Thread: Widgetbucks?

I am thinking about trying Widgetbucks and would like to know if anyone here has had any success with them.

Emm, does that include me?

Why of course it does! I am still awaiting the approval by the way. I am interested to hear about personal experiences with the company. Does their code cause any problems? (like adbrite) Do they serve relevant ads? How well do they pay? etc etc

Well, I'm only a small and non-too-technical publisher (today's phrase of the day).

I used to clear $100 a month with them every month, but that was mainly due to referrals. When they cut their referral rate from 10 to 5% it hit me hard and took 1/2 of my earnings with it. That's why I'm so please they've upped the rate to 15% now. Payment is by PayPal on a NET45 basis.

They manually approve all new publishers now, but when I joined it was automatic approval. They had problems with publishers using the service on bad neighborhood sites, which is why they're more careful with approvals now.

They have something called 'Merchsense', which is meant to help target the ads, but it has its problems and doesn't work well all the time. What I usually do is manually select the type of ad I want to display on each site.

The widgets themselves, which I'm sure you've seen, are pretty attractive and easily customisable. They usually pay on both a CPM and CPC basis. CPM isn't great at around 10 cents per 1000 impressions, although they've just introduced something called 'Yieldsense', which they say will improve CPM rates. CPC is about 20 cents per click - rarely lower than that, quite often higher.

Publisher stats aren't available in real time, but are delayed until the following day.

Something to be aware of is that the widgets take a couple of seconds to load. This means the CTR is less than AdSense, but the actual rate per click is usually better. I consider WidgetBucks an additional revenue stream alongside conventional ad units - I don't rely on it alone, but it's a nice bonus each month.

Thanks for all the info, I realy didnt know that much about Widgetbucks. I will definitely try it out on a couple of my websites to see how it goes.

I recommend using their widgets to advertise material goods - consumer electronics (best option), furniture, music and that sort of thing. They're trying 'local information' type widgets at the moment and they don't work too well due to their limited geotargeting.

Wow, Coutryboy - you seem to be quite the expert on Widgetbucks.

I have a mobile tech blog that I'm building up (pet project right now), and besides my mobile app sales widget, I just threw in an Amazon widget for the phones and accessories. Do you think that Widgetbucks would be a better choice for me?

I am with Amazon Associates too but I find WidgetBucks pays better in my case. I only really use Amazon for advertising books, so that's about 50p per sale commission. I don't sell very many - maybe 1 or 2 a month. WidgetBucks pays per click, which is better from my point of view. It pays a good rate CPC for tech related products, but the CTR is usually lower than AdSense like I said.

Can't deny I quite like WidgetBucks. I'm in touch with their marketing manager, Dean Jutilla, quite a lot over at DP and he's a pretty friendly and helpful guy.

Originally Posted by icjackson

Wow, Coutryboy - you seem to be quite the expert on Widgetbucks.

I have a mobile tech blog that I'm building up (pet project right now), and besides my mobile app sales widget, I just threw in an Amazon widget for the phones and accessories. Do you think that Widgetbucks would be a better choice for me?

If you are thinking abut joining widgetbucks perhaps you could PM CountryBoy and ask for his referral link?