Update: This post is already dated, and only 9 hours later ;-) The section about their affiliate program was an honest first impression. They have since updated their program to something much more enticing.

WidgetBucks is the newest ad-network / widget to put on your site and make money from it. I spend some time playing with the new widget this evening so I thought I’d offer you an introduction.

The widget looks something like this and does it’s best to match the content of your site to the ads they show:

Sign Up For Widget Bucks

To get started with WidgetBucks the first thing you will need to do is sign up. WidgetBucks is currently offering you $25 free to sign up with them, payable when you reach your first payout of $50. In their words:

We’re offering a $25 bonus to bloggers just for signing up. Once you earn $50 in your WidgetBucks account, BOOM!, the $25 bonus kicks in. It doesn’t get much better than that.

They also pay you $5 every time somebody you refer earns their first check. Click Here To Sign Up.

Create A New Widget

Once you are inside of WidgetBucks click on the “New Widget” tab and you will see a cool wizard to make your widget that looks like this.

Simply enter the few details they ask for and they give you some code to place in your template. You are now showing the WidgetBucks widget in your site and when people click it you get paid.

Check Your Stats

Once you’ve installed your WidgetBucks widget it’s time to see who is doing what to your ads. The ad stats seem to be lagging real time by about one hour. You will find the stats under the “My Widgets” tab and they will look like this:

Refer Your Friends - The Affiliate Program

In one word, the WidgetBucks affiliate program is: LAME!

So lame that NOT A SINGLE WidgetBucks link in this post is an affiliate link.

You get a whopping $5 for referring somebody only IF they actually earn a check.

Mr. Kukral is playing buzzmeister for the WidgetBucks launch (that’s who told me about it) so I’m sure you’ll be hearing about it quite more than this post, however I wonder if having such a lame affiliate program won’t slow it down?

Let’s compare the affiliate program of WidgetBucks to the referral program of Chitika (who I consider one of their competitors)

WidgetBucks You get only $5 only if someone you refer gets their first paycheck. And that’s all.

Chitika “You’ll earn 10% of what your referrals earn” and here is the real kicker: “You’re eligible to earn commissions for each referral for 15 months following each referral’s approval date”. Now THAT is an affiliate program.

And yes, those Chitika links are affiliate links ;-)

Did I mention the WidgetBucks affiliate program was lame? lol. But they do make it real easy to get those banners to maybe make that $5:

Confused About Amazon And Ebay Affiliates With Widget Bucks

So I saw this image that says you keep 100% of the revenue if you are an amazon associates or ebay affiliate, but I couldn’t find anywhere in the control panel how to take advantage of this? Let us know the details if you know them.

Relevancy Of The Ads

After putting the WidgetBucks on one site I think they do a decent job of matching their ads to your content if you choose the contextual option.

They aren’t perfect, and niche or themed sites would probably do better, however I thought they were comparable to adsense in how often they made a good match vs. showing default or generic ads.

This is a good thing which will hopefully keep users interested and clicking.

In conclusion

WidgetBucks is a new widget to add to your blog that might make you some money. I write about it here because I’m actually trying it on some of my web pages.

If you’ve got a product oriented site I would give WidgetBucks a spin and see how they perform vs. some of the other ad blocks you are currently using.

However I would not join/promote WidgetBucks because of their affiliate program.