Is Google Adsense Affiliate Marketing?

The question always asks, is Google Adsense Affiliate Marketing Program a real business? And what is the difference between the two, if any?

There are many differences between affiliate marketing and Adsense. I am going to go over the main ones in this article.

First, let me say that affiliate marketing is a business model. Google Adsense is an affiliate program.

There are many ways to make money in affiliate marketing. There is only one way to make money with Google Adsense, and that is you get paid when people click on ads coded with your publisher’s i.d. number.

Google Adsense is a pay-per-click affiliate program. That is it.

You do not sell anything to make money with Adsense. That would be a pay-per-sale program.

You do not get paid when people fill out a lead form or download software. That would be a pay-per-lead or cost-per-action program.

Let’s get into a little bit more detail differences between Google Adsense, and affiliate marketing and I’ll tell you why I love this way to make money!

What Is Affiliate Marketing?

Wikipedia says “Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate’s own marketing efforts.”

I simplify it this way.

Affiliate marketing is where you promote somebody else’s product for a commission.

You can do this 5 ways,

• 1. Pay per click.
• 2. Pay per lead.
• 3. Pay per sale.
• 4. Two-tier recruiting.
• 5. Start your own affiliate program.

There are 4 players if you will in the affiliate marketing tree. Not all come into play every time, but often they do.

• 1. The network.
• 2. The merchant.
• 3. The affiliate.
• 4. The customer.

Clickbank is one of the largest digital products affiliate networks. You find a product from a merchant and sell it to your customer as an affiliate. This is a case where all 4 players do come into play.

Here is another example.

You join the Google Adsense affiliate program. They are the merchant. They sell ads for you that show up on your blog when you add a code to it.

You earn money as an affiliate when people click on one of the ads. There is no network in this example and no customer on your end because they do not buy anything from you.

Do you see how that could be an easy way to make money with affiliate marketing? You focus on getting traffic to your blog, and when a visitor clicks on an ad you earn 68% of the amount billed by Google to the advertiser.

Let’s go deeper into each of the 5 ways to make money as an affiliate.

Pay Per Click

You get paid when somebody clicks on an ad on your site. Google AdSense is the largest PPC affiliate program and they payout 68% of every click back to the affiliate publisher.

As an example, if you have an ad on your site that the advertisers get billed $1 for, you will earn $.68 cents. Google sells advertising for you which is a huge advantage. There are companies that promote this way of business for high returns.

They try and match the advertisers to the content on the page. This just means that if you have a blog about dogs you’re not going to get advertisers for vitamins on your page.

Pay Per Lead

This is also known as cost per action. You get paid when somebody fills out a lead form on your site.

You might also get paid if they perform a specific action such as downloading the free software. Basically, whatever the affiliate merchant requires to be done you earn money when that action is completed.

There are literally thousands of CPA affiliate programs on the Internet. Offer Vault has always been one of my favorite sites to find affiliate networks as well as train on this way to make money.

One of the top cost-per-action affiliate programs is Max Bounty. They’re easy to work with and have offers in multiple niches.

Pay Per Sale

You get paid to sell products for the affiliate merchant. As an example, if you are an affiliate for Amazon you would make money selling books, digital information, or literally thousands of physical products.

Click Bank is one of the largest digital affiliate networks. With one ID number, you are an affiliate for thousands of digital information products in multiple niches.

The great thing about this affiliate network is you are selling digital information which is accessed 100% online. It’s easy to add affiliate products such as e-books to your website or blog and make money selling them.

Two-Tier Affiliate Marketing

With this way to make money, you recruit affiliates and earn commissions when they complete the required action of the affiliate merchant. For example, you continue to make first-tier commissions on your sales, and make a lower commission on their sales.

This might be a 20% commission on your sale on a 5% commission on their sales. This is a good way to make money on the efforts of others similar to the network marketing business model.

The primary difference here is you only earn money on the efforts of your personal recruits. You do not build a downline like you would in network marketing.

Start Your Own Affiliate Program Business

This can be a good way to make a lot of money if you’re committed to building your own affiliate network. However, from a time standpoint, this is not for everybody.

One idea that many affiliate merchants have capitalized on is to create digital information and sell it on Clickbank. This gives you the immediate advantage of having access to thousands of affiliates to sell your products without building your own affiliate network.

Clickbank handles all the transactions including paying the affiliate commissions. This makes it hands-off for you so you can focus on creating products for affiliates to sell.

Final Thoughts On Google Adsense

To summarize this article the primary difference between affiliate marketing and Google AdSense is this. AdSense is an affiliate program whereas affiliate marketing is a business model that includes the pay-per-click model Adsense is in.