The Rise and Fall of Affiliate Programs

Affiliate programs were once a great source of online revenue, a
savvy webmaster with an eye for marketing could easily parley a 
site into a money making machine with a little luck and effort. 
However, the evolution and growth of the Internet has hampered 
the growth of fortune making affiliate programs. Constant search 
engine algorithm changes, along with the search engine's clear 
distaste for sites participating in affiliate programs; have 
made it a little more difficult to earn a healthy affiliate 
revenue. An influx in the use of software programs that 
terminate cookie tracking and privacy programs that prevent 
webmasters from tracking referrers, have also hindered the 
affiliate sales channel. While it is still possible to make 
money through affiliate marketing, other alternatives ought 
to be considered.


A Healthy Alternative or Supplement

Google's Adsense program allows approved websites to dynamically 
serve Google's pay-per-click Adword results. This has become a 
popular alternative and an effective revenue sharing program 
for webmasters. Google's spider parses the adserving website 
and serves ads that relate to the website's content. While the 
Google's Adsense program still has some issues, they are making 
efforts to improve it. 

The website maintenance related to Adsense is very easy and 
requires very little effort. Webmasters need only to insert 
javascript into the webpage or website template. The javascript 
calls the ad from Google and will ensure that ads are served 
each time a visitor goes to the webpage. If the visitor clicks 
one of the Adsense ads served to the website, the website owner 
is credited for the referral. 

The implementation, while simple, has its drawbacks. Google 
dictates the format of the ads. Webmasters can select from a 
handful of preformatted text boxes that lack creativity. A 
recent improvement allows webmasters to modify the ad boxes 
to resemble the website's color scheme. Still, a far cry from 
some of the creative ads webmasters are accustom to.

The example below reflects how the color scheme can be modified 
to match the look of the website, but the ads physically don't 
fit well into the overall website design. 

sample modified to match sites color scheme:
http://www.hospital-software.com (scroll to the bottom) 

Google determines the content of the ads that are shown/ 
Sometimes the ads are poorly targeted, and of no interest 
to the website visitors. 

sample of poorly targeted ads:
http://www.real-estate-supply.com 

Adwords can be a great addition to a website, and when well 
matched to the content the revenue stream from Google is 
consistent and effortless.

sample of effective Adsense program:
http://www.police-supplies.com (scroll to the bottom) 
http://www.small-business-software.net (scroll to the bottom)

Not that the Google Adsense program is not without its problems, 
as the reporting provided by Google is lacking. Google has only 
recently implemented channels as a way to track multiple sites 
that serve ads. The general reporting simply shows the number of 
ads served, the percentage of clicks received, and the revenue 
earned each day. Google does not disclose the amount of the 
revenue they share, what percentage of the revenue they earn and 
what someone can expect to receive for each click. Webmasters 
with multiple sites will have difficulty determining which 
websites are producing the money in the Adsense program. 

With affiliate programs many webmasters implement a new browser 
launch with each click off the site, Adsense removes the visitor 
from the website and there is not currently an option to launch 
the visitor into another browser. 

Early on Google implemented a filtering system that allowed 
webmasters to prevent a specific domain's ads from being served 
on the website. Ad blocking meant that webmasters could prevent 
their competitors ads from being dynamically served on their 
website. 

Overall, adwords are great supplements to websites where 
affiliate programs are either not performing or when affiliate 
programs don't exist that target the sites content.


Give it a Try

Implementing and maintaing Google Adsense program on a content 
site requires very little effort and can often bring a steady 
stream of additional revenue for webmasters. Consider 
supplementing content and see what happens.