What Are Referrals And How Do They Differ From AdSense

9.1 What Are Referrals And How Do They Differ From AdSense?

The biggest difference between AdSense units and referral ads is why you’re being paid. Most AdSense ads pay for each click they receive. Some pay each thousand times they’re shown.

Referral ads pay on a cost-per-action basis, or CPA for short.

It’s not enough to get a click on an ad to earn income. The user has to do something when he reaches the advertiser’s site. That might be downloading a program, leaving an email address or even making a purchase.

It’s very similar to an affiliate system in which you’re paid a percentage of a sales price for a product. The only difference is that payable actions aren’t limited to buying.

Clearly, whatever the action the advertiser demands, it’s going to lower your success rate in comparison to your AdSense units. If 5 percent of your users click a referral ad and only 5 percent of those users take the action the advertiser wants, then you might generate only a few of these actions each month.

Higher payment rates should make up for the lower conversions.

We’ve already seen that the AdSense referral program can pay out $5 quite easily once you get the referral, but the payouts available on other referral products can be much, much higher than that.

Although most seem to fall between $10-$15, it’s not hard to find referral products that pay more than $50 for each user that takes action.

Fig. 9.2 J.G. Wentworth pays almost $77 for users who complete a form.

That already makes them attractive. But referral ads are attractive for another reason...

You should be building multiple revenue streams by placing different kinds of ads on the same page.

Ideally, each Web page should use at least three different types of payment system. Those could be cost-per-click ads, cost-per-mille ads and cost-peraction ads. That would help to ensure that you get something out of all your users.

A few users will take action on the referral ads and generate the most money per click for you.

Some will click your AdSense ads and generate larger numbers of small payments for you.

And your CPM ads will make sure that you get paid even if your users do nothing but look at your content and leave.