AdSense advertisers have even more incentive to use Google Checkout for payment processing. Each time a new buyer signs up for a Checkout account and makes a new purchase, the referring party will receive a monetary bonus.
It looks like Google is trying to tighten up integration across its spectrum of services with greater efficiency by encouraging AdSense partners to adopt Google Checkout. Checkout functions mostly as a gateway service right now, seeing that Google has waived merchant fees until end of 2007 and is giving $10 in signup bonuses to new buyers.
Jack Chou outlines the new referral process in his post on the Official Inside AdSense Blog:
- You place the Checkout referral button on your site.
- Someone clicks on the button, signs up as a buyer with Google Checkout using a valid U.S. credit card, and completes a purchase of at least $10 before shipping and tax through Checkout within 90 days. (The current $10 minimum purchase corresponds to our existing $10 promotion for new buyers, so this amount may change in the future.)
- You earn $1.
The referral promotion is currently only available to U.S. publishers, and that Google Checkout only supports U.S. credit cards. Google hopes to open Checkout more globally in the near future, but will probably hold off until more individuals and merchants within the United States adopt the service.
Many have touted Google Checkout as a potential “PayPal killer” but the service has yet to make a dent into PayPal’s bottom line. PayPal is, of course, tied to eBay and as such has a ready-made user base at its disposal. Google, however, doesn’t have the luxury of a monster online retail service in which to attach Checkout for payment processing.
In January, Hitwise’s Bill Tancer looked at Google’s aggressive marketing of Checkout and made some notable observations about where the traffic is coming from:
It’s interesting to note that Google Base is the #3 upstream provider to Google Checkout. The combination of the two may eventually become a competitive substitute to eBay/Paypal, even though at this point Paypal’s market share is over 60 times that of Google Checkout.
Google Base/Checkout may be an effective combination, but could the next step be a partnership between Google and a major online retailer (Amazon, maybe) to promote Checkout in relevant ways to the average buyer?
