3-4 times more money with affiliate marketing than you can with contextual advertising.

Our very first online adventure was seven years ago selling beanie babies on the Internet. (stop laughing) We didn’t have a shopping cart program we just took phone and email orders and sent the product out via US Mail. It was very small operation but we did however sell butt loads of beanie babies.

Looking back there sure was a lot of work involved in finding the beanie babies, maintaining the inventory levels, taking orders, verifying the shipments and then finally shipping the merchandise.

A couple years back we had a decent size (500 products) website that sold medical supplies and equipment. If there is one thing I learned from owning and operating your own ecommerce website is it’s a lot of work. Then I discovered affiliate programs and the easy money.

Why are affiliate programs easy money? It’s simple… you deliver the traffic and a vendor handles the rest. No taking phone calls that last 30 minutes just to sell a $2.95 gauze. The great thing about affiliates is you can actually make money while you sleep or play golf. Of course you need to work hard at get traffic to your website… traffic is the big key to success.

Right now we use three affiliate programs one of which is Amazon. Regardless of what anyone says Amazon is not dead… they don’t always pay the greatest but there is a trade off. Conversion can often be a little higher as people know they are dealing with a major company that will deliver what’s ordered.

Of course contextual publisher advertising (Adsense & YPN) bring in good money but having a good affiliate is the icing on the cake. The best part is you don’t have to hear a 45 mintue story about some old man’s colostomy bag.