I’m very behind in posting on this site about all the wonderful things that I came across at Blogworld and P0stiecon. I’ve been very sick – actually even before I left for Vegas my Crohn’s flared up and it got worse while I was there. Bummer! I missed a lot, but what I did manage to take in was great. I’ve actually just written about a new application called Triggit on my other site WebStyle. You might be interested in signing up for Triggit as you can add Amazon and CJ links on the fly as well as Flicker and Youtube to your posts.
What I wanted to talk about today is Widgetbucks. I’ve just finally gotten around to signing up and from what I hear that’s a good thing because sometime over the next week they won’t be as open about letting just anyone sign up.
I decided to try Widgetbucks on my main blog Tricia’s Musings in the middle right sidebar. It’s very easy to sign up (right now) and create a widget to place on your site. All you need to do is select which category your site falls into, and pick whatever keywords you’d like to have Widgetbucks use to display products from Mpire on your site and tada … you have widget code to place in your blogs sidebar.
I didn’t realize this, but right now they have a signup bonus that puts $25 into your account when you register. Since the payout minimum is $50 this means that just by signing up for Widgetbucks you’re already closer to getting your first payment.
Unfortunately Widgetbucks is changing it’s algorithm and I believe as of this week they will only be counting clicks from US and Canadian visitors. For bloggers who’s majority of site visitors are Canadian or American this won’t make a huge difference in income, however those who have a high percentage of site visitors from other countries the clicks won’t count.
As a result I probably won’t add Widgetbucks to this site. I just looked at my recent stats and only 54% of my visitors are from the US and Canada. Actually all my blogs have quite an international audience. The stats for my main blog which I thought had mainly North American visitors shows that of my recent visitors only 68% are from the US and Canada. Now if Widgetbucks would include visitors from the UK I’d have closer to 80% of my visitors clicks count.
So the moral of this story is that Widgetbucks can certainly help you monetize your blog quickly and easily but those with mainly US and Canadian audiences will do best. Still, if you want that initial $25 sign up now!
I also just signed up for widgetbucks. I thought it was different from adsense or other ppc programs but I think it is even worst money maker than them. 🙁
I think i m going to take widgetbucks’ ad out of my blog.
Not for me.
I am an Indian Blogger, but anyways, I was not going to give it a shot right now on my new blog.
I know they have a good reason for doing what they are doing but it sure is going to cause a lot of trouble. Hope it works out for them.
Adsense is the only consistently reliable game in town. Everything else seems to wildly change from day to day. Google has the best inventory. I hope they boost their referral program. CPA is the way things are going.
Agree with Chris here. Even though there are alternatives to adsense. Performance wise, there really isn’t an alternative other than yahoo publishing. And that has restrictions with only being available to people in the US.