« Previous post
Next post »

October 2, 2007

A Widget That Actually Makes Money

Erick Schonfeld

46 comments »

picture-167.pngThe only proven way to make money off of widgets is by turning them into ads. There’s Google’s Gadget Ads (AdSense in a widget, basically), AuctionAds (one of our sponsors), boobox, and even ThisNext (which just hired IAC exec Scott Murrow as president, BTW). Now Seattle-based Mpire has launched a widget ad network called WidgetBucks (or, rather, relaunched an earlier program).

Bloggers can customize what kinds of consumer items they want to appear in the widget (books, movies, computers, musical instruments), then they grab some code and put it on their blog. Or they can let Mpire serve up contextually relevant ads based on the topics they write about. WidgetBucks scans your site and tries to match ads to the keywords it finds. The widgets tap into merchandise from 30,000 retailers, including Amazon, Shopping.com, Target, Best Buy, Wal-Mart, and the Gap. WidgetBucks shares the cost-per-click revenue with bloggers, promising the equivalent of $3 to $6 CPMs (cost-per-thousand views). Mpire is also working with RockYou to create a Facebook app. Yeah, schlocking your Facebook page is going to make you real popular.

Here is what one of the widget ads look like:

picture-168.png

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 2nd, 2007 at 9:57 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Trackbacks/Pings (Trackback URL)

  1. WidgetBucks A TechCrunch story–Widgets Lab

    October 2nd, 2007 at 10:46 am

  2. A Widget That Actually Makes Money  »TechAddress

    October 2nd, 2007 at 11:30 am

  3. CenterNetworks

    October 2nd, 2007 at 11:51 am

  4. SplashCast: Channel Yourself Across the Web

    October 2nd, 2007 at 12:08 pm

  5. Ellipsis Aeon

    October 5th, 2007 at 9:41 am

  6. ScottPot.. The Blog of Scott Schroeder

    October 7th, 2007 at 8:57 pm

  7. Money Prodigy - 17-Year-Old's Guide to Making Thousands Each Month

    November 12th, 2007 at 8:42 pm

  8. SheryTiger.Com

    December 15th, 2007 at 6:14 am

  9. www.ubraniaroxy.pl » Blog Archive » Not A Misprint: AOL’s Platform A Is The Top Advertising Network By Reach

    April 15th, 2008 at 1:05 am

  10. WidgetBucks Announces Deals with BlueLithium and Marchex

    May 5th, 2008 at 6:47 pm

Comments

RSS feed for comments on this post.

  1. Derek Anderson

    October 2nd, 2007 at 10:28 am

    Seems widget reporting is becoming very popular. I’ve been reporting on widgets for over a year and I bet this post gets more traffic than any I have written.
    Except maybe

    http://www.widgetslab.com/the-money-widget-list/

  2. Derek

    October 2nd, 2007 at 10:29 am

    I can barely read this post with all the ads cluttering up the page……who the hell wants it!!

  3. Scott Isaacs

    October 2nd, 2007 at 10:47 am

    I signed up to see more about it, but noticed that on the page that asks for my SSN/EIN and address (for sending payments) there is no SSL security.

    Hopefully an oversight?

  4. Alex Williams

    October 2nd, 2007 at 10:55 am

    These are the types of widgets that will factor in how the social media world functions. They provide bloggers a way to write for an audience in a manner that correlates to the advertising on the blog page. Additionally, these are the types of widgets that will make it far easier for a succesful blogger to realistically make a living. As more money flows to bloggers, it will be the balance between editorial integrity and commercial influences that will pose the most significant ethical questions and be important factors in the evolving social media marketplace.

  5. Mark

    October 2nd, 2007 at 11:07 am

    So is this truly a CPC program? Seems like it would be CPA, veiled as eCPC.

    I have a hard time believing the $3-6 eCPM for the average site. And the few niches that could make that, could make much more through manual CPA offers.

  6. mint question

    October 2nd, 2007 at 11:14 am

    OT but is there any site like mint.com that let’s you add in other sources of debt (ex. student loan, mortgage, etc.)?

  7. Matt

    October 2nd, 2007 at 11:51 am

    On Widgetbucks’ site is says “Yes, WidgetBucks is compatible with all other ad systems.”

    However is running widgetbucks widgets WITH google adsense something against google adsense’s policies?

