Blogging income can be derived from many options. If you are relying on Adsense then I suggest you keep a careful watch on any Google announcements. Over the six weeks or so Google have announced several changes to their publisher partnership arrangements.
The first change would probably not affect most small time or new bloggers. Google is discontinuing the Adsense Referral system generally for those living outside the United States. There have been a few modifications of the policy since the first announcement but the bottom line is that the number of partners eligible to receive income will be reduced. Not only that, the size of the payments have also been reduced. The Google announcement stated:
[source] The changes to referrals promoting AdSense will now depend on where your users are located, regardless of your location as a publisher. You’ll earn $100 for every user you refer to AdSense who is located in North America, Latin America or Japan when they generate $100 in AdSense revenue within 180 days and they remove all payment holds. You’ll no longer be paid for users you refer who are located elsewhere. These changes will go into effect the last week of January.
The latest announcement from Google involves the Google referrals programs for Google Pack and Firefox. The amount to be paid for these referrals is being halved. The statement from Google:
[source] Google Pack: Currently, you can earn up to $2 when a user downloads and runs Google Pack for the first time after being referred through your link or button. Starting the third week of February, each successful Pack referral will earn up to $1. This change will apply to all referrals for Google Pack and is independent of user location or publisher location.
Firefox: We’ll also be reducing payments for Firefox referrals from China during the third week of February. This specific referral payment change will only affect installations from users in China. Again, this is independent of your location as a publisher.
It seem that Google is going through a rationalization period and I would not be surprised to see more announcements in the future relating poor performing partners. Google has grown with a high percentage of blogs running Google ad units of some type. This is flooding the market with some partners taking a year to earn the $100 minimum payment. If Google is going through a rationalization stage then I expect these publishers to be the next target.
For bloggers to make some type of income from their blogs, the time may be right to start investigating other options. It would certainly be judicious to trial different ad types to determine which ones are most profitable. It should be remembered that some of the biggest bloggers receiving a lot of blogging income without using and Google ad units. Perhaps you can too!
