Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I can't give you exact numbers but let's say that the referral for Firefox has over 1/2 million impressions and has earned me less than it would cost to buy a big mac, fries and a coke.
I have over 1/4 million impressions of the Picassa referral button and I've yet to earn the price of a movie ticket at a 2nd run theater in the suburbs.
Anyone else having better luck than me?
I should probably pull the referrals and substitute other advertising or affilate ads. They couldn't do much worse.
Yeah....that's a plan! LMAO!
Just before you do that you might want to investigate the biggest money maker on the Net and see how they deal with referrals!
Learn from those that do. Seek out the sites that do! Learn from them! Don't listen to the crap posted here, search......search.....search.....and then learn from the results!
Don't listen to the crap posted here
What you call "crap" has significantly contributed to my earnings, there are some great minds in here, and most importantly collective experiences that cannot be found elsewhere, not to mention the willingness to help total strangers, where else can you find all that?
To rephrase percentages's statement:
Take all you hear with a grain of salt,
but keep an ear open at all times,
for there are gems floating around.
On Referrals: They make 30% of my earnings, 2 reasons:
- Knowing which pages to place them on
- Tons of traffic
What you call "crap" has significantly contributed to my earnings
I'll second that.
Perhaps all my visitors are so net-savvy (which is possible given the nature of my website) that they are already using Firefox and Picasa, so they never click on the referals.
I'm well aware of how to optimize ad placement, but it doesn't seem to matter what I do with the referral buttons. People just ignore them.
Just before you do that you might want to investigate the biggest money maker on the Net and see how they deal with referrals!
I just might do that if you tell me who the biggest money maker on the Internet is.
I really wish that google would ad a picasa button that actually said "picasa" on it somewhere. Doesn't it seem odd that when you are doing a referral setup you click a radio button named "picasa" but all of the referral butons only mention "google picture software"?
I actually like and use Picasa for most of my easy picture edits because it is easier to use than photoshop or the gimp for organizing and most edits. I bet that I could get a lot more picasa referrals if they had a decent button that actually used the name of the product.
Who here bought a digital camera that didn't come with its own photo software? {not many hands going up, eh?}
I'm not suggesting that they have to remove "Google" from the buttons, I just want them to add "Picasa" to some of the options.
Download Picasa
Google's photo software
[webmasterworld.com...]
The OP's experience would seem to be far from representative of the norm though, with presumably his site content being the significant factor.
I'm with Big Dave, and I've mentioned it before on here, I'd like to see the word Picassa used in the buttons. Many of my visitors have heard the word picassa but don't link it to google (just a search engine to most people), in any case, surely they can use both the words Google and Picassa in a button?
[edited by: PinkFairy at 6:45 pm (utc) on Sep. 2, 2006]
Personally, I think that Google should fix it if they want more picasa users.
I've written Google to suggest it. Anyone else that wants it should send them a comment to that effect as well.
There is nothing called undue attention for referrals, you can recommend it to your visitors with no problems.
That isn't what I just read on the adsense help page:
Sure - you're welcome to endorse or recommend the products you're referring on your site. However, our program policies don't permit you to encourage clicks on or draw unnatural attention to the referral units you're displaying on your site.More specifically, it's acceptable to use language such as "I use AdSense and recommend it to monetize your website." However, please avoid using language such as "Click here," "Visit these links to support our site," or other similar language
So putting a referral unit on the page of of a review for that product = good, Directly suggesting a click on the link = bad, putting something like that right above it = not clear.
I like to steer clear of the grey areas. Much better to convince Google to fix their ad units.
For example, you might say, "I recommend the Firefox browser."
Perhaps all my visitors are so net-savvy (which is possible given the nature of my website) that they are already using Firefox and Picasa, so they never click on the referals.
I'm an avid reader of WebmasterWorld, but I've never posted before so please don't slam me - too hard!
Like some posters, I also don't understand why people don't click the Google's Photo Software (Picasa) button. Picasa is great and won't hurt a thing on your computer. No one even seems curious, but this is free software that is far better than my 'paid for' photo software. And so much easier for the novice to use. It's a breeze even for me with virtually no photographic experience.
Same with Firefox but I have to agree with the quoted poster. Probably most people already have Firefox. Or, if they don't, they are afraid to lose their 'favorites' and have to start over. Not fun.
Read the sentence before the one you quoted:
However, in the content of your site you could provide an endorsement for the product you are choosing to refer.
In particular "in the content of your site" part. That does not mean putting soemthing specific right around the referral button. It means writing an actual endorsement as part of your actual content.
Would the suggested text placed right above the button draw Google's wrath? I can't say, but the post by ASA doesn't make it clear that it would be okay.
Anyone know what Google mean by a payout of "up to $1" if someone clicks and installs Picasa? Is it a numbers game? If you get one installation per week you get $0.10 but if you have 100/day you get $1?
It's not like there are different bids as with AdSense. Presumably Google decides what they will payout, but have they ever said exactly how that payment is determined? Do they pay based on traffic or based on the site on which the referral button appears?
At this point it's just academic interest as I'm switching the ads over to other affiliates for a while to see how they do in the same spots.
I double checked with support on it back then, and it is fine according to them.
This is the land of Pay per Action, rules are different.
Perhaps all my visitors are so net-savvy (which is possible given the nature of my website) that they are already using Firefox and Picasa, so they never click on the referals
Why not check this with one the many stats scripts out there?
I'm paying $6, or is it $9 a month, and I can at any time check which browser my visitors are using, if they have disabled javascript, their screen resoulution and so on..
- Or of course you could use Google's Analytics :)
I think this will help you making decisions on what referrals to use, where to place them and so on..
You might want to give it a try.
