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Make Money Online with WidgetBucks

written by John Chow on October 1st, 2007

widget4.png

WidgetBucks is a new advertising network that features a widget that displays shopping ads. When a reader clicks on the widget and visits the advertiser, you make money. WidgetBucks runs on a CPC model – you get paid when readers clicks on the ads – they do not have to make a purchase from the advertiser. WidgetBucks claims $3 to $6 eCPM in early test results.

WidgetBucks integrates with Blogger, TypePad, WordPress, Movable Type, and other large blogging platforms to make it extremely easy to install. However, the customization options are a bit limited right now. There are only five widget sizes and 117 color choices to choose from. I’m sure more will be added in the future. The ads can be pulled with a MerchSense crawl of your page to finds relevant products to include in the widget. Alternatively, you can choose the categories and products yourself if you think you can do a better job than the crawler.

What The Widgets Look Like

widget3.png

widget2.png

Above and to the right of this post, you can see a 468×60 widget and a 300×250 widget. Other widget sizes include a 160×600 skyscraper, 728×90 leaderboard and an odd sized 660×330 half page widget. I don’t see too many bloggers using that one.

WidgetBucks is ideal for technology and shopping related sites and blogs. However, WidgetBucks is opening their widgets to everyone. There are no minimum requirements to join and the minimum payout is $50. Well, the first payout will be done at $25 because of a special grand opening promotion.

$25 Bonus Just For Signing Up

Sign up for WidgetBucks now and they will deposit $25 into your account. Now all you have to do is earn another $25 and you’ll meet the $50 payout. Sounds like a good deal to me.

The low entry barrier and $50 minimum payout should make WidgetBucks a nice alternative or supplement to Google AdSense. Depending on how it does on your blog, you can use it to replace Google, or use it as the AdSense default. More advertising options are always good.

Sign up for WidgetBucks

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  1. I just had to laugh as I was writing an email to my subscribers about this I checked Problogger and John Chow at the same time and as midnight ticked over you both had articles up about it. It’s a race!

  2. That reminds me what ever happened to your ttz ad thing?

  3. You beat me to it again John. I was just writing about this myself. :mrgreen:

  4. The widgets are pretty decent looking. I’m on my way to sign up. :mrgreen:

  5. Reminds me of Chitika, which I do quite well with. So will give this a shot for sure!

  6. does this widget against Google Adsense Regulation? Can user both tools at the same time?

  7. Looks great. Another thing to add to the blog revenue arsenal. Thanks for the heads up! :mrgreen:

  8. I beat you to it Mr. Chow….. :twisted: but you’ll still have more sign ups than me obviously

  9. Sounds like a good network, I’m gonna test it out on my blog!

  10. As far as I can tell, nobody broke the rules. It’s all good.

  11. How did you hear about WidgetBucks, John?

    I got an e-mail about it from a friend this afternoon, but nothing official. Just wondering.

  12. You “big”guys should start conferring with each other about content. I read three blogs in a row this morning, all about the same new widget. The internet may be without boundries but it’s still a small world. :wink:

  13. The ads themselves look nice, you’ve just got another sign-up.

  14. John you evil thing :twisted: ….you monetized my comment…now there’s a thought.

  15. I have been trying quite a few adsense replaces, but nothing ever worked. I will try this one out, but it will be the last time

  16. Signing up now …. looks like a winner to me. Will use it to replace AuctionAds which has gone south very fast.

  17. :roll: I apologize if this is a stupid question, but I just have to ask.. Could you monetize yout own comments to other blogs?

  18. Cool, I’ve signed up! ;) Thanks.

  19. Looks like a nice program. I signed up for it right away ;)

  20. I just found this info at problogger..
    Hope it is useful..

  21. Your post is really interesting! Maybe I can try this on my blog.

  22. We’ve been listening to your feedback as WidgetBucks takes off and have decided to respond rapidly by improving our Referral Program. Mpire will now pay a 10% Referral Fee on commissions for a year. If someone you refer earns $100, you get $10. The new details are going up on our site now.

    Thanks for the suggestions.

    Sean
    VP Product Marketing, Mpire

  23. Ok, I’ll answer that. I think not? I can’t put my code on John’s site. But if I could post all my comments in a monetized format….it would be too evil! :twisted:

  24. The stats are not realtime? That sucks.

  25. CJ

    I just got a blog up and running about a month ago and have been looking for a good PPC ad unit to have on the page aside from AdSense (which a lot of the times I find to be kinda ugly). I like Chitika but I was rejected from their program since I don’t have enough traffic. So this little ad program is a godsend. Aesthetically pleasing, easily integrated, and best of all…PPC. If it performs half as good as it looks then I should be making money in no time. Thanks, John!

    • What do you mean by AdSense being kinda ugly ? Do you really take this into account when selecting a PPC ? Plus they are contextual … you don’t have to like them all :)

      • CJ

        Yeah, I do, actually. Some of AdSense’s ads integrate quite seemlessly and are rather invisible, but others (blocks of text in the middle of a post) just always come off as spammy to me. I think there’s so many better looking ad units and advertisers out there, things that contribute to a blog’s look, as opposed to subtracting from it. Simply put, I just feel ads should be invisible. The reader should see it, want to click it, but not realize it’s something that’s making the webmaster or blogger money.

