WidgetBucks - taking your traffic with a smile

Last week, WidgetBucks addressed the traffic quality issue on their site, claiming that on&after November 15th, all traffic clicks that are from countries outside of the US and Canada, will not be credited for money and instead redirected to their Mpire website. Instead of having an option in the WB control panel to not show ads to such visitors, and possible run a script to display another ad, you are stuck promoting Mpire's website for free. From what I can tell from their post, WidgetBucks' reasoning behind this is that they claim countries outside of the US/Canada...don't buy things? Sound's ridiculous doesn't it? Well, see for yourself if you don't believe me:

Starting tomorrow (Nov. 15), clicks coming from outside the U.S. and Canada on WidgetBucks widgets will no longer be charged to merchants, and therefore, no publisher credit will be given for those clicks. This will positively impact publisher RPC levels, and the change does not affect earnings from October (just posted) or the first half of November.

WidgetBuck$ blog post


When it comes down to it, I understand that they need to make sure their clicks need to convert to product sales for amazon and such companies, but making such forceful decisions is plain shady in my opinion. Nearly every time I check their blog there's a new rule that docks profit..so I wonder if they really still think they are actual competition for the mighty Adsense.
Shape up, Mpire.

Don't put all of your eggs in one basket.

There are a couple of major rules when it comes to internet advertising, and one of them is never put all of your eggs in one basket. What this means is not to become dependant on just one program, because as you may know, if that basket breaks... you go with it.

Recently i've seen many threads and blog postings claiming that WidgetBucks "scammed" them out of $yyy-y,yyy dollars, which only reassures my point that people are becoming too reliant in such programs. (said links are below, name is taken from the thread title)

WIDGETBUCKS IS F$CKING SCAMMERS! $1400 gone :(

WidgetBucks IS a SCAM - Stole my $320!

Lost $550 and 22 affiliate links!

Even with some programs that have been proven legitimate, with one jealous or angry webmaster, you could be clickbombed and have yourself removed (as well as your earnings) permanently from the website. If you run different programs, possibly through other CPC, CPM, or even affiliates, you ensure that your income won't divide by zero if something happens.

So my suggestion to anyone who currently has a good amount of money in their WidgetBucks account: STOP. Pull the ads from your site, and wait for December 15th to see if WidgetBucks is really going to pay out. If they do, then that's fantastic and I will encourage people to use it, however at the same time maintaining the ideals of this blog post.

Just because it looks good on paper, it means nothing if it isn't in your hand.

Reasonable WidgetBucks suspicions

Afternoon all, today I spent a bit of time researching and looking up WB information, and here's the list of what i've found to be suspicious of the program overall.

• Complete removal of people's earnings. - There have been many recent reports that all of a sudden WidgetBucks users (mostly ones earning a substantial amount of money) will find past days, or individual Widgets at 0 dollars. I am not speaking of the October earnings, which WB$ kindly fixed on the 11th, this is completely different. Hopefully it will be addressed, hopefully it's just another kink the admins need to work out.
  

• Earnings being reduced drastically even after turning black. - WidgetBuck's current system of determining CPC is giving a rough estimate based on the Widget niche first (red) and once they actually check the site it is being used on the price is modified, sometimes for good but most times reducing. This is reasonable though and honestly useful, it's good to see near-realtime results..accurate or not. Those complaining about such rates need to understand that they cannot pay a lot of money per Widget click to people who are promoting s*!^$ like diamonds & jewlery on an arcade website. All of this aside, the problem is that after the earnings are cleared (black), they are still being drastically reduced for some people without any messages or notice from WidgetBucks. So basically if you had 500 clicks at .35 cents and they changed your rate for that day to .10 cents, you'd be losing $125. It's a problem.
  

• Why does the WidgetBucks' blog have a referral link to their site? - On the WB$ blog, found at www.widgetbucks.blogspot.com there is a signup image link on the side. Which normally would be fine if you're promoting your own site, but it sends to a referral link. To me something like this sounds like you're taking money out of your left pocket just to put it back into your right. Doesn't make any sense.
  
  
• Banning users once they reach a high amount. - A couple of the bans with WidgetBucks have been because of a change in their policy forbidding any foreign sites that aren't in English. Reasonable, but the majority of bans have been because of "invalid clicks"...not the former. Invalid clicks is what they're putting out and suspending people for, but is that the real reason? I beg to differ - in my opinion the reason is that the user isn't getting enough turnaround and for WidgetBucks. WB$ basically runs through referrals, or at least their sponsors pay them for it. They pay you for clicks hoping that someone will go ahead and buy that product. I believe that if they notice you are making a lot of money but haven't produced any product sales for them, they'll ban you before you can dig deeper holes in their pocket. Of course this is simply speculation, but certainly plausible IMO.

• Customer support line - Have you ever tried to call the phone support for WidgetBucks? Don't bother. I have many times, and each time I get an automated unprofessional answering machine asking me for an extension, or to FWD it to an operator. Any company i've ever dealt with either has an original automated machine (helps with support, problems, etc) or just automatically sends to a available agent who can help. So each and every time it forwards to the operator, I get a guy's answering machine named "Peter" with some drone recording that has nothing to do with WidgetBucks at all, or Mpire for that matter. By the way, this is the company that claims to be backed with 10,000,000 dollars, and if that is the case you'd think they could get some damn support right? Wrong.

Oh, funny thing - yesterday the WB$ team posted on my blog saying that criticism of their program is unacceptable and that my account will be terminated ASAP. No word on that ban yet, but I await the corruption, my dear friends at Mpire!

WidgetBucks and Adsense - are they really all that different?

VS




Anyone who's seen the hype of WidgetBucks knows that they are advertising a relaxed, stylish, non-aggressive (and of course profitable!) alternative to AdSense. For those who do not know, AdSense is known for deleting and suspending accounts for ridiculous reasons - often when the user is approaching the payout ($100). With little to no effort, someone can clickbomb your website resulting in near immediate account closure.

So is WidgetBucks really all that different from the infamous AdSense? From what i've seen on forums and associated blogs, I believe it's fair to say that least a couple hundred users have already been banned, some losing hundreds of dollars. While it's certainly possible that some of those people may have clicked a couple of their own ads, such high numbers this early in the game worries me. Click the below image to see what many users have been waking up to see:


Many people have contested their bans by posting on the official WidgetBucks blog, however that usually resulted in a drone-type response, or the person's comment deleted. Controversy anyone?

Frequently Asked Questions

These questions are bound to be asked, so I will just knock them all out right here.

Q: Why is the blog called "WidgetSucks" if you aren't completely against WidgetBucks?

A: It's a play on words, it sounded catchy, and I thought it was clever. Nobody is really anti-WidgetBucks, as we are all hoping that it truly is a legitimate website, but skepticism is normal.


Q: Where do you get your information about WidgetBucks users?

A: All information is taken from forums like Digital Point

Q: What is WidgetBucks? (WB$)

A: WB$ is a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ad-program that is similar to many other widget or affiliate advertising programs. However what is different, is that is PPC and not dependant on sales through the click. WB$ promises higher payouts than Google's adsense, the current leader in PPC advertising.