Earlier this month, I gave WidgetBucks a try as a replacement for the failing AuctionAds (notice I’m not linking to them…) units I’d been running on Poker Underworld. While AuctionAds started out nicely, my earnings declined every month despite increasing traffic and I am convinced they simply lost everyone’s clicks and sales. It was very disappointing because ads that allowed Poker players to shop on eBay while they played did very well, and the customers enjoyed it.

So far, so good with WidgetBucks. In my first 10 days I’ve put through just over 125,000 impressions and seen around a $0.14 ECPM and $0.29 CPC which is nearly triple what Adsense typically pays - pretty good considering that the Poker impressions always show a low CTR and CPM. While $17 in 10 days doesn’t come close to how AuctionAds started out, it’s much better then it ended off and a nice complement to the other ad units on the site.