Google Referral Program - click your own link is a no-no

I was surprised to find out that it is against Google’s Terms of Services (TOS) to click your own referral links, not that I ever have, but I personally never knew it was against Google Adsense TOS. Unlike Google’s Adsense for Content, which pays per click (so of course clicking your own ads for content was a big no-no), Google’s Referrals ads are paid per action. What that means is that you will earn money when someone clicks your link and then does some other action as in download a product, or fill out a form, or whatever other action is necessary deemed by the advertiser.

I was looking into this because I was thinking of trying out Google Checkout and since I am a web publisher using Adsense, I was sure I’d have a link to sign up to Google Checkout on one of my sites and I could go through that link, sign up and actually get a little credit for doing so. But, I wanted to check and double check that I was not doing anything wrong by doing that and I am glad I did. Since these are pay per action, using the Google Checkout example, I would have had to click on the link, sign up, and then complete a transaction of ten dollars or more within 90 days in order to get paid one dollar, yes one dollar. Sure enough, I would have been violating Google’s Adsense TOS had I used my own referral link to sign up and that is definitely not worth 1 dollar. The amount is really irrelevant, but just explaining the referral program (pay per action vs. pay per click) by example of Google Checkout. I still plan on trying Google Checkout out, just not through my own link.

I think it is rather odd that you cannot click on your own referal links because advertisers are not billed when you click the link, only when you click and then take further action. For that advertiser I wouldn’t think it would matter if I am interested in the product and take the further action also by going through my referral link. Having tried their product, I could then decide on how I want to promote their product. If I download a program and it is the best thing since sliced bread then I’m going to promote it just like that and tell everyone how great I think it is, which I would think would ultimately lead to more sales of the product. For the most part these would generally be one time actions, as in sign up for something or download a product, for instance with the Google Checkout, I can only sign up once, it creates an account that would use my existing gmail (Google Mail) account, my Adsense account, my adwords account, etc. I would use that same account from here on out. Many other programs offer a free trial or download; again you can only download the trial program once and if you are promoting it in a positive way, then you will get more people to try the free trial which would again lead to more sales for the advertiser and I personally want to try anything I promote so that I can give an honest evaluation of that program or service.

I can understand Google’s Policy regarding Referral links a little more since Google released its Google Referral 2.0 to the public about a month ago. Now you can choose other companies for referrals (previously it was only Google Products) and some of those do pay more. See the previous post on this Google Referral 2.0, but I still think if its better to promote products you enjoy and work well for you and the only way to know which those are is to try them. So if you believe in that principle just make sure that you find some other way to try out the products without using your own referral link or you may just get banned from the Adsense program altogether.

Written by Beezlebubba on August 14th, 2007 with 1 comment.
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