Wednesday, November 14, 2007

WidgetBucks Addressing Network Quality and RPC

Maintaining network quality is our main goal at WidgetBucks, and from this comes competitive RPC (revenue-per-click), profitable publishers and satisfied merchants. However, we are currently experiencing an imbalance in our network stemming from an inordinate and unanticipated amount of accounts that violate our Terms of Use, as well as international traffic that is not converting to sale.

We continue to suspend many violating accounts, and naturally, many of those suspended publishers feel wronged, angered and frustrated. Along with our automated click fraud alert system, our account review team is dedicating significant time and energy to hand-reviewing these sites where WidgetBucks widgets are placed -- and taking swift action in removing these accounts from the network. If you have been suspended, we encourage you to refer to the subject line of the email you received for the reason behind your suspension, and read our Terms of Use (or have it translated for clarity).

The other key factor is non-converting clicks (to sale) by users geographically outside the U.S. and Canada. In essence, it is these non-converting clicks that are bringing down publishers' RPCs across the board. Many publishers on blogs and comment boards have raised this issue -- and we've definitely heard you.

We are now taking two steps to help rectify the situation, which we anticipate will help recover RPC levels over the next 7 to 10 days:

  • Starting tomorrow (Nov. 15), clicks coming from outside the U.S. and Canada on WidgetBucks widgets will no longer be charged to merchants, and therefore, no publisher credit will be given for those clicks. This will positively impact publisher RPC levels, and the change does not affect earnings from October (just posted) or the first half of November.

    International site visitors will be redirected to mpire.com -- the online meta-shopping service and company that is behind WidgetBucks. By taking these visitors to Mpire -- which was among TIME magazine's 50 Best Sites for 2007 -- they will be able to access all the major shopping marketplaces, such as eBay, Amazon, Shopping.com, Wal-Mart, Target and thousands more.

    And to clarify, Mpire/WidgetBucks does not get credit for this traffic either -- undoubtedly skeptics will incorrectly assume this. We will definitely evaluate re-adding certain countries over time and evaluate their conversions -- but for the next few weeks, it's critical that we are diligent about click traffic in order to recover RPC numbers.

    If you are a publisher with a lot of non-US traffic, we suggest using a geo-based ad placement service to determine when to display a WidgetBucks ad widget versus an internationally applicable ad. Some examples include MaxMind, IP2Location, etc, and there are solutions available for OpenAds that do this as well.
  • Second, early next week, WidgetBucks will become a "gated" ad network that will require approval to join. For current publishers, this does not change much for you. You are "grandfathered" into the network; however, we will continue to review sites for Terms violations. By raising the bar of entry, we anticipate this will help eliminate a number of issues we're facing.
As a young ad network -- and one that is growing daily -- we may have underestimated the impact these factors would have on and across the network. We are now taking short-term measures to ensure long-term success. We appreciate your patience as we address these issues, and look forward to your feedback as we continue to refine and improve the service.

- Dean

111 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello Dean,

You only forgot to mention what will happen to all international publishers? Are we all banned? When I visit "My Settings" page, there are still only US and Canada in country drop-down menu. Please clarify.

Thanks,
Ilir

Pinterest Enthusiast said...

yes i think that is the main question what is going to happen to us?

kukote said...

i think, we're not banned. that's why they give the IP2Location options. 40% of my visitors came from the US, so, i might still earn, but unfortunately, the earnings will surely drop.

Daniel Larsson said...

I think its good to have less paid but better paid clicks.

I also think that WidgetBucks are working on including more countries i n their RPC-pool.

Hoping that the U.K will be added soon though!

Sikora said...

I've traffic coming from the whole world, I think WB is doing the right thing.

They did it in the right way, they announced what they're going to do and it seemed that they were 100% honest and clear about what's going on.

Congrats Dean and WB Team.

Unknown said...

