Just as I was about to see a little ray of light at the end of the tunnel, Adsense dropped a bombshell casting another big shadow that dimmed out the exit route.
If you’re outside of North America, Latin America, and Japan, AdSense referrals will be retired.
As it is, we were already getting a raw deal. We are paid a miserable 10 cents for a referral who downloads the various other programs like the Firefox Browsers and so on while bloggers from America gets a dollar and I really do not understand this double standard. What is the difference between a Firefox user in Malaysia with those from the Americas.
Most of you might not realise it, but bloggers from my region has a much tougher time trying to make money from our blogs. Apart from Adsense, many other opportunities are not made privy to us. We are sidelined from making money from Clickbank as my country is not recognised by them. If we want to we have to do it via a proxy from the neighboring country. Paypal also forbids us to withdraw our funds to our local banks and it was only recently that we were given the opportunity to withdraw a maximum of $500 a day to our credit cards or debit cards.
Widgetbuck’s advertisers don’t like my country too much either. We are allowed only to run CPM Ads and even that, impressions from my country do not count. Pay Per Post geo-targeted us out of the many high paying reviews, not to mention the many affiliate programs that do not accept members from my country.
What is the mater here? Many Advertisers claims that bloggers and blog readers form outside the Americas do not convert. They don’t shop online, the CTR is dismal, so they are not willing to pay. No doubt I tend to agree that people over here are less savvy but is this a valid reason? I mean, this IS the Internet isn’t it? It is suppose to be accessible worldwide and a good potion of the blogs here enjoys a huge following from visitors in the US.
So why then is this happening? Has it got to do with the way a country is managed? They don’t like our leaders? Our country? Or are we just less human and are considered a lower life form, not fit to compete with people who are more “advanced”.
For more of Adsense New Policy, check out:
Adsense Change Rules – Stupidity x 3 by Darren Rowse
Adsense Slaps Foreign Webmasters In The Face by Shoemoney
Part of it is economic since the Ringgit was unpegged from the US dollar in 2005 and has gone up in value since, or, rather, the USD has declined. Selling internationally has become much more expensive for US companies due to our economic policies.
Part of it is the Internet fraud that has come from Southeast Asia. While governments have cracked down recently, many blocks still exist. For example, our firewall at work blocks virtually all connections to servers with IPs in Malaysia, Philippines and Indonesia (and a lot of Eastern Europe too).
Costa, I buy alot online and I know many US companies do not ship internationally. Really, even if they do, the shipping cost alone sometimes cost more than the product itself. Only big big established US companies with enough sales volume could ship internationally at a good competitive price. That is why, many Asians do not buy online. The culprit is those shipping charges.
I guess that is why the advertisers feel they’re not getting much sales from the SE region.
I was disappointed seeing how Google actually allowed it to happen. But I suppose they have their statistics to prove the effectiveness of the program in Asia.
Nonetheless, this opens up an opportunity for many other competitors.
I can see taxes playing into this. Google doesn’t want to have to learn (and manage the record keeping) about the tax laws in the ~200 countries of the world.
Micheal
But Micheal, Adsense is allowed worldwide. They only pay differently in different countries, so I don’t think is has anything to do with taxes.
I can understand the difference in payout, because lots of non American countries gives a bad ROI, but why the difference in referrals? I have more than 10 referrals for widgetbucks and most of them are from America.
Vic
Yea, it does seems that way doesn’t it?
Hey, ah pek!
Anyway, holla me up since we’re not that far away geographically.
I might have some proposition/projects you might be interested in