I have seen many people come crying to the forums complaining that their Referrals aint working properly. It shows totally irrelevant ads. They selected a forex ad but it shows a ringtone ad. Before you call Google evil. Let me explain you how referrals 2.0 works and the latest changes to the system. 1) What are the changes? Do you even know referrals 2.0 don't work the way they used to when it was launched. YES. The system is now totally different. Why did they change? This was cause of the leads fraud. People asked their friends/family to signup for leads which eventually screwed up advertisers. I know one advertisers got 4000 leads and only 8 were genuine. Imagine, the kind of fraud it was. Of course, advertiser's weren't happy. So now all referral ads are mostly contextual. You would get a myspace related ad on your myspace site even though you select a forex referral. It will match to your content. 2) Country targetting: The second issue was of country targetting. Earlier, if you select ads for USA, you can see them in other countries. This was definately a bug, which is now fixed. Now advertisers target specific countries and referrals are only visible in thsoe countries. 3) I selected an ad for country-USA, now what will show up for India? If you selected an ad for usa, it wont be visible in india. Google will automatically match your content and display ad with highest conversion in the system. This ad should match your content almost all the time. In my eyes, google is doing everything they should have done on day 1. However it was early beta so we can always expect some bugs. Now referrals are only meant for people who want to do legitimate affiliate marketing. Forget the days when you can ask your friends and family to fill up adsense income. Hope this helps everyone on the forum.
Referrals income is totally crap for me, Ads showing more than 4000 times per day, but conversation still $0-0.1. I dropped Referral ads from sites
Referrals works good if you integrate them properly. Putting a banner in your sidebar or link in your footer wont get you anywhere. referrals are like affiliate ads. You need to sell them to get money.
Thats so true.. I was getting like 1 click in one week before devoting time and strategy behind it. But, now I can say.. It was worth spending some time on it.
Could you elaborate on your strategy? I am treating my blocks of referral ads as I would my adsense ads. Placing them in various spots on my pages. Are there other approaches you could suggest? Thanks.
I think in a general sense you have to treat that affiliate product like your own ... have to review it properly bring out the strong points so when the prospective buyer is leaving your page its really to go and buy it ...
Thanks everyone as Chios already explained. Try to sell the product/service to the buyer. Afterall your website is your shop and you are the salesman. Give them reasons to believe that the product they are buying is good.