whydowork.com

Since I’ve been using it for some time now, I thought a small review of WidgetBucks was in order.

The good

I’m not sure I can disclose the click value, but from what I’ve seen so far, they’re decent. In the technology/electronics/gadgets blog where I use them they can compare with Adsense at medium click value.

They give you $25 to start with, and the payment is done at $50. Nice offer, and I like that they pay through PayPal.

And that’s about it with the good parts.

The bad

You can either choose a specific category of products that you want shown, or you can use the MerchSense option, which should give you ads that match your content. The problem is, they do have a limited number of options, so they can serve matching ads only if you have articles on the categories of products that they serve. For example, an article about speakers got laptop ads. If you have a blog that talks about one of their categories, you have a better chance of getting clicks.

The MerchSense option that matches ads to your content isn’t very fast. While Adsense starts serving relevant ads instantly, WidgetBucks can take up to 24 hours to spider your site, and serves only digital camera ads in the meantime.

It takes 3-4 seconds for me to load and hangs the page for half a second when the widget starts loading. With the attention span that Internet users usually have, 3-4 seconds of waiting for a widget to load is huge. To make matters worse, the widgets don’t load until you’re on top of them. This might help WidgetBucks with the bandwidth consumed (can’t think of any other reason), but it means that if I put 3 widgets on the front page, visitors will scroll down and get over the ads by the time they finish loading.

They put hidden links in your page and their TOS says you’re not allowed to remove them. Yeah, that’s right, check the source code of your pages and you’ll see this nice code of a link that visitors can’t see, served along with the widget:

WidgetBucks - Trend Watch - WidgetBucks.com

WidgetBucks was launched on October 1st if I’m not mistaken, and in just 19 days they got 275,000 backlinks to the front page, according to Yahoo. Somehow I doubt those links come just from bloggers that wrote about them. Sorry, but if they want links from my sites, it’ll cost them a hell of a lot more then what I’m earning with them.

The CTR is absolutely horrible. I’m using a 468×60 WidgetBucks at the beginning of articles, and a 336×280 Adsense at the end of articles on that technology site. Still, despite the above the fold position, WidgetBucks manages to get a CTR 5 times smaller then Adsense. It might improve with a bigger widget size, but I’m not prepared to give a 336×280 space above the fold to a widget that takes 4 seconds to load.

Conclusion

They’re off my sites for now. I might give them another try if they do something about the loading time of the widget, if they get a wider variety of products and they increase somehow the CTR of the ads.

Unless you have a blog about a specific category of products that they offer, I’d say don’t bother.

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In such a saturated market as blogging tips and monetization advice, finding a blogger that actually knows what he’s talking about is quite a breath of fresh air.

Meet David Peralty, a blogger with two years of experience behind him, and his blog, eXtra For Every Publisher. I’m saying that he knows what he’s talking about because he’s the Director of Communications at Bloggy Network and he’s a blogger since 2005, with over 4000 articles published since then.

This kind of blogging experience can’t be found easily online, and the fact that he could buy a house from blogging and some cool stuff, proves that he knows what it takes to make it online.

The Content

My Favorite

I’ll start with my absolute favorite post from his blog, Starting a Blog: Idea Mapping. Almost every blogger out there (myself included) takes at the most couple of hours thinking of what he wants to do with his new blog. David took two weeks to prepare for the launch, writing a long to-do list and preparing around thirty sections and writing down hundreds of post ideas. He recommends that when you start a blog you prepare a long list of post ideas for the first 3 months of your blog, and I couldn’t agree with him more.

So many bloggers skip this step and get right into producing content, and they eventually have huge gaps in their publishing, or close down their blog, and neither route will bring you closer to becoming a reasonably paid blogger.

That was exactly my situation when I started this blog. I only had around twenty ideas written down, some of them for guest posts that I haven’t done yet, so I didn’t keep a consistent posting schedule. The fact that I managed to have a respectable growth anyway, only makes me wonder where I would’ve been right now if I would’ve seen his article before I started this blog. Bookmarked!

