WidgetBucks Updates & Referral Earnings

Written by Zac Johnson
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WidgetBucks was the one of the main circulation of news a couple weeks ago, especially once Shoemoney made a post on how he does not agree with their network terms. Andy Beard then came out with a post saying "Widget Bucks is Now Safe to Use". It’s also a funny issue how WidgetBuck’s main web site isn’t listed in Google. Search for "widgetbucks", and my blog is numbers #7, with my "WidgetBucks Top Performer" post.

Aside from all of the publicity (good and bad), let’s take a look at how WidgetBucks is actually performing on an earning standpoint. As you know from my last updates on the program, I am running a few of their banner rotations on general traffic content sites, so I was not expecting any great numbers. Here is the run down for October’s earnings:

As you can see from the stats above, the impressions were high (approx: 1,463,371), while earnings ended up at $123.55. This comes out to an .083 cpm, which isn’t horribly bad considering the location of the ads and non-targeted traffic going through the site. I did multiple ad testing to see which categories did the best. MP3 Players pulled the best Earnings Per Click, but they also had the lowest Click Through Rate. Game Consoles had the most impressions, but with such a low click through rate, it didn’t do too well. As expected, the Movies categories pulled the best Click Through Rates, but with an average earnings per click of .07, it was still low.

We can now take a further look into WidgetBucks performance by examining stats so far for November. Once again I had switched up a few categories and removed the less performing ones. For November I have only been running Jewely, MP3 Players and Game Consoles banners. The stats for November are shown below.

In a quick comparison from October vs. November, you will see both Jewelry and MP3 Players have lower click through rates, while Game Consoles stayed the same. Jewelry earnings per click increased .13, MP3 Players decreased by .07 and Game Consoles also decreased by .05 per click. Average cpm for November is .065.

Something new I noticed today when I logged in to check my stats, was that they are now showing earnings from referrals to the network. I don’t expect to make any decent money off referrals to the network, but this is definitely an area I was waiting for, and one that AuctionAds was never able to implement/update.

I still think WidgetBucks is a great solution for sites that have content targeted to the ads being displayed. Unfortunately for the time being, I am testing this program with general traffic. I might setup some niche sites so I can test how much the program would earn if I was sending relevant content.

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14 Replies to “WidgetBucks Updates & Referral Earnings”

  1. I recommend you try the LCD Televisions widget, as it has a CPC more like $0.60.

    You can see on my blog (link below) that I did a similar breakdown, and I actually managed a CPM of $0.l5 in October on a non-targeted site beneath some games.

    For now I'm pretty impressed with WidgetBucks as a solution in places where text links don't work very well.

    Unfortunately if you read my blog, they unfairly accused me of click fraud, however I'm still seeing earnings reported.

    https://www.onlineepiphany.com/2007/11/13/widgetbu…

  2. You have very impressive numbers for widget bucks. Best I have some from anyone using it. What amount of pageviews do you have that relate to the amount of impressions you get on widgetbucks. Is it basically 1 to 1?

  3. Zac,

    How does .083 CPM stack up against other things you could be doing on the space instead?

  4. I had donated back $23 to widgetbucks since they are not paying anymore for non us residents.A bunch of losers trying to kick everyone out slowly.I guess it only works really for those who are in the US market.

    1. Is it true about non-US residents? Do you have a link to a story that verifies that?

      I'm Canadian.. getting a bit worried!

    2. From WidgetBucks FAQ:

      Can I put WidgetBucks on my site if I'm not based in the US?

      Yes, as long as the site meets the terms of service. Please be aware that our terms of service does not allow non-english sites without prior written consent. Widgetbucks can be placed on any site that has traffic. Because all of the products are from US based merchants and are in US dollars, the likelihood of click conversion is greater for a US targeted audience, but you can still use WidgetBucks on Non-U.S. based sites.

  5. Yes the LCD Flat panel tvs and the PDA pay very well with Widgetbucks

    To be honest I dont like the John Chow TTZ affiliated program I removed them from my main site, it was slowing down my website,and it only allows one click per IP address

    I am given TTZ another try on my arcade website.

    One thing I dont like about widgetbucks is there payout it takes 45 days of the ending month to get paid.

  7. Hey Zac,

    I'm not an affiliate marketer but stumbled upon your blog a month or two ago. Located just south of you in Toms River, it's nice to hear about someone local to my area doing well on the web. Certainly some quality stuff you have posted up here, well done.

    I wanted to chime in with my personal experience with WidgetBucks. I don't think their tracking system is accurate at all. I've setup their ads to run on a small site I've been developing which doesn't receive too much traffic (200-400 page views per day). I use OpenAds to serve all of the ads on the site. The number of ad impressions tracked by WidgetBucks is consistently less than what OpenAds tracks (which has proved to be very accurate when serving and comparing impressions with other ads, including Google AdSense). Sometimes the numbers Widget Bucks has are half of that tracked by OpenAds.

    OpenAds also runs some JavaScript to track clicks, while I concede that setup is not 100% accurate, it's again proved consistent for other ads served including Google Adsense. Any clicks registered by OpenAds never seems to get reported by WidgetBucks.

    Working with these relatively small numbers it's easy for spot inconsistency in the tracking. If they fail to properly track and report impressions at my level, it certainly should raise some question marks for publishers who get considerably more ad impressions. I've again put the ads up to see how their tracking now fairs. They will stay up for a week or so and I'll compare the numbers to see how they add up.

    -Ron

  10. they are performing well on my site, but the scare the heck out of me with some fraud suspension email. i think they since removed the ban on me after i refuted the accusation.

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