You all know about the news Google has broken out about Google reader, right? According to Google, one of the reasons they were decommissioning Google reader was because its usage has declined, and as a company prefer to pour all their energy into fewer products. Sort of saying it was not profitable enough.
Following the sort of same decision as they did on Reader, yesterday, I received an email from Google Affiliate Network Team, announcing the official retirement of the network on July 31, 2013.
Here’s an excerpt:
Important updates for Google Affiliate Network publishers and advertisers
Our goal with Google Affiliate Network has been to help advertisers and publishers improve their performance across the affiliate ecosystem. Cost-per-action (CPA) marketing has rapidly evolved in the last few years, and we constantly evaluate our products to ensure that we’re focused on the services that will have the biggest impact for our advertisers and publishers. To that end, we’ve made the difficult decision to retire the Google Affiliate Network and focus on other products that are driving great results for clients.
Publishers can continue to earn revenue through the AdSense network. And marketers can take advantage of other CPA-oriented Google tools like Product Listing Ads, remarketing and Conversion Optimizer to drive valuable online sales and conversions. These areas are growing rapidly and we continue to invest significantly in them.
…. We plan to disable publisher relationships from advertiser programs on July 31, 2013. Publisher payments will be disbursed for network activity generated through this date. We will continue to make certain functionality available through October 31, 2013 for retrieving reports, reconciling orders, and processing payments.
There you have it. You may or may have not been using the Google Affiliate Network. It was really not a bad network and as a matter of fact, I even recommended it on my best affiliate networks to work with. Main reason for that was it was easier for AdSense publishers to reach the threshold of AdSense, as earning from the Google Affiliate Network were integrated into that of AdSense. Sadly, that’s going away. If you are using Google Affiliate Network, make sure to begin taking those links and banners down, as it soon will disappear.
What say you? What do you think of this move? Quite frankly, just waiting for the next announcement they will make. What’s next? Feedburner?
Atif Imran
Closing Feedburner ? It will be very bad news for small bloggers .
Jane
Google is dropping service after service. They’d better keep them all as beta and withdraw it. If they’re launching it to test the waters and see how profitable it is for THEM, they’ve got to keep it as beta 🙂 It is a pain every time to move from one of google’s service to an alternate one!
That is some bad news, I love googles affiliate network and don’t think there is anything wrong with it!
Fahad Zahid
Another Bad News From Google! Dropping Service One by One is not a good idea; Rather then Launching So many Services without knowing its drawback it would be batter approach to concentrate on few products! Retiring Products one after another could damage Google’s brand repute!
Hi Fahad. Not sure how much damage (if any) would impact Google rep. They are known for doing this and one should sometimes just be realistic that these things can happen and move on.. Oh well. Thanks for leaving your thoughts …
I think they are just trying to move with time so that time doesn’t move away from them.
So they are really embracing the social and mobile age: they got the toddler – Google + and a new baby – Google + communities, rumour has it that they are flirting with WhatsApp. No wonder then the R.I.Ps keep coming – Google Reader, Affiliate Network and … Certainly more are on the way.
I hope feedburner won’t be next. As most of the bloggers are using it including me. So i don’t want to hear that news. 🙂
Babanature
I wonder why google keeps doing this? I know it’s their product but people are using this stuffs. I wonder if they’ll have to shut down gmail too 😀 . Thanks for the post bro
HI. Closing Gmail? Don´t think so, that would be loosing a major source of “data”, lol
Wamiq Ali
Sad to listen that they are closing google affiliate network, I read this news on your blog. However I fear that one day feed burner may not come to an end. However it’s not confirmed yet! I guess it wont be closed as one of the guys in up comment mentioned
Wow DT. I just started using Google Affies a few weeks ago lol….well, so much for that 😉
Google is so massive and successful that any smaller venture can go at any time. This is why not attaching to any one channel is beyond key.
I do cash gifting, I also use Adsense, and my ghostwriting services, and article posting as means of income. Diversify those streams to be prepared for changes at the Big G.
Thanks buddy!
Ryan
Well said bud. “Diversity” is key to ensure long term success. Can´t put all those eggs in one basket now, can we 🙂
Joe Hart
I had been an avid user of Google’s affiliate network until a couple of years back…I had managed to earn some revenue from it..But the monetizing possibilities were limited..I am sure there would have been people who thought otherwise..Anyways it had a good run..Time to bid adieu.
Evan
That is sad news. But life moves on and we have to move on with it whether we like it or not. Thanks for sharing the news.