Comments on: WidgetBucks to Stop Monetizing Non North American Traffic – Interview with Matt Hulett from WidgetBucks

By: Abraham

Abraham — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 12:43:32 +0000

This is too sad to read the above experiences. I will surely remove Widgetbucks from my websites.

By: Kris

Kris — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 19:59:45 +0000

That’s really sad Publisher.
Even I noticed something wrong going on in widgetbucks. They say that only usa and canada traffic can see widgets and rest will see cpm ads. But I’m living in India and I have seen more than a dozen websites with widgets. What’s the deal man?

By: Publisher

Publisher — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 20:26:17 +0000

My Experience with WIDGETBUCKS
I WILL TRY TO POST THIS ON THEIR BLOG- I AM SURE THEY WILL NEVER APPROVE AND POST IT.
ADS SUCKS but Widget bucks Not —— This is there slogan…….. But to the contrary, Not only there ads but THEY SUCK……………
Now my experience…..
1. I joined there publisher network in the beginning of Dec 2007. During the month of Dec 2007, I managed to get 1 referral and earned around $200 by running their ads on my websites.
2. As they say……that actual bucks (AFTER CHECK FOR CLICK FRAUD ETC) will be posted under MY BUCKS within first 10 day of next month (e.g. FINAL Dec earnings will be posted by 10th of Jan) they posted my earnings as $200.00 + earning from referral (They didn’t deduct a cent from the listed earning i had in MY WIDGET page of the statistics)
3. I earned around $ 150 + earning from referral during the month of Jan 2008.
4. On Jan 30th I received a message from WIDGETBUCKS TEAM stating that I should respond to the message in 48 hours else- My account will be suspended.
REASON GIVEN – MY WEBSITES CONTAIN AN ADULT CONTENT.
Please feel free to checkout my sites and see for yourself if there is any ADULT CONTENT. My Websites where widget bucks code is placed: –
LenovoRu
WebHv
DebugRu
HowItWorkz
5. I responded to there message via email as well as there support site http://support.mpire.com stating that this is untrue and they should recheck the website and there records.
6. Now I got a response back stating MY WEBSITES ARE NON-ENGLISH websites and they mistakenly said it contains an ADULT CONTENT.
Again I replied telling them all my websites are in English, they are free to checkout by themselves if they are NON-ENGLISH or ENGLISH
7. I responded to the message stating my websites are in ENGLISH and I SIGNED up as publisher only in DEC 2007, IF MY websites are NON-ENGLISH I would have not been approved as a PUBLISHER as per WIDGETBUCKS site requirement.
8. Got reply this time – that MY account has been suspended because of CLICK FRAUD (see this is 3rd statement for one issue).
This time the Widget bucks team member re-activated my account and I was back up on Feb 4, 2008.
9. I read on there blog that all of the publisher are paid for the month of Dec 2007 by Feb 5th 2008, whereas I was not paid.
10. I opened a ticket regarding the payment for the month of Dec 2007, and guess what…………
11. The response I got — “Your account was suspended again for click-fraud. We aim to build a healthy network and seek publishers who generate natural traffic and clicks.”
AND HE SUSPENDED MY ACCOUNT AGAIN.

POINT TO NOTE HERE IS – ONE OF THEIR TEAM MEMBER HAD ACTIVATED MY ACCOUNT 2 DAYS AGO BECAUSE THEY KNEW THEY WERE AT FAULT. NOW WHEN I ASKED FOR PAYMENT THEY DEACTIVATED MY ACCOUNT AGAIN.
12. WHEN I responded back ….I get this message —
”This suspension was for the previous clicks, December – January. You are welcome to apply again for the program but this account will remain suspended.”
Point to note here is – As I mention above they NOTICE the CLICK FRAUD when I ASKED for the PAYMENT and not the TIME when they POSTED MY ACTUAL EARNINGS.
My Dear PUBLISHERS please let me know what does this entire STORY MEANS to YOU.
I am posting this on all the blogs so that my publisher friends gets a heads up that what all WIDGET BUCKS CAN do with anyone. THEY CAN SUSPEND YOUR ACCOUNT EVEN WHEN THEY HAVE NO REASON AND EAT YOUR ENTIRE EARNINGS.
At the END I would just wish you all LUCK and Widget bucks also ALL THE BEST as they enjoy my EARNINGS.
Thanks for your patience to read this on blog.
-Publisher-

By: m07

m07 — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 17:41:16 +0000

very nice post once again.you blog is really the best.

By: WidgetBucks

WidgetBucks — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 13:39:42 +0000

Personally, I like it as my number 1 pay per click income.