I sent an email to the support team of Widgetbucks 3 days ago asking them about the future of Non US/Canadian publishers :

"Dear Sir,

First off, I would like to congratulate you for the excellent Ads program you've created.
However today,I was surprised to see in the country field of my seetings only United States and Canada !!
While I’m sure there was Algeria and other locations available at the time of my subscription.
I wanna be sure that your program still accept non US/canadian publishers,and if I can receive my payments at the adress I have entered the first time.
Secondly, Do you plan to add additional methods of receiving payment like moneybookers in the future?

Thank you"

I’m still waiting for a response.

Ramzy

Ankil Sanghvi said...

To ceo Widgetbucks team,
I had lost my account on the account of click fraud activity that you had suspected.I would like to tell the team that non of the clicks I had made personally.There might be possibility that others might be clicking my widgets violently.As for the cure of that i have decided that i will delete all the widgets from my site and keep earning through referrals.I had worked hard to promote Widgetbucks and had made 37 people part with adsense and join widgetbucks.later my account was disabled without any prior warning.In the records you might find that there were dilogues between me and widgetbucks team but none of them were related to account suspension.I have never clicked any widget by myself.I have contributed a lot in the success of widgetbucks & this is what I got in return.I have writen many letters to the customer care regarding this but non of them are replied even the week has passed so I am made to write here.I tried to call on the contact numbers mentioned in the site but of no use,as i did not get any reply.So I request dean to personally be in contact with me my wb account is ankil19@hotmail.com reinstate my account as soon as possible.I hope it is not in the policy of widetbucks to not to help anyone even if the person helps us.I think I should be given credits for the referrals I made for Widgetbucks and ya I had not committed click fraud
hoping for the best
Ankil Sanghvi

P.S- I would like to tell WB team that impressions in my site were far more than the clicks say I had only 50(approx) in more than 250 impressions,than how can my account get suspended & I guess its only because of low conversion to sale ratio.But the new policy is good so plz reinstate my acc & lemme earn through referrals.My account is ankil19@hotmail.com

Ankil Sanghvi said...

To team WidgetBucks,
I would like to tell WB team that impressions in my site were far more than the clicks say I had only 50(approx) in more than 250 impressions,than how can my account get suspended & I guess its only because of low conversion to sale ratio.But the new policy is good so plz reinstate my acc & lemme earn through referrals.My account is ankil19@hotmail.com.I made 37 ppl to part with adsense and join Widgetbucks.I had worked hard for that I think I should gredit for that

Shocker said...

This is stupid. It doesn't matter if I'm from US or not, it matters that MY SITE is meant for US users, and have only US users, so the other countries should be readded to the Country List :|

(hris said...

While I understand your need for quality for publishers, my account was closed by Chitika and I was accused of fraud. I did not do that, nor did I have anyone else do it. While I tried to work with them to resolve the problem, they refused to treat me as a loyal publisher.

After finding http://www.widgetsucks.com, I have decided to pull your ads from all of our sites. I have not made much in clicks and perhaps that is why I have not had any problems with you. But I don't need to have someone that is mad at you click on my ads and get my account banned too.

I didn't put your ads on all of our 300+ domains for exactly this reason, since pulling the code would be hours of work that would be wasted, as it was with Chitika.

I hope you can get it together and work with your publishers to fix these kinds of problems without pissing them all off. They are not all comitting fraud, and everyone that you ban that is honest will tell many, many people that you suck, and they will keep doing it much longer than those that do commit fraud.

If you read what it says on widgetsucks.com, you will see that the person is just trying to get information out to people. If there are things that are said which are untrue, you can respond about it. Banning the owner of that site only works against you. This is the main reason I have pulled my ads, but I am also concerned that I would be running your ads only to find my account closed and funds lost when I did nothing wrong.

I suggest you set something up to review accounts, work with publishers, and give them at least a second chance to take care of any problems.

OCG said...

It would be nice if Widgetbucks cracked down on the sploggers using their service to monetize their splogs.

One such splog is http://bahamas23.info - owned by Garry Thompson in PA.

His site is obviously a splog, scraping feeds from sites like mine.

Jay Gee said...

I have backed WidgetBucks from day one, I wasn't surprised to see you guys change at all.

I am not impressed either, if I was the guys who invested $10m into this project - I'd be crapping myself right now.

