Google AdSense Makes Changes to Publisher Referral Program

Google AdSense has made some new changes to their referral program, with one of the changes resulting in publishers earning significantly more money than under the previous program. Now publishers can earn up to $255 for referring a new publisher to AdSense, up from the previous $100. They have also removed the Picasa referrals for publishers to promote, and instead rolling it into the Google Pack referral program.

First off, the AdSense referral program will now allow a publisher to earn an initial $5 when they refer a new publisher to AdSense and that person earns his or her first $5. Then, if that publisher earns the first $100, the referring publisher will earn an additional $250. Formerly, publishers earned $100 when their referred publishers earned their first $100. So now publishers can earn significantly more with this one. More on the AdSense referral changes here.

For Picasa, the program has now been combined with Google Pack. However, no word as of yet if the commission for referring new Google Pack installs will increase to $3 from the current $2 to take into account that publishers previously referring someone to both Picasa and Google Pack would have earned $3 too. More on the Picasa change here.

When I initially heard about the changes from Google a couple of weeks ago, I thought the AdSense change was a good move for publishers, as I suspect both the AdSense & AdWords referral products were the two performing best for the majority of publishers. And I suspected that Picasa likely only performed well on sites that were photography based because in all my travels on websites, I have only seen it used a handful of times since it launched. I had hoped that with Picasa being rolled into Google Pack it would open the way for a new referral product for publishers to promote, but it would appear that is not the case, at least not yet.

None of the support documents have been updated yet, although it is likely that the Google AdSense blog will also make an announcement on the new changes.