Google Adsense dumps Caribbean Webmasters from Referral Programme?

Are you a Caribbean webmaster, site publisher that currently displaying a referral unit for AdSense on your website? Then take it off right now. The Google Adsence blog just announced that you no longer matter to them or as they said, it simply no longer makes business sense. The Google adsense blog just announced changes to its referral programme that will take effect this month end. But let’s clarify that “only referral units promoting AdSense will be affected by this change; referrals to other products and services remain unaffected at this time.” Still, the impact will be big. Here are the changes:

The Payment System: Previously,”a user you referred to the program earned $5 within 180 days of sign-up, you would also earn $5. When that publisher earned $100 within 180 days and removed all payment holds, you’d receive $250.” The Payment System as of this month end will be.“A referred user who reaches $100 within 180 days of signing up and who removes all payments holds before the change occurs will generate earnings of $250 for the referring publisher. Any referred user who meets this conversion criteria after the change occurs will only generate $100 in earnings for the referring publisher. In addition, the $5 bonus will be removed at that time. Please note that the date a user was referred will only affect where the 180-day window is set but not necessarily the payout the referring publisher receives.”

Location,Location, Location. The change in the referral programme will mean “if you’re outside of North America, Latin America and Japan, you’re on your own my friend.”Google said that “For publishers not located in any of the three regions detailed above, we’ll soon be retiring referrals promoting AdSense. We’ve found that this referral product has not performed as well as we had hoped in these regions. Again, please keep in mind that you can still generate referrals for the other products listed under the ‘Referrals’ section of your AdSense Setup tab.

Caribbean webmasters let us hear from you?