The AdSense Rule Change Buzz

In a stunning blow to AdSense publishers everywhere, recent news of the upcoming Google AdSense’s rule changes is sweeping the web. It looks like EVERYONE is ranting about it since EVERYONE in the AdSense publisher community (albeit some more than others).

Being a passive publisher myself I only became aware of the changes today reading a post by Darren Rowse of ProBlogger where he laid down a lot of the details in his post “AdSense Change Rules - Stupidity Stupidity Stupidity” namely that the payment benefit for the referral program has been changed.

Previously if you…

• …refer a publisher to AdSense who then makes $5 within 180 days - you would get $5.
• …refer a publisher to AdSense who then makes $100 within 180 days - you would get $250
• …refer 25 people to AdSense who then make $100 within 180 days - you would get a bonus payment of $2000  

However, after the recently announced changes the payouts have been drastically adjusted down. The new payouts look like they did a year ago before AdSense introduced the payout schedule outlined above.

Now if you… 

• …refer a publisher to AdSense who then makes $5 within 180 days - you would get $0 (nothing for the low performance referrals)
• …refer a publisher to AdSense who then makes $100 within 180 days - you would get $100 (Less than half!)
• …refer 25 people to AdSense who then make $100 within 180 days - you would get a bonus payment of $0 (Wow! No more carrot on that stick)

Not only has the payment structure been smashed to bits, but the program itself has had it’s plug pulled in numerous foreign markets.

“If you’re outside of North America, Latin America, and Japan, AdSense referrals will be retired.”

- Google’s AdSense Blog 

The Australia based power blogger Darren Rowes (ProBlogger.com)went on to talk about Google’s complete retirement of the AdSense Referral program for most foreign markets (including his own Australian Market). This has to be quite a slap in the face

In response, blogging “ShoeperStar” Jeremy Shoemaker got pretty plain in his post titled - “AdSense Slaps Foreign Webmasters in the Face” where he relates Google to Rick James laying the smack-down on the unsuspecting publishers (complete with YouTube clip) - ending with “..that was…….. coooooooldblooooooded” - heh

 As I mentioned before, I’m a pretty relaxed AdSense publisher. I have it on several of my websites, but I haven’t optimized or built content around the ads, and I haven’t really pushed the referral program, so this doesn’t effect me much - directly. How has it Effected you? Will these changes drastically reduce one of your online income channels? Or worse yet, will you now become ineligible for the program at all?

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