What's easier for a beginner: adsense or affiliate website?

[boraba]

The goal is to make around $500 a month from just 1 authority website. What would you say is easier for a beginner that doesn't currently know much about SEO: an authority site making money strictly from adsense or an amazon affiliate site trying to promote a product?

Also, I realize that both require finding a niche and keyword research in the beginning, what would you say is a good amount of US monthly searches for the main keyword for each type of website (adsense/affiliate)? I tried to do some keyword research just to get a feel for it but I have no clue what numbers I should be looking for.

Thanks very much.

 

[swagbasedgodswag]

I would assume you would want to do both at the same time right? I am close to opening up my first site dedicated to amazon affiliation but I would think I would also run Ad Sense on the site as well just to maximize monetization. Mainly commenting because I would like the same answer too.

 

[boraba]

I would assume you would want to do both at the same time right? I am close to opening up my first site dedicated to amazon affiliation but I would think I would also run Ad Sense on the site as well just to maximize monetization. Mainly commenting because I would like the same answer too.

Yeah I thought about that too, but I think that adsense websites require more visitors than affiliate websites to make money, so while a certain amount of monthly searches for your keyword may be enough to make decent money with an affiliate website, you'd probably need a much higher number of monthly searches in order to make the same amount with adsense. I could be completely wrong though.

 

[zebrahat]

You might want to consider CPA or PPD, as it is a lead generation form of monetization that by structure is easier to earn with than either affiliate sales or Adsense:

http://backlinko.com/cpa-marketing

 

[darksideofthemom]

Yeah I thought about that too, but I think that adsense websites require more visitors than affiliate websites to make money, so while a certain amount of monthly searches for your keyword may be enough to make decent money with an affiliate website, you'd probably need a much higher number of monthly searches in order to make the same amount with adsense. I could be completely wrong though.

If you can't apply for adsense think you should try other cpm networks

 

[onlinealways]

I would also run Ad Sense on the site as well just to maximize monetization.