Money-Code » widgetbucks

Spring is here

admin — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 03:47:09 +0000

I’ve gotten a few IMs and emails asking about what has been going on. Sorry about not posting. I have been extremely busy, with both work and affiliate marketing. I hate that feeling when “work” gets in the way of my affiliate marketing plans. I have been on track for launching four sites per month. My quota has been met, and earnings are reflecting this effort. March is looking to be a record breaking month for me!

I’ve learned a few things this Spring. WidgetBucks and Zlio have severely disappointed me in 2008. WidgetBucks most of all, it was so promising, but now conversions are horrible, I have to suspect tracking or internel problem. Zlio looks great, works great, but I’m getting zilch for conversions. I do have to say that I’m not promoting it nearly as much as I should, but I feel like other programs (my own) would be much more profitable. I also gave Amazon another try (this is like the third try), and I have to say I HATE Amazon’s associate program. I get the clicks but no sales. The one day cookie is a nightmare. I think I’ll try introducing it again during x-mas 2008, but I feel like it throws away clicks.

Things that have been working for me… well eBay is still the ultimate winner. I launched a PopShop in February, and I started a small PPC campaign for March to see if I can get some conversions to that shop. I haven’t received anything yet, but the month is still young. I’m torn with PopShops. Currently, I’m using the Pro account ($5/month), but I really need to go Enterprise ($30/month) to take advantage of splitting PIDs across sites, etc. As I type this, I feel like it might be better to focus on making my own storefronts, since I have access to the CJ datafeeds. It just comes down to time.

I’ve been working with a geoIP handling for eBay storefronts which will send users based off of their IPs to their corresponding eBay location (ie: Canadians go to ebay.ca). I’m still in initial test phase, but will be sure to show source code on how I did this. Unfortunately, you need to install PHP shared object (PECL) package to the server, so shared hosting clients might be out of luck, but if you’re owning a dedicated server, you’re set!

I also recently created a Twitter account. If you want, “follow me” by going here: http://twitter.com//hanjicode

WidgetBucks Referrals are nice

admin — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 21:44:37 +0000

So logged into my WidgetBucks control panel today (it’s been a while), and I was super pleased to see that I’m starting to get referral revenue now! Currently they’re offering a 10 percent referral fee based on commissions eared by the people that they refer. This goes on for 12 months.

I’m still seeing some good payouts with WidgetBucks, but definitely seems to have dropped a bit. Almost everything has dipped a bit since Halloween. I’m sure things will start picking up after Thanksgiving as we move into the crazy shopping period for Christmas.

Give WidgetBucks a try!

WidgetBucks and Google

admin — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 23:35:29 +0000

Okay.. unless you live in a hole in the blogosphere, you’ve probably read a few hot topics related with the two. First off, looks like WidgetBucks got Google slapped, and are currently blacklisted from the index. There are various theories from their Flash banner to their non-Flash content to their TOC. Either way, it’s sent up some red flags that are rippling around the internet.

Does this mean that our publishing web sites are potentially exposed to issues? Should I continue to use WidgetBucks, etc? I just received an email about new code for WidgetBucks that were used to help page load of the ‘ad’, but I wasn’t really able to see an improvement, but makes me wonder if it’s because of the bad press, that they’re trying to get pro-active.

Personally, I want to ride this out for a bit, and give this experiment a fair shake. The bottom line is that they seem to be performing better on my poor-Adsense sites. For sites where AdSense peforms well… I will NOT put WidgetBucks up.

The next topic is that Google released their updated page rank. Many bloggers are complaining of a drop in ranking (possibly related to WidgetBucks, selling text-links, who knows). The theories are spreading fast, but no real solid information is out there. As for me, this blog is PR0 and I was pleased to see that it didn’t drop any further. Seriously, all my ranking sites seem to have held steady. No increases, but no decreases.

Want to know what your PR (page rank) is? Download the SearchStatus plugin for FireFox. Or you can use the page rank script.

UPDATE

Wow.. just noticed that Money-Code.com is up to PR2. That’s pretty quick for a month old blog, sounds like good timing of the launch. Now to get below 1,000,000 in Alexa!

WidgetBucks (my thoughts)

admin — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 06:39:14 +0000

Interesting that today I was going to say I’m very pleased with my WidgetBuck tests, but over at Shoemoney, Jeremy gives it a thumbs down. There seems to be some bias to his report (possibly related to his past dealings with AuctionAds and WidgetBucks). You can read about it here.

Here is what I know. I’m a blogger and I use WidgetBucks. I added it to two sites that were poor performers with AdSense. Over the years, I’ve worked with blending, not-blending, white backgrounds, color backgrounds and various ad format, but my CTR was extremely poor with AdSense. I thought this would be a good test for WidgetBucks. Immediately, I was receving some good clicks that showed promise. I’m still not making a ton off of these sites, but already, I’ve exceeded my poor AdSense numbers.

I have to disagree with the ‘10 second load’, my ads were showing up in 5 seconds. Granted, this is still a lag, but the quality of the ads almost justify the load time. Again, I have to say they’re much better than ShopperAds out there currently. My biggest complaint with WidgetBucks is the category selection. There needs to be more. My niches are pretty obscure, so it’s hard to find a good home for these ads. I think I’ll continue to test for a bit, before giving it a full thumbs up or thumbs down, but so far, I’m pleased with what I’m seeing.

WidgetBucks

admin — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 03:56:20 +0000

WidgetBucks – Trend Watch – WidgetBucks.com

So cruising over to John Chow’s blog, he mentioned WidgetBucks. I’m always looking for other ways to monetize my various sites in a way that’s somewhat unique to stand out of the crowd since banner blindness is an issue. I checked out WidgetCode, and was impressed with their banner technique using Flash.

Sign up for WidgetBucks now and they will deposit $25 into your account. Now all you have to do is earn another $25 and you�ll meet the $50 payout! I really like their selection, and I’m sure it will increase to grow and grow. Might be worth experimenting with this. I’ll add it to a few sites and report my findings.