I'd say that with adsense having just one blog with killer amounts of traffic would make you good cash.
Having a hundred blogs with ok traffic would achieve the same, though I couldn't imagine keeping up with a hundred blogs, maybe if I could get them to rank well in search engines I could then leave em.
The more links you have on your blog, the more distractions, so you may not see the full effect of either type of program.
There is a massive variety of affiliate programs out there, most of them with vastly more profitable results than adsense.
My advice would be to have a couple adsense only blogs that you can build up, make them popular, write great content, your typical cool blog, and generate huge traffic to them.
With affiliate programs I'd do the Hundred blog thing, choose a hundred topics, do your keyword research, build each blog solely focused on your chosen topics, make the blog content great and not spammy or stolen, link build and find some great affiliate programs to promote.
I mean with affiliate programs you can find ones that pay ya like $30 for a lead, maybe through a sign-up form.
Affiliate programs are for the nerds, adsense is for the rock stars.
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