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MPire's new Widgetbucks promise to pay out more than Google

If you're trying to monetize your Web site or blog, you probably know there are alternatives to Google AdSense. I wrote recently about PubMatic, which can serve up ad units from networks competitive to Google if they'll pay out more. And as of today, there's yet another advertising widget you can use -- provided you run a particular type of site.

MPire's new WidgetBucks program is designed for sites and blogs about goods. Electronics, appliances, stationery -- it doesn't matter, as long as the category relates to items that are sold. The WidgetBucks program looks at what your site is about, and puts into its widget offers on related products. You get paid when the user clicks through to find out more about a product.

Data for the products pitched on WidgetBucks comes from eBay and from Shopping.com. The Shopping.com database has sales information from a number of retailers, including Amazon.

The MPire code evaluates the content on your page and attempts to pitch products related to it. I tried some tests on Switchboard, a directory that runs WidgetBucks ads, and found the ads relevant when they appeared.

MPrice CEO Matt Hulett says WidgetBucks pays out a lot more than standard Web ads. If you run a site about products, it's certainly worth a shot.

After the jump, you can see a live embedded widget and judge for yourself how relevant its product pitches are.

… Read more

Wipbox: eBay and Craigslist for dummies

Wipbox is a relatively new service that helps people sell things on Craigslist and eBay. Wipbox charges a small fee to help you put together a really slick-looking listing and figure out some of the subtle aspects of getting an item to sell quickly based on what category and service it's listed in. If you've ever wanted to sell something on either of the two classifieds services but have been unsure about a good starting price or the best way to convey the product information, Wipbox does the heavy lifting for you.

To get started quickly, you can do a search for your item. It's not free at $0.25 a pop, but it gives you the starting and closing costs for your item in various categories (for eBay) or locales (for Craigslist). For example, if you're here in San Francisco, your item might fetch more money in surrounding neighborhoods. Likewise, on eBay, putting it in a different category can dramatically improve the closing price. You're paying Wipbox to do the legwork.

In testing, we came across some skewed numbers for certain search items. For eBay, it was likely due to auctioneers incorrectly labeling their items or adding extra words to their titles to boost search engine presence. For Craigslist, we ran into problems with the search grouping together multiple SKUs. For example, a search for an Xbox 360 pulled in results with a difference of about a hundred dollars due to the system having two versions, each at a different price. For popular items such as iPods though, drilling down to the specific model number helped with these issues.

Wipbox bases its statistics on 30 days of eBay listings, and a full week of Craigslist sales, so whatever information you're getting is fairly current for market value. To find general price ranges for online auctions, there's also Mpire, a service that tracks auction prices on eBay to show you whether or not it's in demand--a little bit like Farecast does for airplane tickets.

The real catch to using Wipbox is its listing creator. Wipbox will pull in a description, user reviews, and specifics from Amazon.com. You can either pay $0.15 to have this information posted straight to your listing, or copy and paste the code field by field into eBay or Craigslist's listing creation box for free. … Read more