What's in Your Affiliate Marketing Toolkit?

Dean Jutilla, Director of Marketing

As many of you may know, WidgetBucks increased its Referral Program rate to 15 percent recently, so as referred publishers earn money through their ads, affiliate marketers get more bang for their WidgetBucks.

What you may not have noticed is that WidgetBucks has also updated its Referral Toolkit, a whole new set of pre-designed ad creatives with related code for easy placement on your site. (Note that you'll need to be signed-in to your WidgetBucks account to view this page).

There are 20 various sizes and new creatives from which to choose, including six of the popular 125x125 size option, animated ads and plain text referral links to include in your email and forum signatures. Each is also integrated with TypePad, WordPress and Blogger. Just grab the ad code, drop it into your site and you're done.

WidgetBucks Referral Program highlights:

• You earn a 15 percent referral fee based on the commissions earned by the publishers you refer.
• You receive this 15 percent for the full 12 months after the new member joins.
• Payouts to you are monthly, along with your commission payment.

Here's how one WidgetBucks' publisher used the code on their blog.

- Dean

WidgetBucks Ups Affiliate Referral Program to 15%

WidgetBucks is boosting its Referral Program payout to a generous 15 percent (up from 5). This means that when you refer a new WidgetBucks user, you will receive a 15 percent referral fee based on the commissions earned by the people you refer. You'll receive this 15 percent for the full 12 months after the new member joins.

Your referral fees will be credited to your account and paid monthly, along with your commission payout. So, if you refer someone, and they make $100 in commissions, we pay you $15; if they make $1,000, we pay you $150. This continues for a whole year on all the commissions they earn.

Be sure to access our Referral Tools page for pre-designed affiliate ads, tag lines and logos of various sizes. Here are some serving suggestions for your affiliate referral code:

- signatures (email, forums like Digital Point)
- sidebars on your site or blog
- Twitter feed
- Facebook, LinkedIn & MySpace profiles


- Dean

WidgetBucks Rolls Shop-in-Widget Holiday Creative

Some of you may have noticed that new shopping ad widget designs, including Shop-in-Widget, are now available within WidgetBucks. These are all-new looks for the season: Thumbnail Bonanza, Single Product Showcase and Triple Product Showcase. Those publishers who choose to spread some holiday cheer within your ads can apply the "Sensible Santa" skin to attract clicks from shoppers. (see left) See this creative highlighted on AdBlab.

You might be wondering about Shop-in-Widget and what it means. These new shopping ad widgets all feature interactive search capability, so in addition to the products you wanted to appear, site visitors can proactively search for a desired product. Upon doing so, they are presented with product search results without leaving their existing Web page.
Within this shopping pop-up (example above), they can find their desired item, along with options for free shipping, discounts and deals, brands and various price ranges to suit their budget. When they click on a item within the pop-up shopping window, they will be taken directly to a merchant site just as they would if they click on the pre-defined product images in the widget.

For those in the U.S., Canada or Western Europe, type "digital camera" (or other item title) into the search box of the Sensible Santa shopping widget to the left, and then click "Search." You will then have various digital cameras presented to you in resulting pop-up window. For publishers outside those geographic areas, sample screen shots are within this post.

You'll find all these new designs within the "Create New Widget" page once you select the "Shopping" channel.

Here's some more details on the new designs:

**Thumbnail Bonanza - this widget shows a variety of products at once and highlights each product individually, giving publishers several chances to earn high-paying CPC revenue
(Early tests show this to be a top performer)

**Single Product Showcase - this ad widget highlights a single product at a time in a carousel fashion

**Triple Product Showcase - this widget is a combination of the previous two, displaying three products at a time and cycles through products individually

- Dean

Earn Free Money on WidgetBucks with 'Code for Cash'

We all like free stuff! Free lunch, free giveaways, free gas -- but nothing beats free money.

That's what WidgetBucks is giving away through 'Code for Cash' -- a $10 credit to your account simply by updating your WidgetBucks widget code on your site or blog. Starting on Wednesday, March 5 at noon PT, the FIRST 100 publishers who update their code (based on our log files) will be credited the 10-spot in their WidgetBucks account for February. This offer ends on Sunday (3/9) at noon PT, so hurry!

The benefit of updating your code also has to do with money: this new code will give you even more options and flexibility when selecting the type of WidgetBucks ad widgets that run on your site -- and give you the ability to earn even more. Today, the ads are focused on shopping, but in the coming weeks, additional ad models will be available, so stay tuned.

