I confess I was skeptical when I saw John Chow advertising WidgetBucks.com on his blog. Mostly because I figure anything that makes him a zillion dollars will at most make me 35 cents.

Plus after the whole Blogrush thing and people swarming to and fro and proing and conning and on and on, I was reluctant to try it, but I tell you, it looks promising.

I run an online community (non-bloggish) that gets around 500,000 impressions monthly, and the Google Adsense income for it has been steadily declining. So I replaced it today with Widget Bucks. Click image below to see full-sized screenshot:

What this screenshot can’t illustrate is the interactive quality of the widget.  Users can scroll through a list of top ten items in a category, and it moves them automatically after a delay.

I’m excited about the possibilities, because Adsense is so often a disappointment.  Sure the income is somewhat respectable, but on a site with half a million monthly impressions, I can’t help but think I could be doing so much better.

I definitely plan to add this to The Naked Celebrity, and possibly Bitter Women as well (my other blogs).

Sometimes I think I should have called this  “Experimental Blogging” instead of “About Blogging”, because I’m constantly trying new things.  But if you’re on as much of a journey with your blogs as I am with mine, I thought you’d be interested to hear what I’m trying, why, and the outcome.

I’ll give WidgetBucks a few weeks and then report back with a comparison to Adsense.

Have you tried WidgetBucks?  If so, how are you liking it, and if not, why not?  I’m interested to hear all of your feedback!

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