Google Ditches Affiliate Program

from the bye-bye dept

Wed, Jan 17th 2001 2:27am — Mike Masnick

Don't know if anyone has written this one up as a news article, but Google has apparently cancelled their affiliate program. What's funny is that it was launched with such fanfare just a short while ago, promising to pay 3 cents per search to any site willing to include a Google box. I actually added the Google box to Techdirt to see what would happen. About a month after I started I received an email saying they were reducing commissions from 3 cents to 1 cent. Apparently they were a little overwhelmed by the response. Now it seems in this age of dot com cut backs that they don't want to give out any money. They announced that they're stopping all affiliate programs, and the search box (now removed from Techdirt) will no longer work. Also, I won't be receiving any of the money I had earned because it didn't meet a minimum required threshold.

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4 Comments

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Puzzled of Mars, 17 Jan 2001 @ 4:04am

Huh?
If they were so overwhelmed how come you didn;t manage to meet their threshold?
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- Mike (profile), 17 Jan 2001 @ 11:00am
  
  Re: Huh?
  I doubt it was Techdirt who was overwhelming them. :) I got the feeling that the only person who used the Google box here was me. And, sure I do quite a bit of Google searching, but not that much. My original idea had been to set it up so people could do a one-click google search on ideas in any post, but we never got around to setting that up.
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Michael, 17 Jan 2001 @ 12:19pm

Google
Wonder what their revenue model has morphed to?
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Ebook Ads Affiliate Program, 15 Oct 2008 @ 4:43pm

I had a similar situation with the google search box, lots of searches I never got paid for. I also tried the adsense thing as well only to be shut down after my account reached over $500 in one month ... they said something about violating the terms but never would actually tell me what I violated. I never clicked on my own ads I though I was doing everything right ... I had a high traffic site but I guess that's not what they wanted, my account was removed and never was paid the $500. Go figure ... google isn't all its cracked up to be.
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