Affiliate marketing vs Google Adsense: Which Is Better In 2025? [Latest Earning Reports]

Choosing the right monetization strategy is the key to building a successful blog.

Both affiliate marketing and AdSense are excellent monetization options to generate revenue. 

Affiliate marketing offers a high earning potential but requires strategic content creation whereas AdSense can provide consistent earnings but with low earnings per click.

So, in this guide, we’ll discuss who might benefit most from affiliate marketing and AdSense.

Affiliate Marketing vs Google AdSense: Which One is the Best In 2025?

Affiliate marketing is where you earn a commission with every successful product sale you generate through your affiliate referral links whereas AdSense is a display advertising platform where you earn money by showing ads on your site and your earnings mostly depend on the CPC of your keywords.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is the process of promoting another person’s or company’s products to your audience and earning a commission if someone buys through your affiliate links.

The best example of an affiliate marketing blog is our own site BloggersPassion.com! We create great content and promote relevant products with affiliate links and generate commission while helping our blog readers. It’s a win-win!

How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?

Here’s the breakdown of how affiliate marketing works:

• You (the affiliate): It can be anyone such as a blogger, YouTuber, social media influencer, etc.
• Merchant: The company with the product you want to promote.
• Buyer (your audience or followers): Who purchases a product using your affiliate link.

Types of Affiliate Marketing Programs

There are generally three types of affiliate marketing programs.

1. Pay-Per-Click (PPC): In this model, you earn a commission based on the number of clicks generated by your affiliate links, regardless of whether someone makes a purchase.

For example, if you have a blog about email marketing and you promote an email marketing software (example: ConvertKit). You earn a commission every time someone clicks on your affiliate link to visit the ConverKit website, even if they don’t buy anything. 

2. Pay-per-sale (PPS) or Cost-per-sale (CPS): This is a popular affiliate marketing model where you earn a commission whenever someone makes a purchase using your link. 

For instance, an affiliate promoting a keyword research tool might earn a commission of 30% of the tool’s price if a visitor clicks their affiliate link and buys the tool. 

3. Pay-per-lead (PPL) or cost-per-lead (CPL): This model involves generating leads for the product vendor (or merchant).

For instance, if you’re an SEO expert and promote a popular SEO tool (example: Semrush), you might earn a commission for every person who signs up Semrush’s email list using your affiliate link.

What is Google AdSense?

Google AdSense is a popular display ad network used by website owners to earn money by displaying ads on their site.

The best example of a website generating money from AdSense is Mashable which generates over 15 million views a month.

If you’re curious, here’s a handpicked list of the top 15 AdSense earning sites along with their monthly earnings.

How Does Google AdSense Work?

Here’s the breakdown of how Google AdSense works:

• Advertisers create ads
• Google AdSense works by matching ads to your website based on your content
• Website owners display these ads on their website pages
• Whenever someone clicks on an ad, the website owner earns a commission

Ad Types and Formats In AdSense

AdSense offers a wide range of ad types and formats. Here are a few common ads.

• Display ads: These are the popular ad formats, which can appear as banners or text ads on your website.
• Video ads: These ads appear before or during a video
• In-article ads: These ads are inserted within your content, usually between the paragraphs of your pages.
• In-feed ads: These ads appear in a feed format, such as a news feed or RSS blog feed.
• Matched content ad units: These ad formats are automatically generated based on your website content.

For more information, refer to our free guide on Google AdSense banner sizes to boost your Adsense income.

Affiliate Marketing vs AdSense: Key Differences

Affiliate marketing and AdSense are two of the most popular ways to monetize a website, but they have some key differences which are listed below.

1. Revenue Model

Affiliate marketing: Higher earning potential with affiliate marketing and the earnings depend on the type of products you promote. You basically earn a commission on each sale made through your affiliate link.

AdSense: Lower earnings per click, as AdSense ads typically pay less per click than affiliate marketing. You basically earn a small amount per click on ads displayed on your website.

