Web Marketing Strategy Update

In AdSense changes the referrals from 90 days to 180, Jen reports on Google.com changing the AdSense affiliate program referral acceptance period from 90 to 180 days. This is after having quietly slashed it down to 90 days at the end of January from the original unlimited period.

She points to this post on the Adsense blog:

You may have noticed today that the time limit for AdSense referrals is now 180 days. Based on the feedback we heard, we agreed that 90 days may not provide enough time for your referred publishers to complete earning $100. Therefore, we decided to double the window. This change is retroactive, so it will also apply to AdSense signups that occurred more than 90 days but less than 180 days ago.

If this supposed to be Google being generous, it isn’t. It’s just less stingy.

The cat was out of the bag as soon as Google cut the accepted referral period to 90 days. There’s only one major reason I can see for reducing it from unlimited.

Money.

By shortening the referral period, Google pay out less commissions.

Simple as that.

After Linda Buquet picked up on my previous post, Webmasters, Could Firefox Be Bad For Your Health? and put it out for discussion on her 5 Star Affiliate Programs blog and the WebProWorld forums, I decided to write a follow-up in an attempt to address some of the issues raised in more detail.

As I mentioned on WebProWorld, Firefox is already used by somewhere between 10 and 14% of all surfers.

That’s a LOT of people.

It’s true that only a percentage of them will make use of plugins at all, but nevertheless, with Google promoting Firefox and paying Adsense publishers for every download, their number can be expected to increase rapidly. This, and the wide range of scripts makes Firefox a potentially bigger problem than Norton’s ad blocking software.

At WebProWorld, southplatte said:

“I need the content I need, when I need it and don’t have time, money or the want to have to scroll past three banner ads in the middle to two side sections and the four adsense ads that separate the paragraphs of how-tos, news or other content I am reading.”