I’m not going to lie to you – I became a publisher for WidgetBucks but I never officially put any of their ads on my blog(s). And maybe you guys shouldn’t either. But apparently, they got banned from Google for violating their TOS conditions.

If you don’t know what WidgetBucks is, it’s an advertising network in which they set up a pay-per-click for widgets specifically. Hints the name. You’ll probably see a lot of their ads on people’s blogs, particularly their referrals saying “Free $25 with sign-up” but I haven’t heard good things about them so far.

But they got banned because it seems they’ve been hiding Google text links behind their own ads. Which is a big ‘no-no’ and they should’ve known that! And if you’ve read my blog post “Do Not Edit Google Adsense – Unless Approved” then you should know how serious they are. Obviously, WidgetBucks didn’t get approval.

If you don’t believe me, that’s fine, I heard you can test out the theory for yourself (if they’re still running them). Just go to any site that has WidgetBuck ads on their page and try to temporarily disable the JavaScript from your internet browser. From there, you should see the animated ads are gone and replaced by small text links from… yes, you’ve guessed it, from Google!

A lot of people start off by signing up with them but end up taking their ads down because of the Click-Through-Rate (CTR) is too low. Sometimes not even worth it.

I read on someone’s blog that they had about 10,000 impressions and 20 total clicks. They earned a whopping $2 dollars. And the referrals don’t seem that great either. Someone had 30 total referrals and none of the money showed up in their account. That’s saying something. Either the referrals/company is false or they are extremely slow in getting their customers their money.

I guess WidgetBucks just really don’t get those ‘bucks’ in general, so how can they afford to pay you?

WidgetbucksGoogleText links