  8. Jon Kelly

    October 2nd, 2007 at 11:53 am

    We’ve been monetizing sites with our financial services widget code for over 2 1/2 years, and I can tell you that the monetization is definitely there. The key is making it a win for consumers, publishers and advertisers. The only way to do that is to get the targeting right (algorithms are the wrong approach) and to make it truly useful for consumers.

  9. Money

    October 2nd, 2007 at 12:01 pm

    Damn….

    Bourne Supremacy DVD does not cost $22. It should cost $ 8.44. Today’s, DVD’s should cost $ 8.44, not $14 - $22.

    With higher cost, It drive the economy slow: Can’t create jobs, losing jobs, losing workforce, Kid’s tuition is going be hard from them go to college, losing GDP, losing mortgage interest rates, and makes Gas prices go higher.

    I feel so bad. When people set the price too high… When you go to Best buy… You see less people less DVD movies.

  10. Sean Crotty

    October 2nd, 2007 at 12:11 pm

    Thanks to everyone for the feedback on WidgetBucks. Volume and users are taking off. Our tech team is pushing an update within 2 hours that will will make the sign-up page secure with SSL. Yes, WidgetBucks is a pure CPC program. (Mpire previously released CPA widgets (still working), but that is separate from WidgetBucks.) We’re happy to address any other questions. – Sean, VP Product Marketing, Mpire

  11. Massive industry complaint

    October 2nd, 2007 at 12:12 pm

    Why DVD standard price should cost $ 8.00?

    Because DVD today cost $ 00.1 to make. You can ask DVD manufacturers around the world… They have trillion blank DVD in their storage. It’s not moving anywhere. They need to get rid off it. There’s not space to put more HDDVD.

    DVD manufacturers complaint stores setting prices too high.

    I think they should blame wall street or store owners setting price too high.

  12. Alex Black

    October 2nd, 2007 at 12:18 pm

    Another widget that will actually make you money is Revver’s video widget, which lets you embed entire shows or collections of videos on your site. Videos in the widget are scrollable, and play in a lightbox that opens over your page.

    As with all Revver videos, in-stream ads appear in all the videos, and you can earn either as a creator of the videos or as an affiliate if you’re just sharing the videos (or both!). Several examples of the widget can be see on the Revver blog (http://blog.revver.com).

  13. SorenG

    October 2nd, 2007 at 12:20 pm

    I think there are others ways of making money off widgets, other than using them for ads. We are creating them as ways to uplift user-generated content of various kind. See http://www.askthenextpresident.com/ for an example. The cool thing about widgets is that they can move and be embedded around the web so freely. So I hope that ads are not the only way to make money via widgets.

  14. Steve Ballmer

    October 2nd, 2007 at 12:35 pm

    More ads from Gaggle! oh great!

  15. Matt Keegan

    October 2nd, 2007 at 1:46 pm

    Not a bad looking widget, but I wonder if “widget blindness” has settled in with our visitors? BTW, the widgets on this page are slowing down your site at least as viewed with my two year old laptop. Personally, I am finding so many sites overcrowded with widgets that content is getting pushed to the side.

  16. Michel (ShipPal)

    October 2nd, 2007 at 1:54 pm

    Just signed up and must say I am really impressed with their “MerchSense” (Mpire’s patent-pending contextual algorithm engine - got this info from their FAQ page).

    Easy site and code implementation - how it should be.

  17. SHIPPY

    October 2nd, 2007 at 2:02 pm

    I can see this working for specific situations - such as a blogger who focuses on covering a specific product/service and adds these widgets to sell said product/service. But for the general MySpace/Facebook user? Why would I initiate a purchase of some random item on some random friends page simply because the widget is there?

  18. Ivan Pope

    October 2nd, 2007 at 4:15 pm

    Erick,
    When you say “… Google’s Gadget Ads (AdSense in a widget, basically)”, surely you don’t mean this. If anything, it is precisely the other way round - a Widget in AdSense. A Gadget Ad is any Gadget created to somewhat more stringent guidelines that can then be pushed out via AdWords to sites that are running rich media AdSense already. Seeing as AdSense is effectively a widget in its own right, it wouldn’t make much sense to put a widget in a widget - a bit like your sentence!

  19. phenom

    October 2nd, 2007 at 5:58 pm

    I might wanna try that, if they don’t prompt for SSN.
    http://vidsonly.blogspot.com

  20. Mark

    October 2nd, 2007 at 6:04 pm

    Thanks Sean. I signed up… how long does it take for the stats to update?

