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09.30.03
 By
Rich Hamilton, Jr
When Google introduced their new Adsense revenue
sharing program, people began to wonder if things would change. Certain
questions have been burning in people's mind like: what's going to
happen to Associate Programs, how do they compare against Google's
Adsense and will Adsense cause Associate Programs to be obsolete?
Well, that really depends on a number of things, which I
will go over. In this article I am only going to cover a few advantages
and disadvantages of using Google's Adsense vs Associate Programs
and which Associate Programs will prevail.
In case you are not familiar with Google's Adsense, Adsense is a new
service provided by Google. This service allows you to have text based
advertisements on your web site, known as Google Adwords. In return,
you will receive a share of revenue based on a pay per click arrangement.
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How Does Adsense's Advantages Compare To Associate
Programs
Adsense and Associate Programs share some of the same advantages such
as, Adsense is free to join and so are most other Associate Programs.
Making them both easy to start and suitable for you whether you are
a beginner or an experienced marketer.
Another advantage with Adsense, is that you never have to search for
advertisers. Google supplies you with the advertisements by using
highly relevant content targeted ads. This will insure that only precisely
relevant advertisements are displayed on your web site. As for Associate
Programs, you will have to search for quality programs and the relevancy
of the program will depend on the one you select.
Adsense enables you to filter out up to 200 urls, so you don't have
inappropriate ads or display advertisements of your competition. The
last thing you want is to send traffic to your indirect competition.
No one in their right mind would do that, right! Moreover, with Associate
Programs you can select which ones you want to promote, instead of
worrying about advertising your indirect competition.
How Does Adsense's Disadvantages Compare To Associate Programs
One of the biggest disadvantages of Adsense, is that they never really
tell you what percentage you will receive. I don't know about you,
but wouldn't it be nice to know what percentage of revenue you will
receive. If an Associate Program was to do that, they would have absolutely
no one participating in their program, but somehow Google can manage
to get away with that. With associate programs, you immediately know
what your commission percentage is going to be before you sign up.
Even though you can filter certian urls, you will still receive inappropriate
advertisements. The advertisements are only as good as the person
who wrote them and if they select keywords or phrases that are too
general, this will result in inappropriate advertisements appearring
on your web site. Most Associate Programs enable you to write your
own promotional advertisements, giving you a little more freedom.
Adsense does not rotate their advertisements, so eventually your click
through ratio will decrease, as repeat visitors are less likely to
click through them. Eventually, I'm sure Google will improve the way
it does it's content targeting and start rotating their advertisements.
By promoting an Associate Program you can simply change the wording
of the advertisement, but with Adsense you can't do that, you have
your hands tied behind your back.
Adsense's stats are terrible, they don't tell you which advertisements
your visitors are clicking through or which keywords are involved.
Google supplies Adwords users with the adequate stats, you would think
that they would do the same for their Adsense partners.
You should keep in mind that any advertisement that is on your web
site, is portrayed to be your recommendation. If you are advertising
a poor product or service on your web site, it will reflect on your
credibility. Any product or service that you promote, should be a
reliable one. Otherwise people will assume that you have poor judgement
and it will hurt your credibility. By promoting Associate Programs,
you can pick and choose quality products or services to promote, giving
you full control, without damaging your credibility.
Which Associate Programs Will Prevail
Even though Adsense has a substantial amount of disadvantages, it
will still have a major affect on a lot of Associate Programs that
are currently operating today. In fact, you could say it's a wake
up call for many merchants, especially for the ones who operate a
poor Associate Program. So if you operate your own Associate Program,
that has a low commission percentage and/or has a poor conservation
rate, now might be a good time to start thinking seriously about improving
your Associate Program.
As to which Associate Programs will survive and prevail over Google's
Adsense, it will be determined by a number of things. In order for
Associate Programs to prevail, they will need to offer a high commission
percentage of 40% or higher, have a high conservation rate of 1% or
higher, and be a breeze to promote.
In the end, Google's Adsense is merely just another avenue of generating
profits on your web site. Associate Programs will not become obsolete.
Moreover, they will filter out the good Associate Programs from those
that are bad, and only the quality ones will prevail.
Moreover, you can expect that Google will improve their Adsense campaign
overtime, proving that they are a worthy adversary to the Associate
Program industry. You must be able to adapt and improve as changes
occur.
About the Author:
Rich Hamilton, Jr is the CEO/President of http://www.ElitesMarketing.com
a.k.a. Elites Marketing, Inc and the Author of: "Inside Internet Marketing"
http://www.InsideNetMarketing.com
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| From
the Forum: |
| International Merchant Accounts |
Does anyone have recommendations for setting
up a merchant account if you are a small to medium sized internationally
based e-commerce business?
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