WidgetBucks Update - My Thoughts

It has been just over a month since I put WidgetBucks on this site, so I thought I would do a followup post about my thoughts.

When WidgetBucks appeared on the scene, it was pretty comprehensively covered by a lot of the blogosphere. Not long after, a few people found out some little features (since rectified) that were not really expected. The main problem was that WidgetBucks code contained a link to widgetbucks.com; Hari has a good description here.

This little hidden link appears to have resulted in WidgetBucks getting slapped with a Google ban for a while.

So what does this all mean, well for one, at the least it makes them appear rather foolish, as the worst, it makes their intentions seem quite dubious. Either way, they seem to be out of favour with many people.

How does WidgetBucks perform as a means for monitizing a Website?

It should be noted that these kind of widgets work best on sites that are focussed on products themselves. I never expected the ad widget itself to perform overly well, but it is difficult to review it without actually giving it a fair go.

Since placing the widget on the site, I have had some very large amounts of traffic through the site, yet I haven’t had one single click on the ads since the first week of the ad widget going on the site. As I said, this type of ad widget works best on product/gadget sites, but I would expect to receive better results then this; perhaps the bad PR earned by the hidden links has had an effect on the overall acceptance. Needless to say, I have removed WidgetBucks from this site.

On a side note, I notice that one of the ‘A’ list bloggers has a similar post and then plugs a rival product, without mentioning his involvement in the service. This is exactly the type of practice I was referring to in my post “Would you Buy A Used Car From An A-list Blogger?“.