By: Robin

Robin — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 14:20:06 +0000

It’s needn’t doubt. I’m sure Widgetbucks have problem. Their ad reports delay four times, and every time cost almost one week. This time delay have cost half of month. And the “CPM” ads servered to out side of US, CA, just only a CJ affiliate programs. Also, their code buried a link back to their site, but new code moved it. I cann’t say they are scam directly, but they have some scam features from start until now. Their one click is high (about $0.58), but i’m sure they have counted several clicks as one click revenue. If you are new want to do it, you can find a lot of badly comments on their blog, you needn’t find the review on other blog. Not a trustable ad network, and not recommend this ad for my opinion.

By: markowe

markowe — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 07:48:04 +0000

I still do not think the word “scam” is appropriate for WidgetBucks – this would imply some kind of purposeful attempt to deceive their entire user base, which I seriously doubt. I would say rather that they may not have done their planning as well as they might and have been forced to make some rather sloppy policy changes in mid-launch which does reflect badly on them, but doesn’t make them con artists.

For me, I only left Widgetbucks on a small-traffic blog (though one with at least 50% US traffic) to see how things would progress and a really scary thing is that since they changed their policy a few weeks ago, I HAVE NOT EARNED ONE CENT FROM THE SCHEME – not one click, not one action! Whereas my click-through was almost 3% before (better than Adsense). Now that IS weird, but if they are trying to “scam” anyone, they are going a strange way about it because I will soon remove the widget if things don’t change…

By: Demetra

Demetra — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 22:30:35 +0000

In my perspective WidgetBucks is a scam
At least for some non-US based sites this seams to be the truth. Half words, sudden policy changes, omissions and silence and promises not fulfilled combined with arbitrary account suspensions when they were on the verge to reach the minimum amount that would lead to a payout, all this is happening and all this I can testify in first hand.
A fluke (filled with bugs and inconsistencies) and a scam.
I received ads from widgetbucks in Portuguese (!) (qith spelling mistakes) on my site! And they forbid non-english blogs right!?
Google Adsense can be at ease for the time being.

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 06:33:59 +0000

WidgetBucks are just using third party ad services to make money for the non-us publishers. Hover over their ads try joining with the ad company direct and see if you make more money.

By: Ron

Ron — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 16:02:31 +0000

Great informative post. I was looking into WidgetBucks when I saw this post linked on google. I’m glad I stopped by here first.

I hope you will keep us further informed with it’s performance.

Thanks,
Ron

By: gomdori

gomdori — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 02:53:54 +0000

widgetBucks suck too.
phaaaa~~~~~

By: Dave Starr --- ROI Guy

Dave Starr --- ROI Guy — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 00:35:47 +0000

A few of the commenter’s get the pint that the langaye and location of the country don’t make much difference in their viability as customers. Others seem to think that someone has to meet some standard of fluency in English to buy things … perhaps but the standard is significantly lower than you might think.

As for shipping … I’ve live doutside teh US for years and shipped and received all sorts of things all overe the world .. it just is not that difficult … this idea of shipping being such a problem has me on a rant, see: http://retiredpay.com/income/the-world-is-not-flat/
if you are ignoring business because of borders.

By: David Mackey

David Mackey — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 22:40:24 +0000

Ouch. Seems like they should have included at least a few more countries in that list – e.g. English speaking countries which don’t have the language barrier factor, just the shipping.

By: nadzal

nadzal — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 03:49:06 +0000

By the way. we need to see if WB will paying us or not in December. So, lets see..

By: Woobie

Woobie — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 20:23:25 +0000

Widgetbucks got what they needed, publicity and buzz. Now it’s time for them to do business. Their sign up bonus and referral programs are attractive and the early birds really got the cream of that. But that referral campaign got them the thing they want: a buzzy name in the biz.

By: markowe

markowe — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 19:14:39 +0000

Luis, there are probably a number of good reasons why Google doesn’t use PayPal, but I am sure a good one is that Google does not want to share a slice of the MASSIVE Adwords pie with anyone, especially not PayPal, who are a competitor of sorts, not only because of eBay (to which PayPal belongs), but also probably because Google will want to get into online payment systems sometime in the future (Google Checkout seems like a first step).

Obviously there is no reason for Google to hand millions in commissions over to a huge potential or actual competitor!

By: Arham

Arham — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 18:43:11 +0000

Thanks darren, it’s so usefull interview article.

This is disappointing news. But we need to optimistic. beside of we’ll that WB is scamm or Not ?
the biggest disappointing news is so many people got suspended without explanation..

By: Luis M

Luis M — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 16:00:45 +0000

It’s not exact to say that this is restricted to North American traffic, since Mexico is a Northamerican country (geographically and economically) and it is not included in WB plans. They should note that mexicans buy a lot of goods from the US and Canada.

I’m against this measure.

By: Luis M

Luis M — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 15:58:20 +0000

I wonder why do Google, WB and others send checks instead of doing an electronic transfer? What about Paypal? What could be their reasons?

By: syaifudin zuhri

syaifudin zuhri — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 11:55:45 +0000

I really understand about this situation, Thanks for this one darren