Further to my previous post on experimenting with WidgetBucks, I wanted to explain a bit more to you about this new buzz in the Internet Marketing world.
WidgetBucks is backed by Mpire, a company founded in 2005 that runs a pretty decent online shopping site of the same name. Their new venture allows webmasters monetize websites by installing widgets. A sample of one as below and is relatively simple to install,
The interesting thing with WidgetBucks is that its PPC rather than PPA, and whats more interesting is that at the moment its paying around 0.2 to 0.5USD per click - Higher than Adsense for most niches.
Whats more, they are giving USD25 dollars to webmasters that join now (Click Here if you can wait no longer).
After a bit of testing with ArticleGOLD, its true that clicks are reported at around 0.25USD and everything looks very well done. The script code breaks for some template scripts but its nothing major. CTR is ok at about 0.2% for an articles directory and I suppose could be higher if it allows better targetting as the contextual option doesnt seem to be working. A few webmasters in the entertainment niche has reported excellent results.
So is it all too good to be true and we should start replacing our adsense codes?
Being a worrier I have a few doubts. Firstly as its new, I have not found any webmaster that have received payment from MPire yet. This is understandable and not a big isue at the moment, what is a big issue is how they will be handling fraud clicks. I did a test of clicking on 2 of my widgets(Mpire you can deduct 0.51USD from my account) and they seem to have gone through, personally I am hoping they will discover and deduct.
My main concern is how MPire can sustain this high CPC. I suspect that it will drop drastically in the near future and I suppose more the reason why getting on the bandwagon now when clicks are high is a good idea. I just question how Mpire can sustain the PPC costs with whatever deals they have with the merchants, especially as most of the traffic will not be pre-sold and will have low conversion rates.
But what about if Mpire has done a miscalculation? What if they can’t pay the thousands of webmasters that have ever growing commissions owed to them? Can this happen? Maybe … is it likely to happen? I hope not.
Anyways, it will be interesting to see how this one develops and for the now I will keep my widgets and their high CPCs installed. At least looking at the WidgetBucks accounts page will keep me happy for a bit.
Click here to check out WidgetBucks yourself and get your USD25!
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9 comments ↓
Nice short and easily readable article, I have a few other concerns my-self.
A) The amount of time the widgets take to load, threefold if you have multiple widgets on one page.
B) The Impression rates are some what misleading, yes it’s true that for every 1000 actual widget impressions that load can result in a $6 CPM (but in saying that 4 in 5 of my visitors are either skipping to next page or leaving before widget/s load).
C) So as from my above samples my expected CPM is actually more like $6 per 5000 impressions.
All in all though if you can work the WB widget into a site with your adsense then you can expect an OK return.
A) The amount of time the widgets take to load, threefold if you have multiple widgets on one page.
- I agree.
B) The Impression rates are some what misleading, yes it’s true that for every 1000 actual widget impressions that load can result in a $6 CPM (but in saying that 4 in 5 of my visitors are either skipping to next page or leaving before widget/s load).
- Helps if you place the widget a bit further down the page, maybe even below the fold.
C) So as from my above samples my expected CPM is actually more like $6 per 5000 impressions.
- Also depends on your niche - WidgetBucks works better on certain niches.
- Helps if you place the widget a bit further down the page, maybe even below the fold.
“I have actually switched two of my widgets around, previously I had the leaderboard above my article, today I placed the large 660 x 330 on top of the article and the leaderboard below the article and this has doubled my CTR”
- Also depends on your niche - WidgetBucks works better on certain niches.
“Could be the quality of my traffic aswell, I ran some ad’s through a advertiser, as it’s a new site, will be more targetted as I gain some search engine rankings and natural traffic is (usually) better IMO”
Nice to hear, which ad is getting the higher CTR though.
[…] posted my doubts on WidgetBucks a month ago but reserved my […]
But i have seen in my account that the revenue earned decreases with time, i mean if on monday u see ur TOTAL earnings as $5 then on tuesday or wednesday it may even become $3, can u xplain this ????
The revenue does not decrease with time but rather the red figures are unaudited figures and the lower figure you see are figures after auditing - which should be in black.
WidgetBucks doesn’t explain this process very well on their site but this a common concept with shopping network CPCs.
Chitika does quite a good job of explaining this process as quoted below
‘your unaudited revenue, and it’s a raw approximation of how much revenue you’ve earned. At the end of each month, we perform ‘audits’ to eliminate clicks that our advertisers will not pay for - clicks from scrapers, automated bots, obvious multiple clicking, etc.
We like to show our publishers the raw traffic in their accounts instead of simply removing it every month. Other ad services do this, but may call it something else, “smart pricing”, etc.; we call this process audits. ‘
Adsense and widgetsbucks will go together in one site.
It is also international.
thanks
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