Dear WidgetBucks… Let developers and designers everywhere view their own widgets

So it’s the end of the month and true to their word, WidgetBucks have extended their pay per click network to most of Western Europe. Before the extension of the scheme, if you were placing their advertising widgets on your website and you were outside North America, then you would see a replacement banner ad rather than their more lucrative animated product adverts.

While it was always possible to preview the ad widgets in your WidgetBucks account, it didn’t really help with actual placement on your sites. So now us folks over here in Europe can see our ads as well, as WidgetBucks intended them to look.

But what about those people still outside the list of approved pay per click countries?

Advertisers like WidgetBucks surely gain a lot of business from web designers and developers living outside of Europe? And of course they are usually responsible for creating more than one site so if they find WidgetBucks a good source of income, they’ll place them on many sites.

So Dear WidgetBucks , how about the option to put the Javascript that we drop in to our web sites into debug mode so that we can see the ad as it is meant to be. Of course any views and click when in debug mode would have to be disregarded, but I’m sure it would increase take up of this scheme.

Another alternative would be to allow the widget to be displayed if the request came from localhost.

Any one else have any ideas about how this could work?

Previous WidgetBucks Posts

Filed under: How To Manage A Website, Online Advertising, WidgetBucks , australia, cpc, ppc advertising, WidgetBucks

WidgetBucks Now Available For UK, Western Europe by August

On Monday I wrote about using WidgetBucks and WOOThemes as a possible alternatives to Google’s AdSense referrals scheme when it shuts down in August. Today, WidgetBucks announced that they will at last be extending their pay per click scheme to the UK so widgets now showing UK pricing.

WidgetBucks In Europe

Example of A WidgetBucks Widget showing UK pricing

This is perfect timing as it gives them an opportunity pick up new publishers in Europe. Even better news is that the widgets will be also be available in much of the rest of Western Europe in two weeks time. So by August, WidgetBucks will generate pay per click revenue for site owners with traffic from Western Europe and North America.

This is a significant step forward as previously if a visitor to your site was from outside North America the widget was replaced with a traditional ad and you were paid based on the number of impressions. Now visitors from the UK and soon Western Europe (full list below) will see the much more lucrative widget and revenue from WidgetBucks should start to increase.

Just to be clear, how you are paid and which ads are displayed does not depend on where you are based, it depends on where each visitor to your web site comes from.

Breakdown Of Countries Applicable for WidgetBucks

Visits from the following countries currently trigger pay per click widgets:

• USA
• Canada
• United Kingdom

Visits from the following countries will trigger pay per click widgets from August (2008):

• Belgium
• Denmark
• France
• Germany
• Italy
• Netherlands
• Norway
• Sweden

Visits from the following countries will trigger CPM ads and pricing:

• Australia
• Austria
• India
• Ireland
• New Zealand
• Portugal
• Puerto Rico
• Singapore
• South Africa
• Spain
• Switzerland
• United Arab Emirates

If you have a site that you’d like to monitise then check out WidgetBucks here.

Filed under: Benelux, Online Advertising, WidgetBucks , adsense, advertising, europe, GBP, referrals, sterling, WidgetBucks, widgets

Alternatives to Replace Google AdSense Referrals Income

At the beginning of the month, Google announced that they would retire the referrals section of AdSense. For existing referral ad publishers, this means that any AdSense referral code will cease to generate income for them at the end of August.

It’s all part of Google’s restructuring after the merger with DoubleClick. Unlike previous changes to Google’s advertising plans, this hasn’t been met with a great deal of opposition from web publishers as it generated very little income for anyone.

But if you were using referrals ads to get your readers to sign up for things like Google software bundles or AdWords then you’ll soon have a bit of space freed up on your site and may be looking for alternative options to just adding another block of AdSense ads.

My Alternatives To AdSense Referrals

There are hundreds, if not thousands of different affiliate schemes out there and which one you choose will be dependent on the type of site that you run. I have a few monetised sites (oooh, don’t ya just hate that word) on the web and here are two advertising schemes that I use that have shown positive results so far.

The first is Widget Bucks. I’ve written about them in the past and if you are running a product based web site or technology focused site that has a lot of traffic from North America then this one is certainly worth a try. They produce very eye catching widgets that are simple to place on your web site and can be formatted to a whole range of sizes. The reason that I mention North American traffic is because their current payment model is pay per click for ads displayed to visitors in North American and per thousand impressions for visitors outside of the USA and Canada. [UPDATE, pay per click now extended to Europe]

Widget Bucks is starting to prove itself by making a small a daily income for me, but not not in the way I first expected. The bulk of my income from them has actually been created as trickle down referral income from ads placed on other people sites. When you display ads on your site, there is a small tag-line which promotes the service and anyone who signs up via this link then becomes one of your referred customers and you receive 5% of what they earn for 12 months. The 5% comes from Widget Bucks not from the person placing ads on their site so their income is not reduced.

You have two options for placing ads. You can either select a category of ads such as laptops, cameras, GPS accessories etc or just go down the contextual route and let Widget Bucks figure out what ads to place based upon your content.

