Looks like if you are living outside of the US and if you are thinking of making money by referring AdSense to your readers, this is going to change soon. Recent announcement from Inside AdSense blog. The gradual phase out will happen soon and before you know it, the Adsense Referral Button will no longer appear on your Adsense publisher account. However, I would like to point out that these Adsense Referral units refer to units that promote Adsense sign-ups and does not include other Referral products that pay out publishers.

If you’re outside of North America, Latin America, and Japan, AdSense referrals will be retired.
For publishers not located in any of the three regions detailed above, we’ll soon be retiring referrals promoting AdSense. We’ve found that this referral product has not performed as well as we had hoped in these regions. Again, please keep in mind that you can still generate referrals for the other products listed under the ‘Referrals’ section of your AdSense Setup tab.
Soon, you’ll no longer see the option to create a referral button for AdSense in your account, although existing buttons will display as normal. This specific referral type will then be retired during the last week of January – any users who meet the conversion criteria (reaching $100 in earnings within 180 days of sign-up and removing all payment holds) before the change will generate earnings of $250 for the referring publishers. Any conversions which occur after this change is made will not be recorded in your account. You may wish to begin replacing any existing referrals promoting AdSense with referrals for another product or an AdSense for content unit.

There are pricing structure change for publishers living in North America, Latin America and Japan. Specifically, the payout for referring a user who generates $100 with Adsense in the first 180 days will return to its previous rate of $100 from the current $250 which includes a $5 bonus.

I am not affected much these changes as AdSense referral program does not perform quite well for me. How about you?. Care to share with me your experience with AdSense referral program?.