I was surprised to login to my Adsense today and see ‘Referrals’.
It appears Google is giving us publishers a little control on what Ads are shown in our site. I did some research and found out that this is apparently in BETA:
This feature, a part of Google AdSense, is still in invite-only Beta. Instead of getting paid per click like with regular AdSense ads, with Google Referrals you’ll be getting paid only when a sale is made (or another type of defined action is performed) on the advertiser’s site.
This may just be the start of Google’s Cost Per Action (CPA) program. Traditionally, Google did Cost per Click (CPC) - this means every time someone clicks on an Ad, the publisher earns income. With CPA, you will earn only if the advertiser makes the sale. There are advantages and disadvantages to this. It’s easier to earn with CPC, but the returns on a CPA program may be quite higher.
September 25th, 2007 at 1:12 pm
i’ve tried it
nilagay ko sa Food blog ko months ago kaso wala pang nag purchase. 
hehe..
September 28th, 2007 at 12:40 am
Hi Jozzua, it’s part of what Google calls “Referrals 2.0″: http://adsense.blogspot.com/2007/06/referrals-20-launches-to-all-adsense.html
I have it at the footer of my blog for months now. The good thing is, aside from being able to choose what you want to offer your visitors, you can also explicitly tell them to click on the ads. This provides better return than the original Referrals system.
September 28th, 2007 at 10:02 am
Nice! Is the income stream ok?
October 3rd, 2007 at 11:38 pm
Well, my Referral earnings are higher compared to before. And yesterday, I was able to earn $23 from Referrals alone. Go check:
$23 earnings from Adsense Referrals in 1 day? Not bad!
October 4th, 2007 at 4:57 am
Great to hear that James. Is it consistent? Daily?
Once I get time to work on my site again I’ll add it.
October 4th, 2007 at 10:10 am
The $23 earnings yesterday was a one-time deal. On the average, I only get less than $1 for the referrals, way too low compared to earnings from contextual ads.
I think the performance of referral ads really depends on the niche of your site and, of course, the traffic. Referrals would probably click more in Health & Beauty sites where referral ads give free trials of the products, or in Computer-related sites where computer and networking products can be sold.
If the referral ads won’t dilute the image of the site, won’t mess up with the layout, or won’t pull down the total ad earnings, I don’t see why a publisher won’t include it in the site.
Just my $0.02.