Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Google Adsense Sign Up Referrals not what they Used to be

Earn Money Using MySpace's free blogs and network

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

No comments: