AdSense Referrals Now Available

Google is now offering to pay publishers to refer other publishers to AdSense. That’s remarkable only in that it’s new for Google; but other ad publishing companies have been doing it for quite some time now. What is remarkable, however, is that Google is paying publishers to convert regular web surfers to Firefox. That’s right: get your visitors to use Firefox and earn money.

If you’re an existing AdSense publisher, you can now earn money by promoting AdSense and/or Firefox. For AdSense, when someone you refer earns $100, you get $100. This is an interesting scheme: it suggests that Google’s cut for each click is at least 50%. But that’s not necessarily true; Google could be betting on the fact that publishers are likely to earn much more than $100, especially over time. On the Firefox side, publishers earn $1 each time a user downloads, installs, and runs Firefox. How is Google tracking these referrals? The program must be ‘phoning home’ when Firefox is launched for the first time. Anyone want to check into this?

It’s interesting to note that Google is promoting Firefox. Do they have a special agreement with Mozilla? Firefox is essentially a competitor to Internet Explorer, as they are both designed for the same function: web browsing. This indirectly positions Google as a competitor to Microsoft, which we knew was happening, but not to what extent.