  21. Jeffrey

    October 2nd, 2007 at 6:27 pm

    widgets are annoying…..next

  22. Jughead

    October 2nd, 2007 at 8:28 pm

    widgets rock…next

  23. not gonna be a big deal

    October 2nd, 2007 at 9:46 pm

    this stuff is too in your face, after earning 66 cents, most folks with shit their stores

  24. smith

    October 2nd, 2007 at 10:56 pm

    NOTE: Reporting statistics currently delayed. * Revenue is current through September 29, 2007
    ????

  25. Chris (citypixel.com)

    October 3rd, 2007 at 5:29 pm

    How does the popup function? I mean can you force it to launch on the right hand side of the page, or something?

    If you had the space reserved on your site, like this one, and the content was cross referencing info on the blog, but popping it up on the side and less ‘in your face’ it could be pretty easy to generate 1,000s of ‘views’.

    I guess that could be a sketchy way of making a buck…

  26. Eric

    October 5th, 2007 at 9:54 am

    This is another example that will work well for specific content, not at all for others and of course, abused by some. Obviously, you never want to sacrifice your site content, but that is becoming all to common. Whatever you use to monetize your website, try not to build a landscape ad streams.

  27. Lateefx

    October 7th, 2007 at 10:49 pm

    The items on these ads are SO OVERPRICED!

    A few examples for the MEDIA> MOVIES Widget

    Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man’s Chest DVD - $29.00
    Finding Nemo - $23.00
    Night at the Museum - $26.00

    Finding Nemo is Four Years Old! And it’s $13.00 Brand New at AMAZON.com

  28. Dean Jutilla

    October 9th, 2007 at 9:53 pm

    Here’s an official update on WidgetBucks reporting: Starting Wednesday, Oct. 10, WidgetBucks begins reporting real-time revenue-per-click (RPC) and revenue, along with existing impression and click-through data. This improves original reporting which left daily RPC and revenue fields blank until vendor auditing requirements were completed (48-72 hours).

    To check out the entire post on this, see our blog at http://widgetbucks.blogspot.com
    Thanks for the comments…keep’em comin’!

    Dean Jutilla
    WidgetBucks

  29. Clement

    October 10th, 2007 at 12:17 am

    This looks to be a good one. I am joining it right now :)

  30. GettyCash

    October 10th, 2007 at 11:20 pm

    I got average $0.28 per click thats better than I made off google adsense.

  31. sompong

    October 16th, 2007 at 4:14 am

    I just try put this widget today.Can anybody tell me about this ads payment.
    Thanks

  32. Chaos Inc.

    October 17th, 2007 at 7:11 am

    Widgetbucks is damn good indeed!

  33. AGLOCO WORLD NETWORK

    October 18th, 2007 at 5:22 am

    widgetbucks the best way to make money online for Publishers and Bloggers.
    I can get 0.15 - 0.48$ per cilck.
    Total I have 48.04$ ( since 12-18 october 2007 )

    Very happy. Good luck

  34. roughy

    October 21st, 2007 at 2:26 pm

    I like their ads but I am not sure yet that they are the best choice.

  35. sEOW

    October 27th, 2007 at 10:58 am

    I got it
    http://widgetbucksman.blogspot.com/

  36. seo tool for webmaser

    October 27th, 2007 at 6:09 pm

    Uhmm
    I have been with widgetbucks for two weeks.. with two acc
    the fist one is suspended. without.. any email notices ?? i have website that make 300,000+ pages hits /adays.. and my acc make about 75 referrers for them.. ( some from my friends have huge large site too ) .. in this way if that acc still work it can make 170$ /days and mininum 4000$ referers /month…
    i have send them email to ask but they said no thing but my site have click froud ???
    i’m mot crazy to click ads my selft.. right ? :(
    and if some visitor can click wrong way or click frauds .. their system must work out that or notice me to prevent this..
    i’m thinking of they do not want to pay me for 10% referrers and the money that i have earn..
    gave them one try, i have asked them to remove all revenue from the website i earned and only keep referrers then active my acc for me.. but they not going to.. how bad. scam?? :(

    i just make other acc to recreate referrers only, to have look what they can do if i have only referrers on acc… the bad things is they dont report who is referrers by me ?? . so we still dont know how to manage income ??
    okey let see.. i will tell you more when the fist payment paid..

« Previous post
Next post »