      • I’d agree. If you’ve got ugly-ass banners all over the place your visitors will think you’re only there to make money. Look at some of the small blogs on blogspot and they’re a mess with ads. Check out a more popular site and you’ll see the ads are more discrete and fit in with the site :-)

  26. That is great to hear news. Do you think Google Adsense and Widgetbucks, which one is better than?

  27. I’ve just signed up. Going to share this site with my mates.

  28. I registered and will try it out on my blog real soon!

  29. I have join with the above referral and hope take an advantage of it. Let’s see it.

  30. Congrats on breaking 9k within a day.

  31. Looks like AuctionAds. But I guess this one will attract more clickers than Ebay auctions…

  32. John, once again you’re ahead of the game in bringing us this info..Thanks for the write up on what sounds like another good source of website or blog income!

  33. Hi.,
    another great discovery :)
    great work john…. u are a star

    -abs

  34. I think I’m going to tried WidgetBucks, seem like it work quite pretty good.

  35. First need to seriously evaluate whether you want to work at monetizing your blog, than WidgetBucks need to sign up.

  36. Well luckily they have a size that fits my site. The leader board was too big. Then when I had it, it was going over my content for some reason but now it’s all good. We’ll see if it stays now! lol

  37. Simple, attractive and a pleasing presentation. A major challenge to Google Adsense who can use some competition.

  38. it doesn’t look so intrusive as some other things used as means of advertising.

  39. Eli

    adsense versus this one? there’s no competition in my case since Adsense doesn’t want my blog on their list of account. I’ll go for this widget!

    Thanks!

  40. Very interesting… I’ve been followed your blog and discovered your blog is so powerful and useful for me as a beginner. Thanks John for all the knowledge shared.

  41. I’m still trying to figure out a creative way to integrate ad networks like this and chitika to my niche. It probably just won’t work.

  42. i liek this,i hope they have some sort of fitness feed.

  43. sounds good. i will give it a try and lets see how much i can make with it.

  44. John - Thanks for posting about WidgetBucks. :grin: To answer some of the questions above, our tech team is pushing an update within 2 hours that will give Non-U.S. people a sign-up choice, and will also make the sign-up page secure with SSL. Regarding the empty activation e-mails, we’re seeing those occur when people try to sign up multiple times. We’re changing the messaging on that to help guide people. – Sean, VP Product Marketing, Mpire

  45. Published this news on my blog.Thank you!

  46. Joined and tried it! Amazing! An ad that fits right into my page.

    For my page http://www.pleasantlifestyle.com/microsoft-office-why-not-try-openofficeorg/

    I was talking about microsoft office replacement, since it was pretty expensive to purchase for a consumer user. Guess what that Widget brought in? a 154 dollars Office 2003 professional CD for sale. That’s pretty damn good if you ask me.

    Also, I like the fact that I can get html code, so I can limit this to widget to pages I want it to show.

    Thanks John

  47. Im sold. I just signed up.

  48. Widgets looks like interesting and new so i think they’ll be popular.

  49. looks like chitika

    and chitika didn’t do well on my blog

    so i’ll skip this

  50. I’ve tried this as a test, and while the ads look good and do bring up relevant content (like the model of phone I use to record my rantcasts!) the flash does slow the site down while it loads. It’s only for 3 seconds or so, but is too much to put up with as it stops visitors scrolling down the page quickly.

  51. I thought this was CPC? I put it up on two blogs of mine and both show clicks yet no revenue???

  52. Revenue seems to be delayed like 5-6 days? Also the ad takes quite long to load.

    How are everyones results?

  53. im taking it down until load time can be improved.

  54. We’re getting some questions about reporting.

    The adoption of WidgetBucks has been fantastic! We are collecting all of the view, click, and revenue data continuously. Each type of data has it’s own delay, based on the data source and the processing required to display it.

    The views and clicks reporting is currently running a 12-hour delay. We’ve brought additional machines online, per plan, to handle processing, and expect to reduce that delay significantly.

    Currently the revenue reports get published on a 48-72 hour delay. This is the result of an auditing process and some delays in reporting we receive from our feed providers. Once the data has been processed, then it will populate to the corresponding day.

    Unfortunately this means that users are going the first couple of days of use without having a perfect picture of how well the ads are doing. We’re working with our feed providers to reduce that delay, because we understand our partners need this information as close to real-time as possible to manage their business.

    Thanks for your patience and for using WidgetBucks to monetize your site.

    Sean

    Sean Crotty
    Vice President, Product Marketing
    Mpire Corporation

  55. This is an excellent way to make good money online. If you have the traffic and they really like the presentation of the ads, you should have no problem at all making a quick sale. I will be using this very soon for my websites. Thanks for the great post.

  56. Just included it on my blog ! and blogged about it too. Lets see how it goes

  57. I cant see this in your blog .. have u tried it..

  58. I signed up and had the ad running on my posts. I got 3k impressions 3 clicks and ZERO earnings! What’s this? Isn’t this supposed to be PPC?

Trackbacks

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