Here's what you need to do to get your $10 'Code for Cash' credit:
1. Within your MyWidgets page, go to "edit" for each active widget
2. Within "Customize your Widget" page, copy the HTML code and repaste it into your site or blog. Voila!

Note: This code change was originally announced on Dec. 11. If you've updated code since that time, you already have the correct code and there is no need for an update.

Optimize Your Earnings by Updating Your Code

Our team is really focused on providing innovative ads that complement your blog and publisher sites as well as earn you a competitive CPM. Since WidgetBucks is focused on shopping advertisements today (more to come on new types of ads coming soon), we want to make sure that we keep earning you a solid CPM after the shopping season (advertising rates are seasonal and tend go down after the holidays). In short, we’re deploying our ad optimizing technology, YieldSense, broadly across our publisher base.

In order for you to take advantage of this, we need you to update your WidgetBucks code. To do this, simply re-copy the HTML code of your widgets into your site and start optimizing your revenue. Incidentally, this is an existing code update request originally announced Dec. 11.

Once that code is updated, WidgetBucks publishers can earn money in three ways: 1) existing shopping CPC ads, 2) display CPM ads (see explanation post here), and 3) international CPM ads.

We have moved quickly to implement our yield management technology after extensive testing with select customers. Moving quickly presents its share of challenges. For example, we had to decide between immediately activating the “hybrid” ad widgets BEFORE having our reporting interface ready to go, or wait to let publishers earn the additional revenue until the reporting was completed. The priority was clearly to optimize your revenue. That still puts us in a position to communicate (and risk confusing some of you) where and when “hybrid” revenue will start appearing. Here's a time line of what to expect:

Stage 1 (Feb. 27 to ~March 7)

• Publishers will begin seeing “hybrid” ad CPM revenue appearing as “CPM Revenue” in the My Widgets page, typically 2-3 days delayed.
• You may notice a drop in CTR and/or impressions when “hybrid” ads are active, since the Shopping CPC widget is not visible until the display ad completes. Keep in mind that although your CPC CTR/Revenue may decrease, it is offset by the CPM earnings from the display ad.

Stage 2 (~March 7 -14)

• CPM Revenue will be split into “Display Ad CPM” and “International CPM” to distinguish between the CPM revenue earned through the “hybrid” display ads versus the international CPM revenue

- Dean

Reminder: Hybrid Widgets Require Updated Code

With the combined CPM display ad/PPC shopping widgets now running in all sizes on WidgetBucks, it's important that publishers are working with the latest ad code strand to take advantage of this dual-revenue ad widget.

This code change was actually announced over two months ago -- on Dec. 11 -- as part of the roll-out of CPM ads for non-U.S. and Canadian site visitors. At this point, only one-third of publishers have done so, meaning the rest aren't maximizing their revenue. To ensure you have the latest, which includes"ads.js" within the strand, go to a widget's Customize Your Widget page, click "Copy HTML" and repaste the code into your site.

- Dean

MerchSense Makes Sense for Higher Yield

Behind the scenes at WidgetBucks we've been working to improve MerchSense, our contextual algorithm. One way we're doing this is by implementing YieldSense(tm), which is technology that automatically generates the highest possible yield for publisher ad placements, and we're nearly ready to publish the first phase of these improvements. Starting as early as this weekend or Monday, U.S. and Canada visitors on sites that are running MerchSense will begin seeing short-duration display advertising running before WidgetBucks' traditional shopping widgets. This hybrid CPM display ad/PPC shopping widget combination is intended to help improve effective CPM (eCPM), while maintaining a great e-commerce experience through our widgets. Here is a summary of what is being announced:

• Display ads will begin running before WidgetBucks' shopping widgets -- the duration and advertisers will be dynamic to best optimize for the eCPM of your individual site
• Only U.S. and Canada visitors on sites running MerchSense will see the hybrid CPM display ad/PPC shopping widget (non-U.S. and Canada traffic continues to pay on a CPM basis)
• Display ads are site-category specific and include major corporations as advertisers
• Revenue earned through the display ads will appear within publishers' MyWidgets pages, and be included in the roll-up and pie-chart displays, as well as the "CPM Ads" tab
• Only widgets configured for MerchSense will initially be able to take advantage of this automated yield optimization
• As a reminder, MerchSense works best with product-specific sites and blogs rather than sites covering affiliate tools or online money making
  

One final note about display advertising: according to a JP Morgan report released in January, online display advertising is expected to jump 20 percent to $8.6 billion this year.

- Dean