What started out as promising is quickly fading away into the pit of shame with all the others before WB.

Maybe you guys should have your own mixed ad' network and start selling banners or links to show to the rest of the world instead (Like an Adbrite cross with WB), after all 40-50% of impressions are going to be dead clicks for us publishers.

If the CPC continues to decline as it currently is and previously was - I will be moving on aswell, fair enough that CPC was corrected previously but there' no excuses now.

Dean Jutilla said...

@tebrinio: answer is yes, we do pay publishers outside US and Canada, provided terms of use are met. That pull-down showing only US and Canada in the MySettings was an error on our backend and has now been corrected. sorry for the confusion and delay in get back to you.

Anonymous said...

Thank you very much for your response!

MRGEORGE said...
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MRGEORGE said...
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MRGEORGE said...
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MRGEORGE said...
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MRGEORGE said...
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MRGEORGE said...

BANG

team_widgetbucks said...

it's true, everything you said, we have to die of starvation

team_widgetbucks said...

but you know, poor people, ex. Cubans have no rights to click ads, I mean, *eventually*

team_widgetbucks said...

we have to defend our network, you know, Mpire. If ur Estonian, cannot afford a laptop!!

team_widgetbucks said...
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team_widgetbucks said...

if you do not like her, contact the support... we have English speaking cron jobs that answer your mail!!

nadia gillespie said...
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nadia gillespie said...

:) Is that true? :) eheheheheheheheheheheheheh

I like that rude guy!!

I WANT MY FUCKING MONEY LOL!

nadia gillespie said...

however, Widgetbucks is a complete scam. No doubt about this, you invented the legal fraud, clearly you are only paying your friends. 30.000 publishers? I don't believe it... you have 20 comments per post.
My little search engine converted for you, guys ... really smart.

Mark Jason Gruenwald said...

they cannot answer you, they are organizing a Nigerian one now

dong li said...

another ban for the body count, I deserved it?

sigmatel said...

ya, if we all concentrate on them, they will have porfiria or toxoplasmosis

sigmatel said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
gandalf said...
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gandalf said...

...............======.
..............|.pub..|
..............|.lis..|
..............|.her..|
......========'......'========.
.....|..._......xxxx......_...|
.....|../_;-.__./._\.._.-;_\..|
.....|.....`-._`'`_/'`.-'.....|
.....'========.`\.../`========'
..............|.|../.|
..............|/-.(..|
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..............|......|
..............|......|
..\\._.._\\|.\//..|//_..._.\//._
.^.`^`^.^``.`^.^`.``^^`..`^^`.`^.`^

IVF Info said...

Maybe things are running a little behind schedule, what with all the crap being thrown at you guys right now. Just wondering how long until stats get reviewed and approved. Mine are still showing red for more than 3 days.

Anonymous said...

i don't know, wb is scam or not, b'coz still iam on.:) and hope they will pay me.

And about non-us clicks , i was getting 30$/day now when i looked to it again it decreases to 10$ approx. okki, np but please please do something about non-us clicks and we also deserve the clicks, iam probably one of the biggest site showing wb ads.

I don't know it is stupidity to write it, but i did get email from wb about the reapir work or something like that. i'll be dead if they don't pay me, God don't let me go down.:)

Daniel Larsson said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Feijó said...

I just started using wb in my site, this week!! I'm not in US or Canada, after getting exited with the possibilities, they break my heart with that change! I wanna cry.
About 98% of my visitors aren't from North America :(

Dean Jutilla said...

For those of you who are upset about not being paid for international clicks, understand that through yesterday (11/15) you WILL be paid for those clicks when our payments go out in early December (which will certainly undermine your scam theories). Going forward, no one will get credit for those because merchants won't pay for them -- see the next comment regarding this...

Dean Jutilla said...

To provide some perspective here, the decision to not credit non-US or Canada traffic came from simply listening to our primarily U.S.-based merchants. To be clear, they don't value the international traffic -- or more to the point, they don't want to pay for it -- because it doesn't convert to sale, period. A recent erosion of RPC is evidence of how we were being penalized for this traffic. Will we consider alternatives and/or bring on non-US merchants? Certainly, but in the short term, we're focused on recovering RPCs for publishers.

