No, they didn't get rid of it completely but they sure took a few whacks at it to beat it into something a little less pretty. A friend mentioned this to me earlier as I didn't catch it in my email box because I was insanely busy today, but it's true. CPA Affiliates blog also posted about this and xboxundone posted about it on Digital Point Forums.

Here's the actual email-

Dear Publisher,
Thank you for participating in the AzoogleAds Publisher Referral Program, and for connecting us to your friends, family, and acquaintances.

Starting February 1, 2008, we are introducing some changes to our current Referral Program which may affect you:

• Referral commission will continue to be 2% of referred publishers’ revenue but will now expire after 6 months.
• Start date is the day first penny is earned, and expiration date is 6 months after first penny is earned.
• You must maintain a minimum revenue level of $1,000 in your primary account on a monthly basis in order to receive any referral payouts for that month.
• If you earn less than $1,000 in any given month, you will not qualify for a referral payment that month. However, you will be eligible for any month thereafter, up to the 6 month cutoff date.
• $1,000 threshold must be for revenues that you have earned from regular offer promotion, not referred sales.
• You may not refer another account belonging to you.
• When the 6 month expiration date has ended, you cannot refer the same publisher again.
• Referral payments will be on net 60 terms
• Referral payments will be paid out to parent accounts, not children accounts
These conditions will be listed under our FAQ section starting February 1st 2008.

Thanks again for your support and keep spreading the good word about AzoogleAds!

As always, we’d love to hear any questions or comments that you have; please send us your thoughts at AZreferral@AzoogleAds.com.
Sincerely,
Mitchell Richler
Vice President of Network Distribution

Well, Mitchell, that blows and here's why.

Just last night I wrote up a nice little post on how my affiliates can essentially refer people for a living and let their income roll in on auto-pilot. That is no longer the case, at least as far as Azoogle is concerned.

If I'm interpreting the e-mail correctly, you have to earn $1000 within 6 months to qualify for a referral payment or you will LOSE all referral moneys accrued. But it's not even that simple. They want you to maintain a minimum of $1000 a month in your Azoogle account in order to qualify for referral payouts. Yikes.

On the flip side, I can completely understand this notion. First of all, it doesn't take much to do $1000 in a month's time; it's pretty negligible if you're earning the numbers discussed in my previous post. Second, if you look at it from Azoogle's perspective, they are saving money that can be used elsewhere (like their pockets). These new rules guarantee that all people receiving a payout will be earning Azoogle money while they do so, while people who may have referred internet marketing giants while doing nothing will wallow in a pit of nothingness.

There is a bright side to all this though. If you keep reading this blog, you will never have to worry about not making enough to qualify for the minimum referral payout, so stay tuned and you'll be happy.

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This entry was posted on Friday, January 25th, 2008 at 4:58 pm and is filed under Ad Networks, Affiliate Marketing, AzoogleAds. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.