So we’ve talked about text ads, image ads, link units and search boxes. There is one more way of making money with AdSense: referral programs. Referral programs work in a similar way to the other AdSense advertising programs but with some important differences. First, the prices are fixed. There is no bidding process for the referral program. Before you sign up, you’ll know exactly what you’re likely to earn when a user clicks. The ad also stays exactly the same. While you can choose from a selection of different image and text ads, you won’t have to wonder which ads are going to be served or how you can play around with the keywords to bring up the ads you want. What you see on the ad format page of the referral program in your AdSense account is what you get. Google is currently offering four referral programs: AdSense; Firefox with the Google toolbar; AdWords; and the Google Pack.
9.1 Referring For AdSense
When Google first rolled out its AdSense referral program, it looked good. The program paid $100 each time a signup earned $100 in revenue. If ten of your users clicked, signed up for AdSense and earned $100, you would have made an easy thousand dollars. And it sounded possible. The product is good, the company is reputable and the referral buttons are very attractive. In fact, they look like they were inspired by the iPod and that’s been eyecatching enough! In practice though, few publishers reported massive incomes. That might have been because AdSense is just so popular, there are precious few serious publishers around who aren’t already using it. You can only hope to catch those people who are coming online now. It might also be because the ads aren’t contextualized. You’d certainly expect to see a much lower CTR for an AdSense referral ad than for your traditional text ads. If you’ve got a site selling pet food or a blog about life as high school teacher, only a tiny fraction of your visitors are going to have a website. Only a tiny fraction of those people are going to click.
But it could also be because too many people weren’t optimizing their ads. They were clicking the referral buttons and either clicking away or signing up, pasting the code and ignoring what they could do with the ads. Not only weren’t they making any money, but neither was the site that referred them. That was why Google changed its AdSense referral payments; it made the commissions much more attractive. Now you’ll receive $5 if someone who signs up for AdSense earns $5 within 180 days. That almost guarantees you a reward for sending someone to Google.
But here’s where it gets really interesting. If that publisher earns $100 within 180 days, you’ll receive an additional $250. And if 25 publishers that you refer do that, Google will give you a bonus $2,000. That can make promoting AdSense very lucrative provided you have the right sort of site. Again, it all comes down to context. Google could pay $1,000 for every sign up but if none of your users has a website, you’re not going to see a penny of that money. That doesn’t mean you should ignore AdSense referrals. I just recommend that when it comes to placement, you give top priority to your text ads. You might bring in a few extra bucks with an AdSense referral button but it would just be the cherry on the cake. Your AdSense ads are your cake, so focus on that.
9.2 Firing Up Firefox And Unpacking Google Pack
The same is true of your Firefox and Google Pack referral ads. The Firefox ads pay up to $1 for every user who downloads the Firefox Web browser with an attached Google toolbar, and the Pack ads pay all of $2. These ads can’t be formatted or changed, so you can only play with placement. But at least you know exactly how much money you’re going to receive when someone downloads... One dollar. Maybe two. And that’s when the user downloads, not when he clicks. And you’re not guaranteed that dollar either. For the Firefox and Google Pack referral programs, the amount you earn depends on the location of the user. Google isn’t saying which users they consider last valuable but it’s likely that if you have few users outside the US and many in Burkina Faso you won’t earn much from recommending Firefox or the Google Pack. You’ve probably noticed that I’m not exactly rushing out to put a down payment on a private Caribbean island at the thought of these referral buttons. I just haven’t found that they’re going to bring in a great deal of extra revenue, and I’m not aware of any other publisher who’s managed to prove me wrong.
Of course, an extra buck here or there isn’t going to do me any harm. And if you’d like to see people moving away from Internet Explorer, then being paid to do it can’t be bad. (Although if you compare the amount that Google is paying for these buttons with the amount you can earn with similar ads from other companies, then you might be even less enthusiastic; they don’t compare well.) Even more than the AdSense referral buttons though, you should only think of the Firefox and Google Pack referral buttons as a little bit of extra revenue... and enjoy it!
9.3 Referring AdWords
The AdWords referral program is better, and closer to the AdSense program. You’ll earn $5 if an advertiser spends $5 (in addition to the signup fee) within 90 days. If the advertiser spends $100 within 90 days, you’ll receive another $40. And if 20 advertisers do that, you’ll receive a $600 bonus. So far, so familiar. And this program faces the same earning challenges as the AdSense program. If few of your users have a website that they might want to promote, you’ll see very few clickthroughs and even fewer earnings. There are some strategies you an use to squeeze more bucks out of your referral buttons though...