2. Traffic Requirement

Affiliate marketing: Typically you need to attract highly relevant and targeted website traffic to convert visitors into buyers.

AdSense: Your website needs to generate a significant amount of traffic to earn decent revenue.

3. Content Strategy

Affiliate marketing: You need to create product-focused content (such as reviews, comparisons, tutorials) that directly promotes the affiliate products.

AdSense: For AdSense sites, you should create a wider range of content, including news, latest trends, high-volume posts, etc.

4. User Engagement

Affiliate marketing: Requires high user intent, as your website audience must trust your product recommendations and be ready to make a purchase.

AdSense: Primarily requires minimal user interaction, such as clicks or impressions on the displayed ads.

5 Major Benefits of Affiliate Marketing Over Google Adsense

I personally like affiliate marketing because it allows me to earn money whenever I want. All I need to do is to set up a proper blog sales funnel, drive targeted visitors and promote the right products to make money. That being said, here are few of the biggest reasons why you should use affiliate marketing over AdSense.

1. Make Money While You Sleep

The #1 reason people go after affiliate marketing is it’s the surefire way to make money even when you sleep. It’s the greatest passive income source for majority of the bloggers and marketers.

Pick the right products to promote, drive targeted visitors to see those ads and you will be making money every time they buy from you. It’s as simple as that. You don’t have to beg people to buy products from you or spend money to increase your sales.

You just need the right kind of attention and products that suit your target audience and if they find value in them, you will be making money even while you are sleeping.

Sharing below screenshot for one of my affiliate account:

So you can see, I made over $67,000 while sending 23,527 clicks only to one of affiliate product I’m promoting. You cannot think of making such amount while showing Adsense ads on your blog.

Take Away: Show affiliate products on pages where you are getting traffic on commercial intent keywords.

2. Build First, Make Money Next

Building trust is the key to making more money from affiliate marketing. The best example is Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income and his blog generates over 100,000 dollars every single month.

Do you know his #1 income sources for his blog? It’s affiliate marketing. Almost 80% of the money comes from affiliate marketing. He is able to generate so much money from it because of one simple reason and that is the trust he has built over the years.

When he recommends something, his audience give it a try and that way he makes commission. Bluehost is his biggest income source where he usually makes over $30,000 a month alone from it.

Affiliate marketing can help you keep your visitors stay on your blog whereas Google AdSense kills your readership. Check out this image below to understand better about it.

3. You Don’t Need Huge Traffic

The reason why I always prefer affiliate marketing over AdSense or any other income source is this: “I don’t need huge traffic on my sites”. Even with a couple of thousands visitors seeing my site, I can make decent income from affiliate marketing.

The best part is I can get huge commissions if I choose the products carefully. Not only I can add value to my audience by recommending them the right products but I can make money in the process. So it’s a win win approach.

4. You Can Promote “Relevant Products”

Google AdSense won’t let you pick the ads for your target audience that means you are irritating your blog audience with your ads. Whereas with affiliate marketing, you can promote relevant products that suit your audience.

You can increase your clicks by promoting the relevant products to your blog audience. So even with limited amount of traffic, you can drive more affiliate sales. That’s what I like about affiliate marketing.

5. You are Your Own Boss

You don’t need anyone else’s promotion to start making money from affiliate marketing. To make money from AdSense, you need approval from Google Adsense Team. Only then you can make money from it. Even after getting your AdSense account, you never know when Google bans you (if you violate their rules).

So here’s where affiliate marketing clearly wins the race. Set up the right products, build the right audience and promote it accordingly to increase your affiliate sales.

5 Core Benefits of Google AdSense Over Affiliate Marketing

For 99% of the bloggers, Google AdSense is how they start making money from their blogs. Not that AdSense is the easiest way to make money blogging but it is undoubtedly the fastest way to earn money online.

Google AdSense is hands down the best money-making source for the majority of the people who run microsites or blogs. Here are 5 of the major benefits of using AdSense over affiliate marketing.

