Adsense verses Affiliate Programs which is best??/

There was an interesting thread in webmasterworld.com discussing which is better, Adsense or affiliate programs,

Read the thread here,

One poster Anthony does an interesting post which is worth a quote here,

Any who, there are many, many sites that do so well with affiliate programs that
they wouldn't even consider running Adsense. As long as you, your site, and your
traffic meet the requirements for whatever affiliate program is avail, it can
very well outperform Adsense.
A personal endorsement, for a targeted
affiliate program can potentially blow Adsense out of the water. You can write
several articles/page of actual, useful, informative content, that also serve as
a platform to promote an affiliate. You can't really do that with Adsense...
while those ads may be highly targeted, there is little you can do to entice a
visitor to action.
If you are talking a collection of sites, that range in
topic, and you could only select 1 advertising method... then yeah, Adsense may
be the best route. But a single site, single topic, with an available affiliate
program that fits... you may be missing out if you didn't try the affiliate
game.
Fwiw, my best Adsense day ever is less than 1/10th of my best
affiliate program's top day.
There are plenty of AdWords bidders that do
nothing but promote affiliate programs... and many are very profitable at it.
For example's sake, assume that a profit is indeed being made by the Adwords
bidder. -$1 top bid for Adwords term that does nothing but link to an affiliate
program. -Since a profit is assumed, the return has to be at least $1.01 for
every click. -You run Adsense only & the above ad appears on your site.
-Assuming a rather large EPC of 70% per bid... you get $0.70/click on the ad.
Since the return is at least $1.01/click & you are only getting
$0.70/click, you are potentially missing out on an additional $0.31/click for
not running the affiliate program yourself.
A great tip, imho, is to use the
preview tool & find out what ads targeted towards your site are affiliate
links. Then rush to the affiliate site & see if it may be more profitable to
just sign up for that affiliate yourself. I've found several very profitable
programs through this method.
and back to the original question...
Which
is best? That all depends on your site topic, the availability of targeted
affiliate programs, and your ability to promote those affiliate programs.
Depending on those factors, it could easily go either way as to which is best
for your specific site.
I would suggest at least searching for programs that
would appeal to your site's visitors & then give them a go. Then can be
incorporated to your site in any number of ways... all while continuing to run
Adsense.

Read more on it here: webmasterworld.com/forum89/4040-2-10.htm