Anonymous said...

If I didn't do 50$ and most of my visitors were not from US or Canada, I'll receive the money?

Dean Jutilla said...

@ion: for October, regardless of where the traffic came from, if you hit $50 (including the $25 sign up bonus), you will get paid in early December. If you did NOT hit a total of $50 in October (let's assume $45), it would roll into the next month and be added with your November earnings. If it went over $50 for those two combined months, it would then trigger a payment to you. Hope this helps.

Anonymous said...

If I made just 3$ is any chance to get those 3$, without those 25$ bonus

Daniel Larsson said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Daniel Larsson said...

I Think its INSANE that you cannot pay for clicks from the U.K since a LOT of your publishers have to be able to deliver to the U.K (amazon for example)

Dean Jutilla said...

@ion: We have a $50 minimum payout policy, so you'll need to get to that point before payment is sent.

Dean Jutilla said...

@Daniel Larsson: We definitely hear you, but again, merchants were penalizing for those clicks.

Anonymous said...

@ Daniel, lol i wasn't knowing, my bad. but still iam the biggest of all, hahaha.

Sikora said...

You know what!? My incoming decreased about 40%, but dude, WB is doing the right thing.

To pay us they need to be paid, they will only be paid if they deliver good traffic for their merchants, what doesn't happen if they keep things the way they were.

So it's better to get less than to get nothing.

WB is doing their work to keep this program alive.

lollypop said...

they are banning randomly and for no reason

they are banning randomly and for no reason

they are banning randomly and for no reason

they are banning randomly and for no reason

they are banning randomly and for no reason

they are banning randomly and for no reason

they are banning randomly and for no reason

you will not get paid

you will not get paid

you will not get paid

you will not get paid

you will not get paid

you will not get paid

you will not get paid

you will not get paid

you will not get paid

be aware of them

be aware of them

be aware of them

be aware of them

be aware of them

lollypop said...
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IVF Info said...

Stats from 4 days ago are still not approved. So I ask again, when will stats be approved?

Ankil Sanghvi said...

To team WidgetBucks,
I would like to tell WB team that impressions in my site were far more than the clicks say I had only 50(approx) in more than 250 impressions,than how can my account get suspended & I guess its only because of low conversion to sale ratio.But the new policy is good so plz reinstate my acc & lemme earn through referrals.My account is ankil19@hotmail.com.I made 37 ppl to part with adsense and join Widgetbucks.I had worked hard for that I think I should gredit for that.I think WB is running away rather than solving probs

Dean Jutilla said...

@markgeorge: I've forwarded your issue to our dev team, who is looking into this. Imagine this will be resolved by Monday. Thanks for the headsup.

Dean Jutilla said...

@ankil: we have gone over this at other times recently and you've received several emails from us. and again, your personal account issues won't be discussed in this forum.

SAS, second great-grandson of Kulup Lembang said...

Hi there WidgetBucks...

Your sudden drastic changes really caught us international publishers by surprise! Sorry to say that many international publishers are not at all happy with the changes and some had even called you folks WidgetSucks.

Too bad, we were quite excited with WidgetBucks last month but we can no longer say the same for this month onwards. :-(

Malay Women in Malaysia Blog

scoopy said...

Hello WB,

Please, please, please, explain why it seems many innocent publishers are getting banned for "pages that contain pornographic content" among the many other "random" reasons you guys seem to be coming up with.

The latest victim claims to have no more than 1 photo of Angelina Jolie in a bikini. Many more have claimed to have been running Adsense for a lot longer, and they are very strict when dealing with pornographic content.

I have been one of the few to try and defend you guys on these claims of being a "scam"... but I am also now beginning to feel you guys will not make it past Christmas.

You had a great opportunity to ride that "Widget Frenzy" you got from the webmaster community... but instead everyone is yelling, "scam". You really need to be defending yourselves after wiping out ones earnings.

You are the "new kid on the block" and without the support of us publishers... your multi-million dollar investment in this venture will be quickly flushed down the commode.

thanks for listening,
scoopy

Ankil Sanghvi said...

