Getting money our of  your blog is not as easy as it was several years ago. Yes, you can give out sponsored reviews or sell directly ad space on your blog, but this can happen only if you are a popular blogger, or if you are covering a very specific topic or a small niche. For a more general blog things can get complicated. Until you come to the point where you can maintain your own tutoring membership program, or to give online consultation for 100$/hour, you have to get used to earn some revenue to keep going.

Google Adsense used to be a good income stream for bloggers, but today, the CTR is low because people used to ignore google ads, and CPC is also at a very low level. On the other hand Amazon affiliate system ( Amazon associates ), can be a good alternative, but only in certain situations, usually when you can find high ticket items to sell. Unlike any other affiliate program around, Amazon associates give probably the lowest rate in the industry, and there is no cookie stored.If they buy in the session after they click on a link on your website you get paid. If they leave and come back later you won’t. So, unless they put something into the cart the session they click on your affiliate link you don’t get any commission.

The average conversion rate on amazon ( the number of purchases for every 100 users you send to amazon ), is 1%. For every 100 clicks you usually get 1 sale. Depending on the links you have on your website, you might need 1000-3000 pageviews to get 100 clicks to amazon. If you sell $10 ebooks, where you get 40 cents for each or 60 cents if you generate them enough sales every month, your EPM ( earnings per mile impressions ), can be at 0.40$ top, and can go as low as 0.10$. If you sell a 500$ laptop, the conversion rate might be lower, but you can make a good 20$ per sale. This time, your EPM can start from 5$ and can go anywhere up to 20$.

If you show only adsense ads, unless your website covers a  high paying topic, you will make between 1$ and 5$. If you put a lot of ads all over your website and you are in the right niche, you might get up to $10 for every 1000 impressions. The figures are not that high either.

My conclusion: If you are selling high ticket items, go for Amazon. If not, go for Google Adsense.