9.4 Referral Strategies
The first thing that you can do to maximize earnings is to recommend the programs you’re offering. You can’t say anything about the contents of your AdSense units. But you can encourage people to sign up to AdSense or start using Firefox instead of Internet Explorer. Even a simple line like: “Viewing this site in Explorer? The Web looks better in Firefox” or “We recommend AdSense It pays publishers” could do the trick. (Of course, Google won’t like you telling people to click so that you’ll get paidor telling them that if they click, they’ll get paidbut they don’t mind you talking up the services the buttons offer.) You can be a little more creative than that though and highlight a feature of the program that you want to recommend. Google’s own AdSense blog uses this example on GrownUpGeek.com as a case study:
In this example, the site has created a huge space to really emphasize the security aspect of Firefox. I find it difficult to believe that they did that with the primary goal of earning revenue though; they would have made much more with an AdSense unit in that spot. But if they wanted people to browse safer, why shouldn’t they get paid for it?
You could do something similar. If you think that Google Earth or Google Desktop are cool then you could certainly put in a line or even a whole blog post recommending that people download the Pack and enjoy them. And that’s the second thing you need to consider when you’re trying to maximize your referral incomes: where you put the buttons. Your referrals are always going to do best on pages that discuss topics related to the programs.
So GrownUpGeek.com, which offers technology tips might do well with a referral button that helps users improve their online security. You might not do so well referring users to AdWords on a Web page geared towards dog owners. (You would do better though recommending that people manage their dog pictures with Picassa and providing a link to the Google Pack.) If you really want to focus on referrals, you might even consider building unique pages with content related to the services the programs offer. So you can recommend your referral programs and you can make sure that they appear on appropriate pages. You should also make sure that they appear in the right places on the pages and in the right formats.
As I said, I don’t recommend that you take out a highearning AdSense unit and replace it with a referral button, however pretty it might be. But because some of the buttons are fairly small, you can easily blend them into a text post. That’s especially true for text links, which can be formatted in any way you want. You can change not only the font size, bolding and italics but also the font itself, giving you complete freedom to blend the referral link right into your content. The only thing you can’t change is the copy.
Once you’ve put up your AdSense units feel free to experiment with the placements of those buttons and text links. The only question left then, is how many referral buttons you should use on one page. Here, you have to be very careful. Google lets you place two buttons or links to each product on one page. That can give you a lot of links in one place. I don’t recommend that. The ads are going to compete with each other and with your AdSense units and may cause ad blindness. It’s unlikely that you’ll want more than two referral links on a page whose main source of income is AdSense. That can be two links to the same product or two links to two different products. If you want to promote other products, you can try putting those buttons on different pages. That would give you a good idea of which programs appeal most to your users.
9.1 Referring For AdSense
When Google first rolled out its AdSense referral program, it looked good. The program paid $100 each time a signup earned $100 in revenue. If ten of your users clicked, signed up for AdSense and earned $100, you would have made an easy thousand dollars. And it sounded possible. The product is good, the company is reputable and the referral buttons are very attractive. In fact, they look like they were inspired by the iPod and that’s been eyecatching enough! In practice though, few publishers reported massive incomes. That might have been because AdSense is just so popular, there are precious few serious publishers around who aren’t already using it. You can only hope to catch those people who are coming online now. It might also be because the ads aren’t contextualized. You’d certainly expect to see a much lower CTR for an AdSense referral ad than for your traditional text ads. If you’ve got a site selling pet food or a blog about life as high school teacher, only a tiny fraction of your visitors are going to have a website. Only a tiny fraction of those people are going to click.
Fig. 9.1 AdSense referral buttons come in different shapes and sizes... and some look like iPods.
(Images not to scale.)
But it could also be because too many people weren’t optimizing their ads. They were clicking the referral buttons and either clicking away or signing up, pasting the code and ignoring what they could do with the ads. Not only weren’t they making any money, but neither was the site that referred them. That was why Google changed its AdSense referral payments; it made the commissions much more attractive. Now you’ll receive $5 if someone who signs up for AdSense earns $5 within 180 days. That almost guarantees you a reward for sending someone to Google.
But here’s where it gets really interesting. If that publisher earns $100 within 180 days, you’ll receive an additional $250. And if 25 publishers that you refer do that, Google will give you a bonus $2,000. That can make promoting AdSense very lucrative provided you have the right sort of site. Again, it all comes down to context. Google could pay $1,000 for every sign up but if none of your users has a website, you’re not going to see a penny of that money. That doesn’t mean you should ignore AdSense referrals. I just recommend that when it comes to placement, you give top priority to your text ads. You might bring in a few extra bucks with an AdSense referral button but it would just be the cherry on the cake. Your AdSense ads are your cake, so focus on that.
