The Impact of Rising Peso

After reading Taong Grasa’s post about the effect of the peso-dollar exchange rate, I asked myself how much really is the effect on quest in making money online. For sure, a lot of SEO experts and netpreneurs are feeling the pressure, too. Of course, I don’t make a lot of money through adsense or any affiliate program but I had some dollars in the bank until last week. I shouldn’t be that much affected, right? Well, maybe.

But on my meager income of around $80 a month(take note, that’s a total of all sites I maintain), the difference is becoming more evident. Just a couple of months ago, I get roughly PHP8,000.00 every other month when the peso-dollar exchange rate is at around $50. Small but since this is just a hobby for me, that’s a lot already. It can already pay for my domains and hosting and still have some extra. You cannot get that in the streets even if you walk hundreds of kilometers. But now when $1=PHP41.85, I only get roughly PHP6,600.00. Now, I’m beginning to feel the difference.

It became more evident to me when I decided to close my dollar account. I needed money and had to withdraw every penny I have in the bank. As expected, the value of my dollars are so low already. You see, I got some of my dollars at a exchange rate of PHP56, some at 54 and some at 50. None from below PHP50.00. I got those from my per diem during my trips abroad and some from adsense. If you compute the difference with the current PHP41.85 to a dollar, that’s a whopping average of PHP11.30 for every dollar. So for every thousand, I threw PHP11,300.00. Whew, that’s more than a month’s salary of a daily wage earner here in the Philippines. And that’s just a one time transaction for me. How much more with the beneficiaries of our “Bagong Bayani”, the Overseas Filipino Workers.

We all know that a stronger peso is good for the economy in general but it also comes with caveats. With millions of Filipinos abroad that feed their family here in the Philippines, more and more people are feeling the effect of the rise of the peso. But we must look at the bigger picture instead of our personal grievances brought about by this phenomenon. Our monetary authorities are working overtime to help soften the impact and let’s just hope that they keep doing their jobs.

Widget Bucks CPM Ads for International Traffic

It’s a very welcome news that WidgetBucks is somehow reconsidering their position regarding the non-US and Canada traffic. Just the other day, they announced in their official blog that they’ll start offering country-specific CPM ads. In that way, you’ll still be able to monetize your international traffic using WidgetBucks. This would also mean that you’ll no longer need to filter your traffic as discussed on my earlier post since WidgetBucks will do that automatically for you.

Here’s some quote from their blog.

At the time a user visits a page containing the widget, we will sense the geographic location of the visitor. If they are in the U.S. and/or Canada, the user will see the normal WidgetBucks widget. If the user is outside those two countries, then our system will determine a country- specific CPM ad to display. We are currently working with advertisers covering 100
countries and offering thousands of creatives to ensure that site visitors will be monetized for your benefit. All ads are restricted against adult or other suggestive themes.

Below is the complete post. Kudos to MPire for listening to the concern of their members. It’s definitely a plus point for them and I will again consider placing a widget on one of my sites.

And by the way, I only learned about it when a certain Dean Jutilla from Mpire(the company behind WidgetBucks) commented on my earlier post. I’m surprised and somewhat honored that somebody from Mpire has noticed my blog.

Avoiding Accidental Clicks in Adsense

Note: This is a contributed post in Taong Grasa Blog.

It’s a good thing that google changed the way their ads were clicked. Before, even the background of the ads are clickable and that leads to accidental clicks. I myself has fall into this and was afraid that my adsense account be suspended or terminated because of that. I think it happened thrice already.

With the new format, it is only the title and the url that’s clickable. The background, text and white spaces are no longer clickable. More than the user experience, it would benefit the advertisers more.

Finally, this change won’t just improve user experience on your site; it
benefits advertisers as well. We currently monitor clicks on Google ads for
accidental clicks, and the format change complements our monitoring system by
further ensuring advertisers only pay for meaningful clicks. By reducing
accidental clicks, we hope to increase advertiser campaign value and
satisfaction, encouraging additional spend and facilitating higher monetization
for all publishers.

For the complete adsense announcement about this, click the lick below.
http://adsense.blogspot.com/2007/11/accidental-clicks-fade-into-background.html

WidgetBucks Filters Traffic

A recent decision by WidgetBucks has affected most of its members. Clicks from traffic coming from outside United States and Canada are no longer counted. It’s a big blow to all of its members especially those whose traffic primarily comes from their own country (i.e, local social network, clubs, etc). However, I think it is a bitter pill for WidgetBucks to take since their advertisers are also complaining. Some other companies has done that before. The main reason is that most people from outside the two countries doesn’t really buy goods online.

A Filipino SEO expert has shared his knowledge to filter the traffic on your site, too. Here’s his tip on how to do that. By using his technique, widgetbucks widgets will only appear if the visitor is from US and Canada. For outside the those countries, you can show other ads. You can use adsense if you have one.

Well, if you are still banned from adsense, WidgetBucks is still a good alternative. For me, the change has significantly lowered its edge against adsense. I still have widgetbucks in an inner page of one of my sites. But that’s just it.

WidgetBucks : A Promising Ad Network

Over the last couple of months there’s been a lot written about new ad network - WidgetBucks. As with any new player in the ads market, there has a lot of varied opinions shared about them and a lot are skeptics. This new entrant promises a better conversion of your traffic.

Here’s some advantages:
1. You are paid for both CPM and PPC. And when they say CPM(Cost Per Thousand Impressions), they are claiming that they pay as much as $3-$6 CPM. That’s almost three times the traditional ad networks. PPC (Pay-Per-Click) is paid at a high of $0.45.
2. You get $25 sign-up bonus and that’s halfway to the $50 payout.
3. Rich Media ads. No boring texts.
4. Affiliate programs. You get 10% of your referred members for full 12 months!
5. Can run with adsense.
6. Easy Sign-Up, Easy Setup.
7. Pays thru PayPal.

So who are behind WidgetBucks? Here’s a quote from Darren of Problogger, here’s what Matt Hulett (CEO of WidgetBucks) has to say.

WidgetBucks was created by Mpire.com , the online meta-shopping service that brings together all the most popular online marketplaces such as eBay, Amazon, Shopping.com, Wal-Mart, Target, Gap, and thousands more — into one single site. We blend all that historical pricing information with our pricing analytics and other proprietary technologies to create what we like to call the “Kelly Blue Book” for online products. We are able to tell people what they can expect to pay for that product they are interested in — and then help them take the next step in buying it. Mpire has been around since 2005 — and after originally focusing on offering eBay selling tools, we turned buyer-focused just over a year ago. Today, Mpire.com is getting between 800,000 - 900,000 unique visitors a month. So WidgetBucks fits into our strategy of distributing our pricing analytics across the Web, almost like thousands of little mini-Mpire’s being hosted on publishers’ sites.

However, there are also a lot of people that says it is a scam. SEO.PH
has some threads
. There’s a lot more in DigitalPoint Forum. I think that’s normal for every new entrants. With all the things said and posted everywhere, they are all something that we’ll have to see later.

I signed-up for it the other week and started using it only yesterday. I’m using it now in at least two of the sites that I maintain. So far, adsense still provides me a better income but maybe that’s because my adsense placement is better than my widgets that are primarily placed on the sidebars.