Asia, Middle East, Africa countries banned from AdSense in future?

[irock]

Have you guys read this thread? Looks like an increasing number of affiliate programs are rejecting appliants from every country on the planet except USA, Canada, Australia, Britain, France, Germany & Italy. Japan is also on the list too. Will this happen to AdSense and spread to rest of the Internet?

[update] sorry, I forgot to add the link to the thread I was referring to.
[webmasterworld.com...]

[edited by: irock at 5:18 am (utc) on May 22, 2004]

[Woz]

A valid question irock,

It constantly amazes me how people often look at the global internet market and yet still seem to have blinkers on. All too often I find a good affiliate program I want to promote to a specific market, only to find the program is restricted to residents of that country only. Hullo!? Just because I don't live in the specific country doesn't mean I cannot promote to residents of the country.

There are many reasons given, ranging from perceived fraud levels to commission payment costs right through to a total misunderstanding of the way the open internet market works.

And despite you mentioning Australia as being on the "Good to Go" list, I often get rejected simply because I do live in Australia. Frustrating as all get out.

Having said that, I find that the people with those views generally do not understand what is going on and therefor not people I would want to do business with anyway.

Google on the other hand *does* recognize the implications of a global market, to whit, their rolling out of numerous country specific search portals, and so I don't think they are going to be restricting access to adsense purely based on the country a webmaster lives in. When an application is made the site listed in the account is reviewed. Perhaps country of origin does raise a few caution flags, but it would be fairly easy to ascertain from looking at a persons website the type of traffic they are drawing etc which would then be used in making the decision to accept or not. Mind you, this is pure supposition on my part.

Is this going to spread? Probably not, but it will also probably not go away completely, and those clinging to such out-of-date ideals are not on my get-round-to list.

Onya
Woz

[Jenstar]

I often get rejected for programs because I am in Canada and not in the US, even though all my business websites target Americans, not Canadians.

AdSense used to reject all applicants who had a mailing address in Italy, [webmasterworld.com] due to VAT restrictions, although this changed a few months ago. I wouldn't be surprised if there were other countries that would fall into this that just haven't been mentioned here.

[FromRocky]

I often get rejected for programs because I am in Canada and not in the US, even though all my business websites target Americans, not Canadians.

The same here. I'm tired of these rejections.

[Woz]

Ah, I stand corrected Jenstar and bow to your superior knowledge. Even so, it would seem that the Italy restriction was based purely on regulations and not perceptions, which kinda helps to prove my point a little.

Onya
Woz

[irock]

Jenstar,

Welcome to the club. Because my site gets around 20% traffic from Britain, I tried to join TradeDoubler to gain access to dealtime uk affiliate. Turns out TradeDoubler only accepted UK address.

Oh well...

[irock]

Since this topic is in AdSense forum, I want to added that Google won't be placing country restrictions on publsihers. AdSense, unlike other affiliate programs, is expanding in different languages. It's unlikely that Google will 'shrink' its international business. This is evident with the launch of AdWords Chinese and Japanese a while ago.

[level80]

This is strange to me. They seem to base a lot on mailing address. However it is quite easy to have a mailing address in a country and no physical presence there (eg friend who forwards/ faxes mail).

I agree with a lot of the comments here. However, some of it is down to ignorance (tax issues etc), some down to perceptions of another country....

However to compete in the global marketplace - everyone from the one-man band to the multinational must start trusting foreigners as that is the thing on which business relationships are built.

It's not just about making money all this - part of it is maintaining good working relationships too. I'll give an example:-

Person X (a sole trader) trades with an American company but doesn't get paid - writes a few reminder letters but it doesn't work (say small amount - $65) - decides to conduct no future trade with America because afraid of same thing happening again.

or

Person Y makes money through Google Adsense - but feels strongly about American foreign policy re Iraq and instead switches the advertising space to a German company - as Google's business taxes will go to support the US government as well as destabilising the home currency/dollar exchange rate. (Euro/pound is more stable than dollar/pound over the past few years).

There are reasons behind what everyone does. I know plenty of companies that don't see the point to trading outside of their little locality (eg 10-40 mile circle around where they are based). Some do expand to become national... however it's the international ones that remain competitive.

[esllou]

I was the person affected by the Italian restrictions and have had cheques sent to my old dad in Ireland without any problems ever since the problem arose.

Now I have contacted support about having the cheques sent directly to me again.

keep you posted....