At first, I was not going to try Widget Bucks, but I started hearing more reports about it, some saying that it was earning even more than AdSense, so I decided to give it a try.
So far, it has not done that great for me. I have had it on two blogs for two days, and I have only earned $1.11. The amount paid per click is fine, but the click rate is very low.
I have it set to where I choose the category of ads to display. You can also have Widget Bucks contextually choose ads for you, but that would conflict with the AdSense terms of service, and I have AdSense on these blogs.
Some of the categories have a lot better products than others. The digital camera category looks very good. There are not enough categories, either, so your blog’s topic may not be on the list.
Here are the pros and cons so far:
Pros:
- The widgets are attractive.
- They don’t seem to have reduced my AdSense earnings any.
- They are easy to set up.
- I could see them earning a lot on the right kind of blog, such as a Digital Camera blog.
Cons:
- The click rate is poor, so they are not earning much.
- The category selection is limited, and some categories have limited numbers of ads.
- The widgets load very slowly.
If you have a blog in a good category, such as digital cameras, this might be a good earner for you.
I would also give them some time. It is possible that they will fix the slow loading time and come up with more categories in the future.
However, for now, I will probably give them a few more days, and if things don’t get better, I will remove them from my blogs for now. I might give them another try later if things have improved.
Update: According to JenSense, it is ok to use other contextual advertising along with AdSense. Google has updated their Policies, but they have not updated the Terms and Conditions yet. However, Jen checked with Google, and they told her it was ok. Thanks to Dave Starr for pointing this out to me.
- Pat Doyle
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I had the same problem with widgetbucks. The Clickthrough rate is horrible. I had well over 1500 impressions and only 4 Clicks.
I dropped it in favour of my adsense ads.
Good luck with it though.
Pat I think as with most advertising you have to find the right match between your topic your visitor and your ad.
My guess is those doing well have found that match where those not doing as well haven’t.
I haven’t specifically tried Widget Bucks, though I don’t think they’d be a good fit for my site.
Steve, I am going to be dropping it too. Glad to hear someone else has had the same experience as me!
Steven, I agree, the right match makes a huge difference.
You hit it right on. The blogs I placed widget bucks on are very product specific and I’m having great success with them. My ctr is actually higher then with adsense. this widget works great for me because I have sites that are about cell phones and other electronics. If your site is not in a specific product niche you may have troubles. 1 week is never enough to run a trial when it comes to these type of things. I would leave it on just a few of your popular blogs for a month and then compare the results. A nice thing about this to is you can run widget bucks and adsense on the same page. So your top banner can be adsense and adsense in your posts but on the side bar you can run widget bucks. I also like the graphics and rotating ads.