most of the payments publishers have come to rely on. The two changes:

• The payment system, which had been expanded to make it more complicated and more lucrative, has been rolled back to the way it used to be. Google is now using the old system, paying out $100 if you refer a new AdSense publisher who earns $100 in the first 180 days. Under the improved system, you not only could earn that, but $5 if the referred publisher earns $5, as well as a monster $2,000 payment if you refer 25 people who earn $100 each. Those payments are now completely gone.
• Most of the countries in the world have now been removed from the AdSense referral program. Everyone is kicked out, save those in North America, Latin America, and Japan.

If you really think about it, youll see why publishers like Darren Rowse are furious. Darren lives in Australia, but most of his audience is American, making that second change incredibly stupid. A referral is a referral. Google makes money off of it no matter where it comes from. The only reason to change this is because Google must have see that the program wasnt earning as well as it could, and concluded that it was failing because it was too complicated and needed to be simplified.

Ive got news: From experience, when you try to improve something by removing options and making it simpler, you very rarely wind up with something better. The new payment structure removes all incentive for referring small publishers ($5) as well as the added incentive for referring lots of publishers ($2,000). It makes the program almost worthless, earning only the occasional $100.

If Google thought the program wasnt converting well before, wait till they see how bad it is now. Theyve cancelled out most of the planet from being eligible, and removed incentive for succeeding at it. AdSense referrals will perform even worse now, as the few publishers who had been using and had been referring Google new customers give up, knowing there are better ways to make money than this crock.

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