Sometimes I think us bloggers are like a load of lemmings diving into the latest, 'greatest' money making program. Wonder why this is? Afraid of missing out? Want to be seen as someone in the know? Must get in at the beginning?What we should be doing, of course, is sizing up opportunities properly, doing our homework and only joining things which are compatible with our blog.
Take WidgetBucks, okay and other similar programs. The truth is they don't really work on most average blogs do they?
Product orientated, money making programs only work where the blogs have defined niches, which are related to the products - horses for courses so to speak.
WidgetBucks has good points: the advert widget now loads pretty quick, there is a $25 bonus for signing up and everything looks very professional but ... and there is often a but in life!
And my but is that the click-rate, for the blogs that I have tested it on, is dreadful. I've tried out four different widgets and the best click-rate I have been able to achieve is a measly 0.14%.
My test has been a reasonable size of about 28,000 page impressions and for this I have now earned the grand total of $5.47.
As I have already indicated, these type of programs only work to a worthwhile degree if the adverts are relevant to the blog's subject matter.
If, for example, you have a photography blog and put camera ads in your WidgetBucks widget then great, this will no doubt get some decent clicks and earn some decent revenue.
With a blog such as this one, however, it's difficult to get ads that are actually relevant to the posts. The best response I've had is with digital cameras - that's where I managed the 0.14% click-rate.
It could be argued that I haven't given the widgets a premier position. Perhaps true, but I'm not going to give them my AdSense spots as I know that I'll get a good (proven) response from these - primarily because the Google ads shown will be about money making and are therefore more likely to be of interest to readers.
By what I have written I'm not saying there is anything wrong with WidgetBucks, it's simply that I expect most general blogs will get a poor response.
I'm going to keep the ads running, after all, with the $25 sign-on bonus I only need to earn $25 to receive $50. Once I've achieved that then ... well who knows. There might be something better that we are all stampeding to get in on.
The thing is though: If something is really good, and makes money, there's no rush.
Good luck,
Mike.