1. Google AdSense is the Fastest Way to Make Money Online

Making money from affiliate marketing takes a lot of time. You can’t make affiliate sales within a month or two especially when you have zero online marketing skills. This is where AdSense comes into play.

It is the quickest and reliable way to make money from your blogs. Drive enough visitors from search engines to your sites, use AdSense ads and you will be making decent money every month. That’s the beauty of Google AdSense.

2. You Don’t Need Any Online Expertise

Seriously, making money using AdSense doesn’t require you to become an expert in your field. Thousands of new bloggers without any expertise in their fields are launching new sites and making money from AdSense.

We all know building online expertise takes a lot of time (not months but it usually takes years). This is where most people give up and fail miserably to build profitable blogs like Mashable, Techcrunch etc. Luckily, AdSense allows you to quickly make money and all you need is decent amount of traffic coming from search engines to your sites.

3. You Don’t Need Any Products

Seriously, you don’t need to find any “perfect products” to promote. Google AdSense takes care of everything. Once you apply for AdSense and get approved your account, you can find relevant ads to place on your sites to grow your AdSense earnings.

4. If Done Right, AdSense can be Your #1 Passive Income Source

Amit Agarwal, Darren Rowse and few other guys are making millions of dollars every single year just from Google Adsense. That means AdSense can be your #1 passive income source if you properly use it.

The only reason why most people can’t make enough AdSense earnings is they either don’t get enough traffic from Google or they try to get random visitors by using vague keywords while creating content. If you take care of your traffic and drive targeted visitors to your sites from search engines, your Google AdSense earnings can skyrocket easily.

5. You Don’t Need Any Special Skills

Seriously I’ve seen so many new bloggers launching new sites and making money from AdSense. Why would you need special skills when you can create some good content that gets you enough traffic and increase your AdSense earnings.

But make sure you are NOT creating content just for the sake of AdSense. Give importance to your audience, create good content around their needs, do proper on-page optimization and you can easily increase your AdSense income.

Pros and Cons of Affiliate Marketing

Pros of affiliate marketing	Cons of affiliate marketing
You don’t need a product inventory	Huge competition in almost every niche
It is cost-effective, as all you need is an email list or a website	It takes lots of time to build a money-making affiliate site
One of the best passive income sources	Affiliate product companies can change rules and commission structures anytime they want
Lots of diversity, you can promote ANY product you want	Most products often have low conversions
Most affiliate programs are free to join

Pros and Cons of Google AdSense

Pros of AdSense	Cons of AdSense
AdSense automatically shows targeted ads based on your visitors’ location and search history	It is a low-income business model, as AdSense may not generate enough revenue for most niches
Work from anywhere at any time	You’re HUGELY dependent on the mercy of Google for traffic and ad clicks
There are no upfront costs, except a website	Google may NOT approve all websites
Wide range of ad formats, as you can choose from text, image, and video ads	Too many ads can irritate website users
AdSense is a great option for beginners

Affiliate Marketing vs Google Adsense: Which One Is More Profitable?

Before choosing affiliate marketing or AdSense, consider the potential earnings. Affiliate marketing often offers HIGHER commission, while AdSense earnings are based on your website traffic and demographics.

Affiliate Marketing

You can certainly earn a full-time income from affiliate marketing. But, the earnings HUGELY depend on your niche. 

Niches with higher average order values or recurring revenue products typically help you generate HIGHER affiliate commissions.

Let’s take our own blog BloggersPassion for example, a popular digital marketing blog.

In our niche, there are so many SEO tools and web hosting products that offer HEFTY commissions and recurring earnings. This ultimately allows us to generate over $10,000 every month from affiliate marketing.

Here’s one of our affiliate earning reports from the Semrush affiliate program.

As you can see above, the earning potential is really promising. However, it’s important to remember that it took us MANY years of consistent effort, quality content, and overcoming lots of challenges through trial and error.

Google AdSense

Google AdSense is the POPULAR choice for bloggers who want to monetize their content through advertisements. But the earnings are low compared to affiliate marketing.