Promotion

Something that I’m planning to start doing this week, guest blogging can be a nice way to bring some extra subscribers and get your name known, and David talks about his experience with that in What You Can Learn From Three Recent Guest Posts By Me.

With all the Digg hype in the webmaster world today, some of us keep forgetting one of the best methods of promotion: word of mouth. He explains a bit how he gets it started and it’s not a surprise that it’s based quite a bit on networking in the beginning.

Blog Networks

Not surprising considering his work with Bloggy Network, David has quite a few posts about blog networks, starting with the advantages of working with a blog network and the disadvantages, continuing with starting a blog network and 46 things to do before launching one, his blog is a great resource for anyone that wants to get into this area. It’s the first blog that I see that gives tips on this subject, maybe because few have the experience he gained in the last two years.

To be honest, I’d love to start a blog network, and it’s one of the things to do on my long term list, and David’s blog is a great resource for that. He even talks about his own failed blog network, and while I’m sure that he would do much better now, it’s great to know what problems you can have if you start one.

Speed Linking and Podcasting go well together

I haven’t seen many people do this, but it’s a great way to add to the conversation. David does a Podcast series where he covers the best stories from the 45n5 Top 50 blogs and adds his own experience to the comments, making it quite an interesting listen.

I don’t really get why only the top 50 bloggers are covered though. There are a lot of great bloggers out there that don’t get the attention they deserve, and what the A listers talk about is pretty well commented already. Maybe it’s linkbait for the A bloggers, but I got the feeling that the smaller ones would appreciate much more being mentioned in a podcast.

Design

eXtra For Every Publisher uses a free WordPress theme, the one released by CopyBlogger and I can’t find much fault to it. It’s clean, not overloaded with information and has plenty of space for content. Advertisement is kept to a minimum and it’s not annoying at all. The only thing that seems out of place is the Subscribe by e-mail box, which is below the fold, actually the last in the left sidebar. From my own experience though, bloggers don’t seem to use this option that much, since I for one have about 4% of my readers by e-mail subscription and the rest by RSS.

He also released a free WordPress theme, which you might be interested in if you’re looking for a dark theme.

Conclusion

It’s really tough finding something to pick on with this blog. Certainly not with the content, maybe with the need for a custom design, but now I’m just being picky since I don’t have one either. It’s a great read and I’ve learned quite a few new things while I was reading it, so I can recommended subscribing to it. You’re certainly going to learn a few new things along the way, and if you got th
e extra money and need an advice, he’s also doing paid consulting.

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The tagline of this blog starts with two words that I strongly believe in, aggressive blogging. Putting into practice everything you read on all those blogs about making money online that you’re subscribed to. If you don’t do that, then you’ve wasted the time it took you to read those articles.

Here’s one of the few bloggers that do just that, aggressive blogging, and he does it well. I’m talking about Matt Jones, an 18 year old blogger from UK, and his blog, Blogging Fingers.

Started in July, this blog about blogging ideas and making money online, had a very nice growth, despite the extremely saturated niche that he’s in, and that’s due to the aggressive style of blogging and promotion that I was talking about earlier.

Looking for validation from others that this is a blog worth subscribing to? 177 subscribers and 10,000 uniques in September, after just 3 months of blogging are testimony to that.

9 times on the front page of Sphinn are testimony of the quality of his posts, and if I may dare to say so, his guest posts on Problogger.net, JohnChow.com and Performancing.com, are proof that he has what it takes to make it big, and he also puts it well into practice. He does linkbait well, and the 13,000 backlinks that he has so far prove that.

Some good examples of linkbait that I enjoyed are:

• the post about blogging success stories,
• Sphinn: In Depth Traffic Analysis and Advice,
• How To Get a Free PR4 Link With Every Comment Your Blog Receives

One other thing that I like about him is that he’s also learning and improving constantly. His previous blog was sold for $1000 after just 3 months. Blogging Fingers made almost $400 in its 3rd month from direct ad sales, so it’s worth quite a bit more already. How many blogs about making money online make that much after just 3 months? Only true niche blogging can usually make that much so fast, if you’re truly inspired when you choose your topic.

Other articles you might be interested in: Web Hosting Packages and CashCrate - proof of payment.

