WidgetBucks - Your Ads Don’t Suck? Really?

Category: Reviews Author: User Image

Gary R. Hess

This article is part of the series “Looking at Affiliates”.

WidgetBucks has been around the blogosphere the past few months as the next big thing. What thing however, is still being decided.

WidgetBucks offers a few ways to “rake” in the money:

Widgets. Basically an affiliate program, but with less of a selection and more of a craphole. You don’t get to choose exactly what ads are chosen, but you do get to select the category. Oh, but you don’t get to choose when the affiliate ad is chosen. More details of its crappyness below.
CPM ads. Just like any other CPM program. You select the category (or you can let WidgetBucks bot crawl your site) and you earn money for every thousand visitors. The problem? You don’t get to choose whether these are the affiliate ads are shown. There’s also an annoying timer that changes what ad is shown every 1 to 10 seconds. It’s also flash.
Referrals. The best thing that WidgetBucks has done. You get money every time someone signs up through you. So please, sign up through me. Another good thing? You get $25 for signing up. The bad? They won’t pay you until you reach $50. The ugly? Their ads.

Alright, so their ads aren’t entirely ugly… just annoying. 1-10 second flash images changing across the screen. Sure, it might catch the eye of the annoyed visitor, but they will barely be able to see what is actually going on. Actually buying the item is a whole other story.

So lets refresh, shall we?

The good: They will pay you $25 just for signing up. You also get the chance to refer your friends for more money.
The bad: They won’t pay you until you reach $50, which can be impossible for smaller bloggers and might take much more time compared to other affiliates/cpm programs.
The ugly: The ads. They are flash, ever changing and can annoy the visitors. 1-10 second frame changes is too fast for visitors to actually see, realize what they are, then read and finally click through. Hell, even their referral ads change every few seconds.

Conclusion

I don’t recommend it, but if you are willing to try, might as well sign up now. Maybe you’ll have better luck with the CPM ads or sales. Who knows? Maybe someone will get lucky.

[edit]Rumor is that WidgetBucks is doing away with the $25 signup. So if you want to join, join now![/edit]