Get WidgetBucks for More Money

Leave it to monetization master John Chow to discover and unveil yet another great new way to make money online, known as WidgetBucks. After reading Mr. Chow's post, Monetizer decided to head over and sign up for an account just for kicks. Mainly because it looks like it could be something to replace either Auction Ads or Adsense with. However, it probably would not trump Adsense earnings in any sense, unless your site is really about promoting certain products (mp3 players or music, books, dvds, family products, sports items etc).

The way WidgetBucks works is by placing a graphics style banner on your site (various sizes) and then you receive money based on clicks (not sales). Very similar to Adsense. It's yet to be determined if this program is ok to run on your site with Adsense ads, as Google can be quite picky! The minimum payout for WidgetBucks is $50, similar to Auction Ads. Also similar to Auction Ads, they are giving you an automatic $25 in your account to start things off. Payments are done at the end of each month either by a check sent or PayPal deposit.

WidgetBucks gives you about 12 categories to choose ads from (examples: media, family, sports, video games and cars), as well as sub-categories in each of those (media: dvd, cds, books). If your blog is about Making Money or Financial topics, the product choices seem to be non-existant. However, WidgetBucks also offers you an option you can select known as "MerchSense" where it will "crawl" your blog or site and match relevant ads to your content. That could be interesting to see :)

There are currently 5 sizes of ads to choose from for your Widgets:

Skyscraper 160x600
Rectangle 300x250
Leaderboard 728x90
Full Banner 468x60
Custom 660x330

There's also multiple color schemes to choose from, however white seems to be the base color in each of them (the color you choose forms borders and part of the ad, with the background white). Here's an example of the 300x250 rectangle WidgetBucks in basic blue:



If you've been banned from Adsense or not happy with the performance of Auction Ads on your site, WidgetBucks might make for a good alternative money source for your blog or site. It's worth being a member and at least experimenting. Perhaps this might be your brand new meal ticket :)

To get started, head over and signup:
Earn $$$ with WidgetBucks!

Update: According to the WidgetBucks FAQ, you can run WidgetBucks along with Google Adsense on a site.