My own $0.02 is that if he continues to write original content and promote it as well as he did so far, he will be one of the big bloggers in the blogging tips and money making niche. It’s not easy to make it in this area, but he seems to pull it off quite well.

A small advice would be to concentrate more on things that bloggers are always looking for: new or better ways to monetize, outside the box thinking when it comes to promotion, link building, linkbait. There are only so many blogging tips articles that one can stomach, and probably everyone has by now a good idea on ways to finding inspiration for blogging.

If you haven’t done that yet, I recommend visiting Blogging Fingers, and subscribing to its feed, if you want to see him grow and benefit from his tips.

This article is a paid review, that reflects my honest opinion on the subject.

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This is the first review from the three given in the Shylock Contest.

If I had to put ThinKlear into a category, it would be quick online tips, with a dash of web development, SEO and make money online. It seems geared towards those a bit geeky, heavy Internet users, that have a blog or website, and want to improve it. The blog is 3 months old right now and if it’s heavily promoted and he continues to deliver good content on a regular basis he has all the chances to make it big.

Posts I Liked

The web programming category for example has this neat post about 3 icons search engines, arranged by Alexa rank, that’s already bookmarked in my Tools folder.

And if you take a peek into the design category, you’ll see a few other gems, like this one pointing you to a resource of RSS icons and the post about laptop stickers, which I’ll definitely do (works great as a gift for your friends that own a laptop). Another resource for webmasters is the one about mini pixel icons.

We’re all downloading files left and right (well, I know I do), especially when you have a blog. Plugins, themes, add-ons, ebooks, all these zipped and with no knowledge of what’s inside. This post points the way to a Firefox add-on that lets you scan files for viruses before downloading.

And, if you’re a heavy WordPress user, I’m sure you’ll find these WordPress tips quite handy.

ThinKlear IT Helper

Got a problem with your computer or you don’t know what Firefix add-on to use for a specific task? Chris has a special page where you can ask questions, called ThinKlear IT Helper, and he’ll do his best to help you with your problem.

Hello there - if you have any problems regarding your computer you are free to ask me here…

do you want me to write an article about something you really want to know about it [from IT of course] - eg: what Firefox extension should you use for downloading YouTube Movies, where can I find great firefox extensions, … ?!?

This one’s a cool offer in my book, though I feel he should be a bit more specific on the areas where he can help (Windows, tweaking, virus, browsing add-ons, finding resources online, php?, mysql?, design, etc). Once the blog gets a bit more momentum, it can be a good selling point for him.

Design

The blog has a clean, two column, white design, with plenty of space for content.

There are a couple of things that could be improved in my opinion. Right now, at this stage in the blog’s life, I don’t think its needed to show the number of subscribers or how many page views a post has. This is an area where size matters, and there is no point in showing off low numbers. With so many blogs out there to choose from, people tend to pick those that are already established and validated by others that subscribed.

Also, the WidgetBucks ads make the page hang for half a second while they’re loading (and they only load when you’re on top of them as far as I saw). Since you got one right after the first post, this can be a bit annoying when you browse the blog.

Suggestions

About and Contact pages - they should be there. People are often interested who is the blogger and they might want to contact you in private instead of leaving a comment on the blog. It doesn’t take long to put a page up and it certainly has benefits.

Categories - There were 34 of them yesterday when I counted, many of them with just 1 post. IMO, I think it’s a bit much. Maybe focus on just a few categories (10-15), and also use tags?

Promotion: there are a few successful blogs out there that are focused on online tips. Quick Online Tips and Connected Internet come to mind right now. With some quality guest posting I’m sure that some of those readers might come your way. Using social media sites is quite nice also for this type of blog.

Content: some linkbait posts might work well. Take as example the posts you linked to, the one with the RSS icons collection and others. Mashable has a great collection of lists with useful online resources that you can use as an example.

Conclusion

All in all, I like it, and I feel it has great potential if more work is put into it. From content to promotion and the design, they all could use a bit of improvement if you want to make it big. It’s all up to you. I for one am subscribed and I’ll be watching it closely :).

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