Adsense Referral Links are a Waste of Web Space
Google recently changed the way their Adsense Referral program making it even more unlikely that you'll actually get any money.
You've probably seen the adverts around something like this:
Previously there was no limit, if someone signed up to Adsense under you and made $100, you would also receive $100.
Now Google has imposed a limit of 90 days, so the novice webmaster has to make $100 within 3 months, or you don't get anything.
That's pretty unfair, that means someone who is new to Adsense, has to average more than $1 a day in their first 3 months..hardly anyone does that.
Even for experienced people that might be quite difficult, I am making more than $1 a day (just about) on some sites after 4-5 months of learning about Adsense.
You can check the terms and conditions, the new clause is as follows:
An AdSense referral is counted when a publisher, who has never previously enrolled in AdSense, creates an account and earns at least $100.00 within 90 days of sign-up. The referred publisher must be eligible for payment to qualify as a successful referral.
Plus the fact if you aren't using Adsense already, it's unlikely that you wouldn't know about it, and if you didn't it's unlikely you'd straight away be able to make $100 within the first 3 months.
I've taken the Adsense Referral Adblocks out of all my sites from the static locations and just left the Firefox ones, not to make money but because I support Firefox!
I'll leave the Referral blocks inside any posts they are in, as they aren't using up real estate.
Another point is that they didn't announce this or tell anyone about it, they just kind of silently slipped the new rule in.
What happened to not being evil?
There is also a rumour from a Portuguese user that they have heard the complaints and have increased the time, but this has yet to be confirmed.
Google AdSense Team just sent me a mail message (in Portuguese, otherwise I’d copy/paste it here) saying that Google “take users comments very seriously and so they decided to change the 90 days referral window to 6 months”.
They also mentioned that, as of today, we still see the 90 days message in our referral page, but the decision was taken.
I won't be putting it back up anyway, I've yet to have a sign-up.
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