To widgetbucks team,
I havent received a single email from WB team regarding account suspension.

Unknown said...

WHaT Da HElL is Goin On HEre ?
WB - You caN't F*uc*K uS lYk THiS .!!

Shocker said...

Now I'm a 100% sure that WidgetBucks IS A SCAM. They've suspended my account [got 50$+ so they should have payed me in December] saying that my site is Non-English, but those idiots don't even know that my site is 100% English, not a single foreign word. They are definetly banning all/allmost all accounts. So yea.. this IS A COMPLETE SCAM :)

Federica said...

when do my CPM earnings get published?
or, actually.. do you count only clicks? I thought you also count impressions...

Nikhil ...... said...

WB sucks man.. .!!
they hv suspended me also on starting
of NOV.

ITs a SCAM.. !!
GUys dont waste your time here.. !
GOOGLE rocks always... !

Rash said...

I am very dissapointed with this change by WB. Most of my visitors are from all over the world = 90% non-US and Canada.

I always thought WB is going to be better than Google Adsense but I was wrong. To WB team, your change will only bring you down because you won't be able to compete with the GIANTS - Google and Adbrite.

Now people will start running away from your program which was labelled "scam" since the first day. I had so many people interested in joining but well now they won't because there is no way someone can solely depend on US and Canada traffic only to make good number of clicks..slowly they will seek for other programs.

I will wait for my cheque and then stop WB forever..by then I will hope a change in the policies.

30,000 publishers will be 3,000 only soon because no way we international publishers will earn much with only US and Canada visitors..hell everyone will struggle.

Goodluck and all the best.

Anonymous said...

now my earnings decreased to 3 to 5$ mostly under 4$,
hmmmmm........

Anonymous said...

hi team widgets, iam just asking, if i remove ur ads and start using my old ads, ru going to ban me?

b'coz now iam hardly earning anything from guys, i can earn better than from now what iam earning.

Anonymous said...

no, i think i'll stick with widgets bucks and hope they will do something about it or will get international merchants.

b'coz widgets bucks have given me so much, yes i'll stick to it and wait until they come up with any good ideas for internatonal publishers.

dexter morgan said...

Dear Sir WidgetBollocks,

very thanks for cheating me, this is too bad, really really bad

ECS said...

A thought that might help. Instead of our international ads going to mPire. How about give us an option for defaults to show html we put into your system. So this way we can fill it with international ad networks instead.

I understand we can use the services you mentioned but this should just be done by you guys.

Mike said...

This i guess is a official blog of a giant "widgetbucks"
and the blog is full of ads nd referral links
this is throughly unprofessional.
THROUGH THIS BLOG WIDGETBUCKS IS MAKING MONEY OR A GUY CALLED MIKE IS MAKING MONEY FOR TELLING PPL THEIR PROGRAM UPDATES ?
I GUESS THE WIDGETBUCKS MUST REMOVE THIS BLOG AND INTRODUCE A BLOG WHICH IS AD FREE AND LINKS FREE ?
CHECK OUT ADSENSE BLOG AND THEN SET THE STANDARDS

Dean Jutilla said...

@Mike: Our ads on the site simply show people some examples of our widgets -- we don't make money from those. But guess what, I removed the referral link. I suppose someone out there will have an issue with me removing it, though. - Dean from ad "giant" WidgetBucks

hey widgetbollocks said...

hi, mike

all publishers that are making a good money from widgetbucks will get the eventual fate of account suspension due to unjust claim of "invalid clicks"?

do me a favor, publish your stats, publish banned accounts list, little mike... we want to see if all people are fraudsters or if you are a fraudster instead.

Publish this fucking black list of fraudsters, do you understand?

hey widgetbollocks said...

I wanted to say *dean*, I know 10 guys... they had an account with you, 9 out of 10 are banned, even my fucking teenage sister is banned, the one still alive has 15 fucking dollars he will eventually receive in January

what's wrong with you?

Dean Jutilla said...

