I’m doing a little promotion with WidgetBucks while at BWE this year.
They’re giving me some 70’s style ‘baseball cards’ with my face on them to give out (why they chose that picture I’ll never know) and are offering ProBlogger readers (whether you get a card or not) a $50 signup bonus if you sign up as a WidgetBucks publisher.
To get the $50 you need to sign up as a publisher and when you’ve earned your first $100 you get the bonus.
WidgetBucks is an ad network that give bloggers the opportunity to make money using their ‘widget ads’.
As with all types of ad networks WidgetBucks convert better on some blogs than others – but they’re worth a try, particularly if you have blog with any kind of products featured on it. They’re also expanding into more geo-targeted ‘travel ads’ (should be announced soon) which will have opportunities for a more international group of publishers.
PS: the baseball card picture is of me eating a New York Pizza while I was there last year. It’s not sweat dripping down my face either – I think it’s a ‘crease’ photo shopped into the card to make it look old (it’s a 70’s style card after all). The back of the card has a few of my ‘stats’ on it. You’ll have to find me at BWE to see it.
There is at least one other blogger with their own cards at BWE – collect the complete set and they could be worth something on ebay one day (or it could just be an embarrassing thing that my wife pulls out to show the grandkids in years to come)!
I signed up with them and I think their ads run well on tech related sites/blogs.
I’m curious if they would be recommended for a fairly new blog. I’m afraid to over-monetize too early, but if I can find ways that are less intrusive, I’d be interested for sure.
Meh, I tried them out a while back. They aren’t worth it… For every $10 they give you, you could get $20 from somewhere else.
I am so sad as their ads are not showing up in my countries, it only works for their supported nations. I decline the offer :-)
Hahahaha very cool Darren.
I found WidgetBucks ok for the brief period of time I used it, biggest issue I had with it is that a majority of my traffic is Australian and it just wasn’t serving up relevant offers for my traffic.
Darren,
Has widgetbucks worked well for you?
I have not made much anytime so signing up with them again just to earn $100 and getting the $50 would be a big time waster for me.
AdSense, Chitika or WidgetBucks? It will be great Darren if you can review these three and let the world know which one will perform better for whom.
BTW, what are you looking at? ;-)
Haha this photo is pretty awesome. I can’t wait till someone makes a baseball card of me :)
So this same pic is going on the jacket cover for ProBlogger II The Book, right?
Widget bucks had a lot of complaints about not pyaing out when they first started out…I am suprised to see you are still pushing them Darren.
Hi Darren,
Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge.
Is this Wigetbucks acceptable on a blog hosted by blogger?
I’m a newbie to blogging. Can you kindly take a minute to check my blog and tell me what is lacking?
Thanks.
embarressing = embarrassing…
How embarrassing!
HAHA I took that picture! I’ve got to have one of these…
BTW – He’s just looking up and out the window (we were sitting at a countertop against the window), and this was his first bite of NYC pizza ever. I was honored to have been the one to introduce Darren to NYC pizza! This was a lunch break we took during the FOOA conference in 2007.
Love the 70’s style baseball card design Darren I have loads of ball cards hanging around.Widget Bucks on the other hand has never played out like expected.
I love that picture, Darren. You seem so…focused on what you’re doing. :-)
Darren,
I’m betting on the embarrassing moment with the grandkids vs eBay. Sorry! he he
Too cool though!
Nice offer, but I reckon if I put anymore widgets on my blogs they will implode under the virtual weight of it all.
Not interested but there’s something I want to tell you. Your writings are very focused and enjoyable (and learnable too) to read. There is some beautiful advise I get from your blog daily. I want to thank you for giving such beautiful content. Please Keep it up!
I think very great oppotunity…thanks for information
Dave Conrey – no ad network will make a lot of money on a new blog with not much traffic – but WidgetBucks can do as well as other ad units if the blog is product related. My view with advertising is to start it early – gets readers used to the idea of ads on the blog.
ImpNERD – I think it depends on the blog’s topic personally. I’ve seen them do well on some blogs and not perform at all on others. The key is to test different options and go with what works.
Tinh – sounds like they’re slowly expanding where their ads work.
Matthew – yep, they need North American traffic to perform best. They’ve recently expanded into Europe but it’s still largely a US thing from what I see.
Dilip – too hard to choose between them – as I’ve said above, depends a lot on the blog. The key is to test them both alone and in combination with one another.
Sid – sure, I’ll make sure it is :-)
Simon – I’ve not seen any of those problems. The main issues I heard of early on were with people clicking their own ads and/or people who had issues with them over non US traffic etc.
Like I say above numerous times. WB isn’t for everyone – test it for yourself, if you see promising results early on go for the bonus $50, if it doesn’t work out – try something else til you find something that does.
thanks for the tip, I’m going to give WB a go – need some fresh ideas for my site!
Cheers
Good marketing technique with the baseball cards. Your posting about it so it must have worked, unless there was some more incentive ;)
I don’t remember why, but I skipped them. Did they had text links in bottom?
Shopping Ads only offers $25 to publishers, and it is kinda hard to effectively target ads because of their kind of technology
Thanks Darren, but I think how can junior bloggers from unsupported countries can grow up in this case while almost affiliate and PPC, CPC are not supporting them. Any tips from you? Thanks
so I’m wondering …is a new york pizza any good??
thanks for the tip, I’m going to give WB a go – need some fresh ideas for my site!
Cheers