So I got my first $2 on widget bucks after installing it on one blog for a week (see my previous post “First 7 Days with WidgetBucks“). I had 15,220 impressions, 14 clicks and revenue of $2.08.
This morning, I got an email from the WidgetBucks staff telling me:

We’ve noticed that your WidgetBucks widgets are getting a respectable number of impressions, but the click-through-rate is relatively low. This is very unusual among our publishers. We’d like to help increase your earnings.

I could not disagree. 14 clicks out of 15,220 impressions on a blog is very low.

WidgetsBucks suggested three ways to that have dramatically improved click-through-rate for some of its top publishers: Page Placement, Category Matching, and Rotating Categories.

Page Placement:

The most important factor in widget success is placement on the page. The more prominent the placement, the more clicks the widget will get. Higher on the page is better, especially placing it above-the-fold. And widgets that are placed in the stream of text, for instance the Medium Rectangle 300×250 size widget, rather than on the edges of the page, convert better. They seem more integrated with the flow of information and get noticed more.

Category Matching:

Once your audience sees the widget, the next most important factor is that the products shown match their interests. We’ve seen that the more specific product categories convert better than broader, more general categories. And matching the product to the needs of your specific audience helps a great deal. This is usually best determined by testing several categories and seeing which they like the most.

If you’re using MerchSense to automatically match the product category for you, then placing the widget on a page with a large amount of audience-specific text is key to enable MerchSense to make a good match. The worst case is placing the widget in an I-frame all by itself, since then there is no text for MerchSense to use in matching. If you don’t think the match is the best one, then we suggest hand picking the category for best match.

Rotating Categories:

Once you’ve gotten your users to see the widget, and you’ve tested product categories to find those they respond best to, the next improvement we suggest is showing them more than one category. This can be accomplished by placing more than one widget, or by rotating several widgets through in one spot. Rotating three widgets, say for Video Game Consoles, MP3 Players, and Digital Cameras, gives your users variety in what they see on your page every time they come back, and thus increases their interest, leading to higher commissions to you.

I will try to follow these suggestions, and at the same time, include the widget on more blogs. I will post the results after a week.

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