Both are a ways to make money on internet. Affiliate marketing has evolved from the days when Amazon used to pay for webmasters if they published ads and sold books of Amazon on their websites.

Today it spread to huge range of products that is having presence on web. In affiliate marketing, companies pay for the affiliate marketers in terms of commission a percentage of sales for products advertised on their websites.

Where Google Adsense is a way the merchants use to advertise their services across the web. The Google Adsense advertisements are concept ads that are placed into the content of the website. The publishers who place these ads on their website get paid for the clicks that are clicked through their website.

The main difference between the Affiliate marketing and Google Adsense is that affiliate marketer makes money on the sale of product and Google Adsense money is made through the clicks on the ads.