Creative Commons License photo credit: sunshinecity

There are so many posts about “making money online”. Some people tell you “adsense”, then they say “text link ads”, then they say “affiliate marketing”. Im going to clarify a few things about each of the previously mentioned so you can pick the right way to make money online.

Adsense

To make money online from Google Adsense, you need two things.

  1. Decent Traffic
  2. Appropriate Niche

Adsense only works if you have decent traffic. As a webmaster, I’m sure you can work out what decent traffic is; that is for those who dont know, of relatively high volume and targetted traffic. If you only get a few visits per day, adsense will not work. You will perhaps make $3/4 a day, depending on the niche. Certain niches make money, other niches dont. For example, based upon the post ‘Is Adsense Dead?‘, you will realise that if you have a target audience of visitors who realise adverts are adverts, they just simply wont click. Consider a simpler niche such as ‘amazing videos’ or ‘myspace layouts’. If do not have the right niche, adsense will not work.

Text Link Ads

Now text link ads is a money you can make without a large amount of traffic. If you have decent page rank, say greater than PR5/6, then you are likely to find that selling text links will allow you to make more money than adsense, regardless of traffic. Text links are usually determined by their page rank (Google’s algorythm of determining the important of a page).

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing can be effective if, you have two things - infact, the same as Adsense;

  1. Appropriate Niche

However, unlike adsense, the money you earn isnt entirely based on niche. Sure some niche’s will pay better than others, especially on CPC level. On affiliate marketing, you get paid a cut of a sale you refer - so, even if you get 1 visitor, whislt in Adsnse you may get $0.20 for a click, you can get $200 for a conversion. See the difference? You dont need loads of traffic, just a few targetted visitors.

I’ll leave it to you to work out where you site fits in - give it a try - you may make money online.