New advertising network WidgetBucks has just updated publishers accounts with their earnings figures from the previous month of earnings.
This includes three amounts. A $25 signup bonus, the earnings that their Widgets earned for October plus earnings from their referrals (10% of the earnings of those that they referred).
While it’s only been about 6 weeks since WidgetBucks launched I’d be interested to hear the thoughts of those who’ve been trying them now that they’ve got their first month’s totals.
My own feelings have not really changed since I first came across them.
- I think that the system has a lot of potential
- It’s early days and there’s lots of room for improvement from WB to make the service really great
- My own earnings have been very encouraging (WB is outperforming both AdSense and Chitika on a couple of blogs for me – although is doing less on others – I find that product related blogs is where it really shines). I don’t think that I’m allowed to reveal earnings – but lets just say that they are four figures per month – and that I’ve only been using them sparingly so far).
- Interestingly – the amount that I earned from referrals fees over the month of October was considerably less than I’d expected. In fact if that figure is 10% of the amount that those I’ve referred are earning I’m earning more than all of them put together (and I’ve referred hundreds of bloggers). Obviously not everyone who signed up is using WB and not everyone is getting the great results I have so far.
- I have noticed a decrease in click values in the last week or two. I’m presuming that WB are tweaking the back end to get the balance right between publishers and advertisers right. I hope it doesn’t decrease too much further though as it’ll bring it back to a par with other networks for me in terms of profitability
- I’ve noticed some improvements in the loading speed of Widgets. Its still not super fast but a lot better than it was for me
They are my initial reports – I’d be interested to hear what others are finding.
I started using WB half way through october and raked in a hefty $1,300. My referral earnings (100+) totaled only a few dollars (which means combined they earned about 300 dollars). I REALLY hope (as you do) this improves in November.
I think it’s funny that a lot of bloggers are involved in their affiliate program trying to refer others when they themselves are unwilling to use the actual product.
Nonetheless, I think the company has a lot of potential and has a program that is great for bloggers.
I used Widgetbucks as my second ad unit to Adsense and it perfomed lower than Adsense in similar position. It seems earnings are very dependant on product category used. My referral earnings for over a 150 referrals is a very dissapointing.
they do have a great potential but many of my readers find it annoying and too flashy so I removed it…the loading speed did improve ( loading speed was my first turn off) but there is still a but in my head. Something wrongs about this program not just the fact that Google penalized them…
Widgetbucks performs pretty good on my blog. They don’t make me as much money as Google AdSense but they do well.
I have been blogging for about 12 months (but gave up for about 3 of those). I only just started blogging full on again in mid october and so far have had one click from WB. They aren’t very popular on my sites so i am using adbrite (which doesn’t earn amazing either)
Are there better programs than WB out there for me? I am banned from adsense
I am using them for a digital blog, which i started as an experiment with 0 visitors from the start, and within 2 weeks i am getting $24. I guess this program does have some potential in it.
I have gathered that WB really pays a good deal to bloggers and advertisers got their money’s worth.
I haven’t really earned anything off of this, but I was concerned with the intrusive look and slowness of the system.. I might have to find a different way to approach it though.
I do have a few blogs in mind and it may come in handy.
look like worth to try… I never use WB before :D
Is it my imagination, or did the CTR gradually decline over the month? I have a sneaky feeling, that I have had from the beginning, that the widget is just TOO flashy and that people were initially clicking out of curiosity rather than interest in the product.
If that is so, then publishers are going to be seeing a low action rate, which might explain a reduction in CPC, and also we are going to be seeing a decline in earnings, as compared to initial launch. This is as surfers, and especially regular readers, get blind to the widget… Hope I am wrong, because Widgetbucks has thrashed Adsense for me…
Wow, I never heard of Widget bucks until today… I will check them out and see what earning$ I can generate by putting them on my site. Thanks again for the always informative updates.
Referral earnings are dismal. So have my own, but I have plans for them. They have to be really targeted otherwise it’s completely useless.
It is not bad at all if you have a gadget site like mine and run especially gadget products of widgetbucks. But still Chitika works better for me. Widgetbucks will be more popular if they solve their speed problem
I started on 22 oct. and I think I got pretty money. It’s true that the widgets are so slow yet but if you own a product blog or similar topic you can get a nice mount of money. Better than AdSense or Chitika. Anyway, AdSense will be the number one for me.
Using Blogger CMS – I love that it fits into individual blog entries whereas I haven’t been able to do that with Adsense – with adsense it seems like it’s sitewide or nothing. In this one blog’s case WB allows much more relevant ads, because it’s kinduva sprawling blog for which most of the pages would be public service stuff if I put up adsense sitewide. It’s really just a few specific posts I want to monetize, and so WB fits nicely. I’ll see what happens…
I think it’s a great widget and you definitely can make a bomb provided:
You have huge traffic!
Otherwise, low traffic blogs should use adsense instead…
AuctionAds failed miserably on one of my low traffic blog :) It’s my fault actually..
This is a good news. Thank you Darren.
I don’t have a gadget site. I’m using it on a pet fish site – WidgetBucks has a Pet Fish category. My traffic is pretty low, a couple hundred visitors per day. WB is doing pretty good, much better than AdSense was doing, 3X to 4X the RPC and 2X the CTR. Maybe the CTR will drop after visitors become blind to the flashy widget, I’ll see. My CPM is around $10 – wish I could get tons of traffic!
WB has a lot of potential but the big question is, when are they going to release the first payment?
And the other thing is that you only see how many referrals you have but don’t see the commission you get from them. how sad.
As usual my revenue is close to nill. But after looking at some of the placements on other commenters’ blogs I know now I need to move my widget to a more promenent location
WB looks very promosing i would have to agree. I would go with it instead of adsense because people are starting to tune out adsense ads.
Eh, it’s OK, CTR for me is lower than Adsense but the revenue is higher so it kind of equals out. My complaints:
1) Too slow to load (but everyone complains about this)
2) MerchSense (their contextual ad sensing system) is not very good at all. Not in the slightest.
3) I’d move away from MerchSense but the product categories are too restrictive.
We checked them out but found the ads to be too flashy (annoying) for our readers tastes.
That coupled with the fact that they are new and untested, we’ll wait on this one.
My referral earnings came to 1c! Widgetbucks categories aren’t suitable for any of my blogs so I’ve just been promoting the referrals. It seems they haven’t been doing too well though. I think, based on 1c, I might look at other money-making schemes instead!
I used them on http://www.thetechbrief.com and it is performing good. It is generating more money than adsense and my CTR is about 1% to 2%. It seems to work better on my porduct-based posts. I am not very happy with the speed either… I have been getting a lot of stumbleupon traffic but the widget impressions are less than the traffic which leads me to think that people are navigating away faster than the widget loads :)
My experience was that it did not outperform Adsense in the same slots on two different blogs over a two week period. Therefore, I pulled it.
I have been using WidgetBucks for a month or so now and it seems to be doing just as well if not better than my Adsense. Adsense has been declining lately for me. I am not sure what I am doing wrong, but I think it all has to do with placement and categories that are relevant to the site.
Widgetbucks is a good addition but it seems that they weren’t sure if the clicks are valid and told me that I’ve placed an invalid domain? Clicks are very few compared to the impressions. How come it’s fraudulent clicks? I don’t know how to resolve this because they suspended my account and told me contact them on http://support.mpire.com/ but can’t login too. Has anyone been paid by Widgetbucks? I think this might happen to anyone if they are near the payment date.
I will remove adsense to see widgetbucks result.