WOOthemes WordPress Theme Club

The second suggestion is a new site called WOOthemes which is backed by some very well know designers and I’ve included it in this post because although it is very new, it has shown very good click through rates so far and it looks very promising.

WOO is run a WordPress theme club, offering access to a selection of really top notch WordPress themes for between $150 and $375 dollars depending on the length of your subscription. When you sign up to the club, you receive all of the current themes and they guarantee at least one new theme every month.

The themes come with good documentation and they are created by well know designers who have good reputations to maintain so the standard of the themes should remain consistently high.

Affiliates receive 20% of any new sign-ups, but the real strength of the scheme is in the opportunity to earn continuing fees from people that renew their subscriptions.

So if you have been using AdSense’s referral products there are plenty of good alternatives out there and you may as well start replacing your referrals codes before they are retired in a few weeks.

Finally, if you have been using AdSense referrals and the data is important to you then make sure you download the report information after you replace your ads as the referrals potion of AdSense reporting will no longer be available from October.

Filed under: How To Manage A Website, Online Advertising, Promoting Your Website and Organisation, Reviews, WidgetBucks , adsense, advertising, referrals, themes, WidgetBucks, woo, wordpress

WidgetBucks To End $25 Sign Up Bonus

Less than a week to go!

As of January 15th 08, WidgetBucks will no longer be providing a $25 sign up bonus to new subscribers. So if you’ve been considering signing up but haven’t down so yet, now is the time.

You can read a review of WidgetBucks here.

Filed under: Online Advertising, WidgetBucks , affiliate scheme, affiliates, make money, make money online, web advertising, website advertising, WidgetBucks, widgets

Widget Bucks International Advertising Now Provides CPM Ads

If you’ve been thinking about using WidgetBucks on your web site but were put off by the fact that click throughs were only paid for if the web site visitor was in the USA or Canada, then that problem has now been solved. They’re still offering a $25 sign up bonus as well so you only need to earn another $25 to get your first pay out (Sign up bonus available until January 15th 08).

The widget detects if you visitor is outside the USA or Canada and if they are, will display an advert for which you are paid per 1000 impressions. Traffic from the UK, Australia, Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Brazil, India, and Japan pays better than most other non North American countries at the moment because Widget Bucks have good advertiser relationships in there countries and can provide more targeted and therefore better paying ads.

Now You Earn Money No Matter Who Visits Your Site

Put simply, you’ll now be paid for ads, no matter where your traffic comes from.

The adverts are easy to implement and come in a variety of size formats including traditional banners, skycrapers, small boxes and the the full featured product comparison widget like the one pictured below.

The really great thing about Widget Bucks is the flexibility of the formats and the fact that you can set up ads to display specific product categories such as the latest laptop or iPods or just leave it running on auto-pilot like Google adSense.

With all the last minute Christmas shopping going on at the moment this is the best time of year to place adverts on your site or blog and the eye-catching widgets certainly have a wide range of those Christmas presents to display.

As I’ve said before in previous posts about Widget Bucks, they really have made everything incredibly simple to set up and I think that early adopters will benefit from the innovation of this new scheme. You can try out Widget Bucks here.

Filed under: Online Advertising, WidgetBucks , advertising, affiliate, affiliate scheme, make money online, merchsense, mpire, WidgetBucks, widgets

Widget Bucks – Easy Web Site Advertising

If you’re looking for a simple, but impressive way to earn income from your web site or blog you should check out Widget Bucks here.

Widget Bucks began trading in October this year, and are backed by an established company, MPire.

The advertising widgets are attractive and you can customise the size and colour to fit your site. Unlike the plain text AdWords that people running AdSense have on their site Widget Bucks are much more engaging and show products and prices in rotation.

You can select your category of product e.g. mp3 players, laptops, pet products, books DVDs etc or like AdSense, have the adverts displayed automatically based on the content of your page. This automatic option is called MerchSense. I’ve opted for specific categories (digital camcorders, mp3 players and lap tops) on some of my web sites.

An example of the types of larger adverts is shown below.

Click Throughs vs CPM

At the moment you only receive money on click-throughs generated by visitors from North America. If a visitor to your site is from outside North America, you are paid for every 1000 appearances of the ads on your site. However, unless you run a very specialist web site or blog, it is likely that a lot of your web site traffic will be from the United States and Canada anyway so you still make money no matter where your visitors come from. (updated information is available here)

At the moment (until January 15th 08), they credit $25 to your account when you sign up and pay out when your account reaches $50 so you only have to make $25 to receive your first $50 cheque. It’s money for nothing really, and it shows they are serious about expanding their network.

You can also make additional money by referring people to the scheme. You will receive a referrers commission of 10% of what they earn in the their first year. You can either refer via text links such as the one below or there is a sign up link on each of your ad widgets which contains your referrer information.

They really have made everything incredibly simple to set up and I think that early adopters will benefit from the innovation of this new scheme. You can try out Widget Bucks here.

Filed under: How To Manage A Website, Online Advertising, WidgetBucks , adsense, widget bucks, widgets, advertising, monetization, adwords, merchsense, mpire, make money online, ppc, pay per click, WidgetBucks