9.2 Firing Up Firefox And Unpacking Google Pack
The same is true of your Firefox and Google Pack referral ads. The Firefox ads pay up to $1 for every user who downloads the Firefox Web browser with an attached Google toolbar, and the Pack ads pay all of $2. These ads can’t be formatted or changed, so you can only play with placement. But at least you know exactly how much money you’re going to receive when someone downloads... One dollar. Maybe two. And that’s when the user downloads, not when he clicks. And you’re not guaranteed that dollar either. For the Firefox and Google Pack referral programs, the amount you earn depends on the location of the user. Google isn’t saying which users they consider last valuable but it’s likely that if you have few users outside the US and many in Burkina Faso you won’t earn much from recommending Firefox or the Google Pack. You’ve probably noticed that I’m not exactly rushing out to put a down payment on a private Caribbean island at the thought of these referral buttons. I just haven’t found that they’re going to bring in a great deal of extra revenue, and I’m not aware of any other publisher who’s managed to prove me wrong.
Of course, an extra buck here or there isn’t going to do me any harm. And if you’d like to see people moving away from Internet Explorer, then being paid to do it can’t be bad. (Although if you compare the amount that Google is paying for these buttons with the amount you can earn with similar ads from other companies, then you might be even less enthusiastic; they don’t compare well.) Even more than the AdSense referral buttons though, you should only think of the Firefox and Google Pack referral buttons as a little bit of extra revenue... and enjoy it!
Fig. 9.2 Firefox referral buttons. Pretty but not very lucrative.
9.3 Referring AdWords
The AdWords referral program is better, and closer to the AdSense program. You’ll earn $5 if an advertiser spends $5 (in addition to the signup fee) within 90 days. If the advertiser spends $100 within 90 days, you’ll receive another $40. And if 20 advertisers do that, you’ll receive a $600 bonus. So far, so familiar. And this program faces the same earning challenges as the AdSense program. If few of your users have a website that they might want to promote, you’ll see very few clickthroughs and even fewer earnings. There are some strategies you an use to squeeze more bucks out of your referral buttons though...
9.4 Referral Strategies
The first thing that you can do to maximize earnings is to recommend the programs you’re offering. You can’t say anything about the contents of your AdSense units. But you can encourage people to sign up to AdSense or start using Firefox instead of Internet Explorer. Even a simple line like: “Viewing this site in Explorer? The Web looks better in Firefox” or “We recommend AdSense It pays publishers” could do the trick. (Of course, Google won’t like you telling people to click so that you’ll get paidor telling them that if they click, they’ll get paidbut they don’t mind you talking up the services the buttons offer.) You can be a little more creative than that though and highlight a feature of the program that you want to recommend. Google’s own AdSense blog uses this example on GrownUpGeek.com as a case study:
Fig. 9.3 GrownUpGeek sets Firefox alight with its own box.
In this example, the site has created a huge space to really emphasize the security aspect of Firefox. I find it difficult to believe that they did that with the primary goal of earning revenue though; they would have made much more with an AdSense unit in that spot. But if they wanted people to browse safer, why shouldn’t they get paid for it?
You could do something similar. If you think that Google Earth or Google Desktop are cool then you could certainly put in a line or even a whole blog post recommending that people download the Pack and enjoy them. And that’s the second thing you need to consider when you’re trying to maximize your referral incomes: where you put the buttons. Your referrals are always going to do best on pages that discuss topics related to the programs.
So GrownUpGeek.com, which offers technology tips might do well with a referral button that helps users improve their online security. You might not do so well referring users to AdWords on a Web page geared towards dog owners. (You would do better though recommending that people manage their dog pictures with Picassa and providing a link to the Google Pack.) If you really want to focus on referrals, you might even consider building unique pages with content related to the services the programs offer. So you can recommend your referral programs and you can make sure that they appear on appropriate pages. You should also make sure that they appear in the right places on the pages and in the right formats.
As I said, I don’t recommend that you take out a highearning AdSense unit and replace it with a referral button, however pretty it might be. But because some of the buttons are fairly small, you can easily blend them into a text post. That’s especially true for text links, which can be formatted in any way you want. You can change not only the font size, bolding and italics but also the font itself, giving you complete freedom to blend the referral link right into your content. The only thing you can’t change is the copy.
Once you’ve put up your AdSense units feel free to experiment with the placements of those buttons and text links. The only question left then, is how many referral buttons you should use on one page. Here, you have to be very careful. Google lets you place two buttons or links to each product on one page. That can give you a lot of links in one place. I don’t recommend that. The ads are going to compete with each other and with your AdSense units and may cause ad blindness. It’s unlikely that you’ll want more than two referral links on a page whose main source of income is AdSense. That can be two links to the same product or two links to two different products. If you want to promote other products, you can try putting those buttons on different pages. That would give you a good idea of which programs appeal most to your users.
