Earlier in the week AdSense confirmed that they would no longer accept publishers into their AdSense referral system (the program where they earn commissions by recommending AdSense) that lived outside of North America, Latin America or Japan. I (and other bloggers) wrote expressing our disappointment and pointing out problems with this post.
Today AdSense have announced that they’ve re-thought their approach and will now allow all publishers to participate – but will only pay commissions based upon the location of the publishers that they refer.
While this will still mean a reduction in commissions for those referring AdSense new publishers – it seems a more logical decision to me.
As I previously wrote an open letter about my ‘broken heart’ over their last decision – I thought I’d send them another today.
Dearest AdSense,
When I wrote to you to tell you of the way that you broke my heart earlier in the week I must admit that I thought my cries of despair might fall on deaf ears and that you’d toss my note aside. I know how much correspondence from lovers (and ex-lovers) you must get.
Yet yesterday when you called to say that you got my note and that my declaration of love for you had caused you to rethink your decision…. my heart did leap with joy.
Today you’ve posted a note of your own – on your blog. You say that you’ve rethought your decision to end your affair with those of us who live outside of your backyard and that you’ll continue to accept (and reward) some of the gifts of traffic that we send to you.
Instead of rejecting the advances of lovers based upon their location – you’ll look at the quality of the gifts (traffic) that we send and make a call on whether we’ll be rewarded based upon that.
While I’m still sad to know that not all of my gifts are valuable in your eyes – this change of heart is one that makes a little more sense to me and I respect that you’ve been willing to rethink the relationship that we have.
With Valentines Day approaching hopefully our gifts to one another will continue to bring happiness to all.
Thank you
Darren Rowse
ProBlogger.net
Jeez! Maybe you can write another letter to Adsense but this time on behalf of my blog. They stripped the PR 4 it had, and i want it back.
Since you seem to have such awesome powers!
Congrats Darren, ProBlogger deserve love from the biggest internet company in the world.
Congrats Darren,
It’s nice to see the two of you back together again. You were always good together.
This is at least 4 times more heart tugging than the Ross and Rachel debacle.
Dear AdSense, while you are at it, please talk to you father Google. Make him improve overnight my PR so I can get those 1 million visitors I have in mind a little faster.
Seriously now I am surprised they listen. Or should I be surprised they haven’t taken into consideration that solution from the beginning!
Woo hoo Darren! Congratulations, ya done good.
I am glad you and adsense could make friends again. I know its not the same but its the bond that matters.
Bud
Well done Darren – it looks like your letter worked. I didn’t think you’d go as far as painting your wall for them though. I hope they are grateful.
OK you got what you wanted but I would have more respect for you if you had just manned up instead of this wussy stuff. You do like women don’t you?
Watch out for fickle partners, just when you start to love them again… ;)
wow, they listened to you!
I’m surprised they actually scraped the whole program at the beginning instead of doing this…
This is still BS!
So if I refer my (Australian) next door neighbour, and he goes on to make one million dollars a month from AdSense, I get nothing, yet if I refer someone from the US, and they scratch out $100 a month, I get paid?
That’s a freaking joke! :-(
Nice to see that Adsense looked on Google maps and found Australia to be there after all!
@missy
If you think they stripped you because of some error that has been fixed, you can write your own plea.
See http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35843
Just goes to show, if you don’t ask, you don’t get. This is a better outcome.
But I’m wondering why adSense have such a downer on Europe and if there is any connection to the fact that the EU is investigating their takeover of DoubleClick. Maybe we’re going to see a seperate AdSense network for Europe that pays in Euros?
That would attract more European publishers as the value of the dollar has dropped so much that it really affects revenue.
This is an even worse solution than kicking us out of the program entirely.
Now, people will still be tempted to use adsense referrals, yet many people will get paid NOTHING for sending Google perfectly good traffic which results in sign-ups.
Darren,
Great! Can you write them a letter asking them to re-think manually reducing PR on blogs too?
Sometimes Adsense can be so frustrating. Im amazed they moved this fast. I for one am venturing out to test new products and services such as PPP. You can view this on our web site as the launch is pending Feb 1st.
dear Darren, can you tell us if you had your own trick how to write a letter/email to Google staff and then Google Staff will respond our email soon. at least we got the email replies in 3 or 7 days later.
I too feel sad about discontinue of Adsense Referral Program.