@widgetbollocks: oh, i understand, but no can do, partner. Against our privacy policy, do YOU understand? By the way, not sure where people got the name "mike." Who is mike?

hey widgetbollocks said...

at the present time you are a complete waste of time for 99% publishers, what kind of network mpire want to build? Does widgetbucks detect real spammers instead?
Now widgetbucks and mpire are the ones to be blacklisted ... I do not think I am the only one who think like this

hey widgetbollocks said...

your privacy policy?
change it! Write a clausole in your program Term of Use

you banned my fucking teenage sister with her fucking little manga site... you have fucking warez sites in your network, guy!

Dean Jutilla said...

@scoopy: Bikini or even seriously skimpy lingerie would NOT get suspended. You may want to confirm with the suspended party if that's truly the only thing on their site.

Sites that did get suspended for containing Pornograghic Content had
full-on fornication (video, photos, and even anime versions), naked genitals in sexual situations, steamy naked make-out with heavy petting / rubbing...should I go on?????

By the way, the reasons are not random - they are actually quite well-defined. As a public service, here's a reminder: There are only 5 things that anyone has been suspended for: Pornograghic Content, No Valid Domain Provided (no working website for us to look at), Ad-Only Page, Non-English Site, Click Fraud, and Violent Content.
Hope to see you at the company Christmas party!!!! ;-)

hey widgetbollocks said...

firstly, define "click fraud"...

secondly, why the mail communicating the suspension contais 7 different reasons?

thirdly, what is worth your support site if a guy is always banned after the suspension?

Dean Jutilla said...

@ecs: Thanks for your suggestion. We're definitely looking into ways to make this work on an international basis and exploring a number of options. But as I've mentioned before, in the short term we're focused on recovering our RPC. I'll pass along your input.

hey widgetbollocks said...

I think you are an Internet fraudster, dear wb team.

We want to see your fucking stats, man... I know a way to see that. Guess what.

Dean Jutilla said...

@widgetbollocks: for someone who's opinion is that this is a waste of time, you sure are spending some time on it. interesting. anyway, here's a public definition of click fraud if you aren't familiar with it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_fraud

we have systems in place that constantly flag click fraud -- and then we review them to determine if the flagging is valid and take appropriate action. for example, if a site gets 300 clicks on 20 ad impressions (which has happened) we'd get the sneaking suspicion that it is click fraud.

gregor said...

[quote]Hope to see you at the company Christmas party!!!! ;-)[/quote]

I won't be surprised if someone give you a nice gift with an exploding thing inside of it

hey wigetbollocks said...

dean, don't try to jerk us around... no one had thoose numbers, we had all
0.xx% of clicks, nearly zero out of 100

You banned the ones with money, I mean 50$, 75$, 100$ at the payout time

hey wigetbollocks said...

I correct myself, at the "official earning time for October"

hey wigetbollocks said...

what if I am damned postal cop, dean?

Dean Jutilla said...

gregor/widgetbollocks, I take each of your last comments seriously -- and consider them to be no less than death threats on the employees of WidgetBucks, of which I am one. I plan to consult a third party on this and take appropriate next steps, if any. I won't be responding to your comments any longer on this thread.

Nikhil ...... said...

so finally i have decide to LEAVE widgetbucks.
@DEAN: Thanx alot for wasting our precious time.!

GOD BLESS WB !

Unknown said...

Hi Dean,

A serious question: how come the official WidgetBucks blog is hosted by Blogger? It doesn't portray a very professional image.

On a different note, I'm still a publisher with WB - not making a fortune but a steady few dollars each day and keeping my head below the parapet.

It's natural, although quite unreasonable, that those who have been banned by WB are venting their frustration on here. However, I really think we should just be patient and wait to see what their payouts are like come December time.

And most of the vulgarities and personal insults being traded in this blog are completely out of order.

Shocker said...

"By the way, the reasons are not random - they are actually quite well-defined."
No shit. Then why has my site been banned because of NON-ENGLISH CONTENT? It is 100% English, not even a single foreign word.

Rash said...

Shocker have a very good blog and when I check it out, it seems to be 100% english blog. I don't know what happened to your account. Contact WB and ask them what happened.

