Are Affilitate Ads Better Than Direct Ads?

Who doesn't want to make money online? To me, its the easiest job one could get. Blogging from home, in your own set environment, get up late and what not. There are so many ways that we could make our full time living through different levels of monetization on our blogs/websites.

Beginners often get confused while choosing among different money making ventures that are available to us in today's online world.

Affiliate ads (affiliate marketing) has a great potential and so as direct paid ads. Which one is better? Its again not that simple. Not one of those binary questions to answer. Its depends. There are so many variables in real world that we have to take in consideration.

Affiliate ads (affiliate marketing) is a type where we promote other company's products (that are related to our blog niche, topic in general). You wont promote a hosting company on a technology blog.

The company provides you with their banners (of standard different sizes) and you promote them on your site.

In case of direct ads (like BSA: BuySell ads) you simply advertise any one on your blog at a negotiated price. In this case, you could either build an Advertise Page on your blog and set relevant details (as per your demands) or you could use a popular direct ad network, i.e BuySell Ads.

So either way, you promote some other company (product) and that's what advertisement is all about.

Lets Compare: Affiliate Ads vs Direct 

Affiliate ads are often high paying. Take an example of a hosting company, Host Gator. They offer around 50$ whenever a customer gets Host Gator hosting through our Affiliate link (that Host Gator would provide to us). Note the example of Host Gator is just for informational purpose (example) and we are not trying to promote here anything.

1-5 per month	—————	$50 /signup
6-10 per month	—————	$75 /signup
11-20 per month	—————	$100 /signup
21+ per month	—————	$125 /signup

The example shows how powerful affiliate marketing (affiliate ads) can be. Again it all converges to one point, i.e Traffic. Affiliate programs are free to join by the way.

On the other hand, direct banner ads are often low paying in long term. This point needs more explanation. Though we could increase the rates of our ads as our blog gets more traffic and thus popularity, but it has a limit to it.

The maximum rates that we could increase have to slow down at some point. You just cant keep on asking for more and more in today's competitive market. Advertisers have so many options due to immense competition among webmasters.

On the other hand, affiliate marketing, just like PPC ads could not even have an end to its potential. The more the traffic, the more sales we could get. But as online marketing depends on so many factors as i mentioned before, Affiliate marking doesn't work for every blog niche. It requires a huge amount of loyal readership that is willing to buy online.

How many times have you ever considered to buy something online? It has been seen that search engine traffic doesn't really support affiliate marketing. As people often search to get something (to get to some specific point) and thats it.

Ladies would better perform at buying stuff online. Just saying. They are more fond of those window shopping thingy where they could be trapped into those ads? (just a light side).

Lets Wrap Up

So to summarize, we cant really back any one of them. Affiliate marketing could be the ultimate way to make money online, only if a webmaster has that 'buying online' tendency viewership. But no doubt it has a huge potential when it comes to mash up of high traffic and loyal readership.

On the other hand, direct ads could be satisfactory, specially in short terms. One starts to get the reward instantly. Popular bloggers, like Daren from problogger earns huge sums through affiliate marketing. Why? The type of readership he got + Mega Traffic.

Have you tried any one of them on your blog? How do you monetize your blog generally? Let us know.

Peace :)

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Guest Post by Hassam Ahmad Awan. MBT's Gold Star Guest Author.

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Hassam Ahmad Awan 11/18/2011