Making Money Through Adsense Firefox Referrals: A Look at Explorer Destroyer

I’ve only recently come across Explorer Destroyer, an interesting website which helps you to make more money from Adsense by switching users from Internet Explorer to the Firefox browser.

As you probably already know, Google’s Adsense referral program will pay you $1 for every person who downloads Firefox from your referral link.

Explorer Destroyer expedites the task of getting more Firefox referrals by offering a free script that allows you to automatically promote Firefox to IE users visiting your website.

Once the script is installed, a message which sells the benefits of using Firefox (along with your referral link) will appear to IE users when they visit your website or blog.

There are three types of settings for the script, depending on how aggressively you want to push for conversions. Installation instructions are clearly provided at the Explorer Destroyer website.

Level 1 will make IE visitors see a message across the top of the page, encouraging them to download Firefox.

Level 2 will direct IE Visitors to a splash plage with a download link and a link to continue to your site.

Level 3 will not allow anyone using IE to access your website. A splash page is shown instead with a Firefox download link. This seems to go against Google’s TOS, so you’ll have to use a regular, non-Adsense referral link instead.

It is interesting to note that Explorer Destroyer was started by a team of four people with the sole aim of overturning Microsoft’s dominance over the web browser market. Their manifesto offers more clues into Explorer Destroyer’s mission:

Firefox is one of the most important software applications in the world because it can play a big part in determining the future of the web. It is crucial that an open-source, standards-based web browser becomes the most popular browser, and Firefox has a shot at being that.

We’ve spent days fixing computers of our family members that have been hobbled by spyware that Internet Explorer allowed in. These annoyances alone more than justify a aggressive campaign to switch people to Firefox.

But what really matters is putting the internet back in the hands of the public and ensuring that the technology that will remake so much of our world in the next 30 years is a public resource not a corporate one.

The Explorer Destroyer idea does seem like it would lead to more Firefox downloads, although it seriously affects web usability because it interrupts the viewing experience of all visitors to your site.

Level 1 of the script setting is the least intrusive and will probably be the only one that is doable for most blogs or websites. Level 2 and 3 might be more successful in getting sign-ups but they will most definitely drive visitors away from your site as well.

See this parody website for an alternative perspective on Explorer Destroyer’s campaign to win more Firefox users.

I haven’t seen any other websites using the script so I’m not 100% sure if the script still works. If anyone has used it before or am currently using it, do leave a comment to let us know if it still works.

Update: According to various readers, the script apparently still works and you can try to download it from Explorer Destroyer’s website.

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