Continue the good job on your blog and I change my mind - I will stick around with WB till the end, better days will come ahead and they will surely pay for all the non-US and Canada clicks.

Thank you!

Dean Jutilla said...

@cb: thanks for your reasonable comments. re: hosting on Blogger, frankly, it was only to be a simple post-launch party site (with pictures, a comment from the ceo, etc.), but quickly grew into a blog that was getting a reasonable amount of traffic and rank (for an ad network blog). i have considered shifting internal but the priority has been communicating our changes and growth, not changing the communications vehicle itself. perhaps i'll do so now given the vulgarity and insults (and threats)- no room for that. Honest answer.

bill said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Webmaster said...

Hi Team WidgetBucks,

First of all I would like to congratulate you with WB, definitely one of the best out there.

I have a question, I have earned around $7k from 2nd week of October. Just this Nov. 15th i removed my ads coz I was earning through non-US/Canada traffic. Will I still receive what I've earned untill the 15th? I know you've answered this somewhere but just want to make sure. :)

I will put back your ads soon, since I also have other sites that has primarily US traffic.

Do you close unused/inactive accounts? I don't want to close my account and still have plans to put them back on. Thank goodness I wasn't banned/suspended, coz I always make sure I don't violate any of your TOS/Guidelines.

Thanks so much. :)

bill said...

lol, hilarious, dean

widgetbucks found his own way to evade transparency

want to talk about the gold promise you did at widgetbucks start?

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&
q=WIDGETBUCKS+scam
Results 1 - 10 of about 349,000 for WIDGETBUCKS scam.

actually everybody knows the truth but says the opposite because he would like, he hope to be payed one day

Unknown said...

If that comment is directed at me Bill, then yes obviously I'd like to be paid.

But it isn't at all fair to brand WidgetBucks a scam when they have yet to prove them self one way or the other.

Just like AdSense, where it is the people who have RIGHTLY been banned that protest their 'innocence' the loudest, I'm sure that most of the people that WidgetBucks have banned HAVE actually been trying to exploit the system. These people, by their inherently dishonest nature, are unlikely to admit they were actually in the wrong.

The reason the web is full of these stories is because no-one has received payment yet, so no-one is in a position to write positive comments to outweigh all the negatives.

I'm confident that WidgetBucks will honor their pledge to all honest, rule-abiding publishers.

bill said...

[quote]Just like AdSense, where it is the people who have RIGHTLY been banned that protest their 'innocence' the loudest, I'm sure that most of the people that WidgetBucks have banned HAVE actually been trying to exploit the system. These people, by their inherently dishonest nature, are unlikely to admit they were actually in the wrong.[/quote]

I would like to see this applied to the companies even. There is no way a publisher can protect himself from ban because Tems Of Use can be always interpreted in a way convenient to widgetbucks ... is it really possible that evetyone in the world is an exploiter (don't know what does it mean), a pornographer and so on? Really, everyone.

You say: wait. See you on next payout time

rgod said...

I have a site with flash games, lots of them are action ones with waste of blood but ... you define that "violent content"?

too easy for you Widgetbucks ;), I'm nearly sure I will be banned, despite my pagerank, my waste of time

Unknown said...

guys it would be nice if you can get the click tracking fixed that has been down for a while now. also, we are waiting to see 'finalized' stats going all the way back to 6 days ago 11/13/07.

Unknown said...

Quote : "for example, if a site gets 300 clicks on 20 ad impressions (which has happened) we'd get the sneaking suspicion that it is click fraud."

My site had about a 100 clicks everyday from over 1200-1500 impressions .. and it was suspended due to click fraud?? Care to explain ? Oh and how come noone ever replies to any support tickets or emails sent? Just an email saying your account has been suspended due to suscipious click fraud? If you would, consider rechecking ashagg@gmail.com

Vinod Nambiar said...

Which country out of the US are you getting the maximum traffic from?

scoopy said...
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scoopy said...

Appreciate your responses here team widgetbucks, but there still remains too many unanswered questions and possibly more of those random bans showing up here.