The estimated earnings from AdSense depends on several things, including:

• Click-Through Rate (CTR): This is the percentage of website users who click on your AdSense ads. The higher your CTR, the more you’ll earn.
• Geographic Location: The LOCATION of your website visitors plays a HUGE role in your AdSense earnings. If your website attracts a large audience from regions with higher CPCs (such as the USA, UK, Canada, Australia, Germany, etc), you’ll likely earn more than if your audience is primarily from regions with lower CPCs (such as.India, Indonesia, Brazil, Nigeria, Vietnam, etc).
• Niche: The niche of your website can also impact your AdSense earnings. Some niches have higher CPCs (finance, technology, healthcare, etc) than others due to the demand for advertising in those industries. 

For example, consider USA Today, a major news website with over 75 million monthly visitors. 

It’s estimated that their AdSense earnings range between $250,000 and $300,000 per month. To maximize revenue, USA Today strategically places AdSense ads in prominent locations on its website, such as at the top of pages and in sidebars.

Have a look;

So yes, your AdSense earning depends on several things like the amount of website traffic, demographics, niche, ad placement, and the content you publish.
If you’re curious, here’s a handpicked list of the top 15 high AdSense-earning websites along with their success secrets.

The tug of war: Affiliate marketing vs Google AdSense

Now comes the most frequently asked question by most bloggers. “Can I use both affiliate marketing ads and Google AdSense ads on the same page?”.

Personally, I don’t recommend you to use both affiliate marketing products and AdSense ads on the same site. If you are running a niche site, AdSense works really best for you. But if you are aiming to build a brand and want to build a profitable blog for the long run, you need to consider affiliate marketing.

Using both of them on the same site doesn’t give you best results. Yes, you can certainly use both affiliate marketing and AdSense ads on the same page as long as you are not showing up more than 3 ads on the same page (or you will be violating the Google AdSense rules as it only allows you to show 3 ads per page).

Now you may ask, “Which one is the best among affiliate marketing or Google AdSense?”.

If you have a website that gets huge traffic (more than 100,000 visitors a month) from search engines, AdSense can be a good choice for you. By finding and using the high CPC (Cost Per Click) keywords, you can generate huge AdSense earnings.

But if you are in a competitive niche and have decent traffic (coming from Facebook, Google, Twitter etc) and have an email list of hungry buyers or if you are running a particular niche site, affiliate marketing can be your best bet.

Pro-tip on Affiliate marketing vs Google Adsense: If you are just starting out, create good content and attract more traffic from Google. Apply for AdSense and start using it to make the first few dollars. Once you are making a decent income from AdSense, start building an email list and introduce affiliate products to your audience. Slowly go from using AdSense to affiliate marketing and you will be making a reliable income from your sites.

Which Monetization Method Should You Choose In 2025?

The best monetization method for you depends on various factors, including your niche, your website’s audience, content, and monetization goals. 

Affiliate Marketing:

• Ideal for: Influencers, bloggers and marketers
• How it works: Promote other products and earn a commission on each sale
• Example: Amazon Associates, Commission Junction, ShareASale, ClickBank, etc

Google AdSense:

• Ideal for: Website owners, app creators and vloggers (with high-traffic or followers)
• How it works: Simply integrate Google Adsense into your website or app. As visitors click on relevant ads, you earn money based on their actions (e.g., clicks, purchases).
• Other Alternatives: Media.net, Ezoic, Infolinks, PropellerAds, etc

Conclusion On Google AdSense Vs Affiliate Marketing

Your target audience, website traffic, and expertise – these THREE things play a crucial role in choosing between affiliate marketing and AdSense.

If you’ve expertise in a topic and are ready to build a loyal audience, affiliate marketing is the BEST choice. It offers higher potential earnings and you’ll have full control over the ads.

You don’t need to be an expert to earn with AdSense. But, it has lower pay rates and less control over ad content.

Remember, it takes at least a year to start earning a decent income from either affiliate marketing or AdSense. So, what are your thoughts? Which one do you prefer? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

FAQs | Google Adsense vs Affiliate Marketing