Google Adsense Sign Up Referrals not what they Used to be

There was a time (urban legend tells) when a person could make a lot of money from referral commissions earned when new people signed up to use Adsense.  For the most part those days are no more.  Google referral buttons just do not convert the way they used to.  You can probably make more money in Vegas at the beer pong tables than you can earning Adsense referral money.

That said, it illustrates an important point

With any advertisement or referral program, you must always consider your opportunity cost of running one ad versus another and you should pay attention to when those ads have run their course.

That said, Google is making some changes to their referral program not only for new Adsense sign ups but for the equally poor performing Firefox tool download.

Hello AdSense publisher,

We are writing to give you an important follow-up to the changes we announced earlier this month to the referrals to AdSense program.  Since announcing the changes, we've received a number of responses about the program being dependent on the location of the referring publisher rather than the referred user.  After carefully considering this feedback, we have decided to modify our planned changes.

Specifically, you will have the option to add a referral unit for AdSense within your account when you target any referral unit to Japan and/or any countries in North America and Latin America. To ensure payment for valid conversions, we recommend that you check the targeting settings on your current AdSense referral units.
We'd also like to let you know about upcoming changes to the referrals programs for Google Pack and Firefox:

Google Pack: Currently, you can earn up to $2 when a user downloads and runs Google Pack for the first time after being referred through your link or button. Starting the third week of February, each successful Pack referral will earn up to $1. This change will apply to all referrals for Google Pack and is independent of user location or publisher location.

Firefox: We will also be reducing payments for Firefox referrals from China during the third week of February. This specific referral payment change will only affect installations from users in China. As with referrals to AdSense, this is independent of your location as a publisher.

We understand that these changes may decrease revenue for some of you currently participating in these referrals programs. While it is our goal to help publishers earn as much as possible with the AdSense program, like any other referrals advertiser, we are constantly evaluating our campaigns to make them effective and sustainable.

Again, thank you for your feedback and support of the referrals program.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

BlogExplosion - Networking and Building Traffic

I have been working with BlogExplosion for almost 2 years now.  I've seen them go through ownership changes and build up new services left and right.  They have been eclipsed in size a bit by blogmad, but they have maintained their quality over the years which is something very difficult to do in the blogosphere.

Over the last two years I have successfully networked and made real business relationships with about a dozen bloggers.  I have lightly networked with about a hundred in total germinating and cross germinating our articles back and forth and generally building each other up, sharing new ideas, benchmarking and improving our blogging game and more.  I have met a number of great bloggers covering topics from politics to humor, to pets and raising kids.  Not too mention some great photo bloggers and artists, I even helped encourage a friend to kick off a modern furniture blog to compliment his studio work as an artist.

BlogExplosion is not like the defunct Agloco, which used to pay in money for surfing.  Instead BlogExplosion rewards people that surf their network of blogs with credits that can be redeemed for advertising banners or for actual direct referrals to your blog. 

What can be easier that working with a network that introduces your site directly to new readers?!

These days I also find the service excellent for specific article promotion.  Instead of pushing a blog through general circulation to the point that it starts to look like random noise, I save up some of my better articles for blog explosion and light up those blogs on blogexplosion to help build up momentum with those articles, getting them linked by other blogs that reference them, getting them dugg, and stumbled and more. 

note there's nothing that requires any of this activity, but the increased exposure combined with a great article increases the chances of it happening naturally and that is the goal afterall!

BlogExplosion is not by far the only blog surfing network but it is definitely one of the top 2.

Press Release Resource List and Tips

One of the tools that you can utilize to promote your work, your company and your articles is press releases.  Two services that enable you to push out press release include PRWeb.com and PRlog.org.  PRWeb.com enables you to create a free account, but will charge you when it comes time to actually submit articles for release.  PRWeb.com is however one of the largest and most respected companies in the Press release business.  PRlog.org is free all the way around, but your press releases will be displayed with PRlog.org's adsense ads (so now you know how they make money to pay for the service).

Many companies and media companies utilize these services regularly to promote products ranging from directbuy furniture to managing buzz about presidential candidates to building up a site for search engine optimization purposes.  Note most press release forms and agencies do not allow embedded html.  That means NO link tags and almost no other tags as well.  You might list a url for a company or website in a press release, but it must typically be a root domain and once distributed the url address is rarely clickable.

List of Press Release Firms

1. PRWeb (Starting at $80)
2. PR.com
3. PRlog.org
4. Free-Press-Release.com
5. I-Newswire.com (free or $2)
6. PRBuzz.com ($49)
7. AddPR.com
8. OpenPR.com (Must follow the German Press Code)
9. EReleases.com ($399)

More Tips to help you get up to speed with Press Releases

• How to Write a Press Release from PRLog.org
• See a Sample Release from PRWeb.com
• or Check out this Press Release Template from free-press-release.com

Get Paid to Vote in Social Networks

The concept has been around for a while existing mostly in back internet forums and email news groups, but a company named Subvert and Profit is hoping to do just that by paying people for their votes. 

They are not paying for votes in the primaries or general election, but instead they are paying for people to vote on social networks such as Digg or StumbleUpon.

Is this controversial?  Yes

Will participating in such a network possibly get you expelled from Digg or StumbleUpon if they catch you?

It wouldn't surprise me.

Do they pay?  I do not know as I haven't tried the system myself.  I suspect that from the reviews I have read that they probably do make their payments, but it seems that the typical payment is between 50 cents and a dollar for each vote.  That may not buy you a Bose home theater system anytime soon, but it may give you a little extra money for engaging in an activity that you would probably do already.

At a philosophical level, I do not have a problem with this program.  I do not see networks like this as so overly important that garnishing votes in this way should be forbidden. 

If you give this one a try, let me know what you think.

If you do not give this one a try, let me know what you think and why you are not doing it.