Some of us want to trust that things will work out but are hesitant to continue with WB seeing the numerous questions arise.

So what about shocker's non-English site or Ankil Sanghvi and ashwani's click-fraud ? I am sure most of the complaints we see posted everywhere... are indeed guilty as charge... BUT, I find it hard to believe your system is 100% accurate.

I can also see multiple clicks happening... but how can I stop them? Your ads have up to 10 links in them and some people may want to click each one for whatever reason.

Where's the appeal process and where can we get our questions answered? From our side we are not seeing any responses... all we see are publishers getting banned and their money taken away.

What about questions from those of us trying to meet your terms before we also get banned? I haven't heard of one email being answered and I don't see any answers showing up on your support pages.

PS: I questioned the bikini guy... and have not received a response from that post.

PSS: Maybe after I get my WB check... I can buy you a drink at the company Christmas party ;)

Daniel Larsson said...
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Daniel Larsson said...

TO all 'they suspended my account' posts.

COMMON!

You got caught, suck it up!

Average CTR is somewhere like 1,5% - 2,5% and you get 30%

WHAT DO YOU THINK WILL HAPPEN?? You don't necessarily have to click the ads yourself but obviously its not clean clicks,,

Stop embarrassing yourselves!

Jennifer Mattern said...

OK. So let's get a few things straight....

1. Your business model relies on two distinct groups of people... advertisers and publishers. You're making advertisers not just a priority, but your only concern lately, while pissing off the publishing community - frankly, they're the ones with the power to kill the company and model; advertisers won't pay you squat if no one with a quality site it willing to publish your ads.

2. You run a CPC model, but are penalizing publishers b/c advertisers want the benefits of a PPA model instead. Hmmm... perhaps you're in the wrong business. Google f'd up the conversions issue big time ages ago (neglecting the fact that poor ad copy, poor landing pages, etc. have as much, if not more, to do with poor conversions than the traffic itself - much of which is certainly targeted). If advertisers only want to pay on high-converting traffic, you need to adjust how they're paying you, and how you're paying publishers. For the record, then you wouldn't have to worry about the whole international issue.

3. By accusing non-scammers of fraud because your model doesn't work quite as well as advertisers would hope borders on libel. Good job.

How about a bit of forethought before you screw up even more like all the others. If you can't live up to the hype, you'll die trying.

Jennifer Mattern said...

And one other point... who the hell are you guys to weed out publishers b/c of conversion rates when it's your own damn fault half the time b/c your ad inventory sucks, you're severely lacking on ad categories, and your content targeting is atrocious. Perhaps publishers should start invoicing WB for the ad space they've been taking up with these nonsense ads you provide half the time - if you can't supply something relevant, you lose your right to bitch about the conversions. Get your act together.

I'm actually surprised if you're not being investigated on false advertising claims yet with the BS promotion you guys have pulled from day one.

Shocker said...

[quote="Daniel Larsson"]
TO all 'they suspended my account' posts.

COMMON!

You got caught, suck it up!

Average CTR is somewhere like 1,5% - 2,5% and you get 30%
[/quote]
You must be some sort of retarded idiot I guess. My CTR is 1,08% so you can really shut the F word up

calling said...

Its not fair for international publisher,we have made your site and now your kicking us out.
also, we must have an option to redirect non acceptable clicks to another sites and not mpire

Ankil Sanghvi said...
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Ankil Sanghvi said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Christopher said...

Even most English-only sites designed for the USA get around 30% international traffic.

benng said...

let say about us and canada traffic.. I agree with
Christopher said... ( Even most English-only sites designed for the USA get around 30% international traffic.) for me have only 10% US, site have 300,000 hits days.. of cause i not stupid to waste 90% traffic to the nothings.. .. so have two question..
1 - is WB can have option which will used as extenal ads when the ip comming from other than US canada.. so i can put my own ads on that case ( adsense is have this option )
2 - can i put WB on an iframe pages ( which i will code it only viewable for US traffic ) and use it as extenal url ads for Adsense. is this will violated the WB TOS ( no WB on non content pages, infact it is iframe so it on the main pages with content )
thanks for any infomation