Is Google’s Adsense worth more than pocketchange to stand-along bloggers?

My thoughts are;
Adsense should never be forgotten as an income source. My point, however, is whether to put Adsense as a primary income source or not.
The answer depends.
If I just enjoy blogging and consider having a passive income, I would focus on Adsense. Because it’s easy to perform and it works for me as long as my goal is getting decent passive income. And thus I put Adsense as my primary income source.

However, if I really want to earn money as my living from my blog, I would think Adsense as a secondary income source. I would work more with other affiliate programs (BTW Adsense is a kind of affiliate program by definition.)

Actually the discussion was about which one works better. In terms of amount of money, the affiliate program will work better. But it’s no secret that most of affiliates don’t earn enough; probably, they may earn money more from Adsense. So I have to say that the affiliate program will work better only when performed properly. Performing an affiliate program is kind of complex. The way to promote an affiiate program must be different from normal blogging.
Differen income model needs different marketing strategy, right?

While on the net, I never ever click on GoogleAds because my eyes are too used to recognizing them as ad units.

But blogads to invite my attention sometimes.

I redesigned by blog http://labnol.blogspot.com keeping the right sidebar free for displaying blogads. I think blogads can co-exist with Adsense but unfortunately, blogads are not accepting application at this time.

Another alternative for the sidebar are Google Skyscraper units but they aren’t high paying as their rectangular counterparts.

Darren Rowse currently has a nice discussion going on a [...]

I have one weblog that is making nearly $50 a month from AdSense now with 700 visitors a day, and should be in the $75 range when it gets to 1000/day. Not a fortune, but I doubt I could beat it with affiliate programs.

If you were really lucky there might be a well-converting affiliate program that precisely matched your weblog’s topic, but unless you’re creating your site specifically for that, the chance of having very many sales is small.

AdSense isn’t always the best choice, though–I have one very high traffic site with a general non-tech audience, and AdSense does terribly there. Few clicks and low per-click prices. I make more money on traditional ad networks.

you have to actually cause your reader to make a purchase

There are also a number of ‘pay per lead’ affiliate programs which don’t necessarily depend on the visitor making a purchase, simply filling out some information.

I’ve found the per per lead affiliate programs have greater conversion rates, but they vary from niche to niche. I also believe CJ has a search function for finding PPL programs as well.

Granted, the commission may be less than a hundred dollars per lead, but I have seen some programs offering upwards of $25-$50 per lead (no purchase necessary) – but they are often in the over saturated markets, so if you’re not already established, the chances of getting enough traffic to make it worth while is minimized.

I maintain that on a site doing 1000 impressions per day that they will have a pretty low conversion rate. The reason for this is that to get the $50 (or whatever the figure) you have to actually cause your reader to make a purchase.

With Adsense you just have to get a click on the ad.

I’m thinking of one site in particularly – where I have an affiliate program being promoted that can earn me $100 per sale – the only problem is that despite linking to it in a variety of ways throughout my blog I’m yet to have a sale after 6 months.

In the mean time Adsense has earned me $500.

The other thing I’d say is that with your ‘credit card’ illustration – you’re right that the affiliate programs pay well – but in the same way Adsense can pay well also for those sorts of terms. I know one person who reports making between 15 cents to $4 per click from ‘credit card’ terms. At that rate, and using the method of calculating you used in your case study (10% CTR at 1000 impressions) a blogger could expect to earn anywhere between $15 and $400 per day. Of course the 10% is still a pretty high CTR so I’m not sure the $400 mark is feasible – but I still think it illustrates that Adsense probably is in the ballpark of affiliate programs (taking into account their lower rate of sale/conversion).

You compare one Affiliate program sale with $10 from Adsense – but I guess I’d ask – how often do you get the affiliate sale? As i say – in my experience the $50 sale doesn’t come along on a daily basis on a site with 1000 daily impressions.

I guess it depends on a lot of factors – but I’d still maintain (as I said in my post) that it’s not an either/or situation – but that a variety of revenue streams should be tried on each blog (within reason so as not to get into ‘clutter advertising’. I think Adsense and affiliate programs/sponsorship/partnerships/impression based ads etc should all be tried.

I was thinking of putting it on a few of my posts, but only a few that get around 20-30 searches a day- just wanting some backup data, thanks.

It’s all in what niche is chosen, the target audience and how savvy they may be when it comes to affiliate links/ad placement, and the revenue streams the blogmaster chooses.

I would honestly diversify – it’s never a good thing to put all of one’s eggs in one basket (i.e. AdSense) and the only way to truly know what will work for a specific blog is to test it and test thoroughly.

More importantly, you can use both channel to maximize your income. Adsense usually makes up 40-70% of my advertising income, and I definitely agree with Darren that Adsense is an easier and profitable model.