Sometime ago I noticed the hype about WidgetBucks and got interested to put it on websites of mine. I decided to do a nice thing, and use somebody's referrer link to sign up. I was sure that when WB would work, I'd make a decent amount of $, and so would the person that referred me (10%). All said and done, I put up the code and found the a nice type of advertising and location on the page. And then, last week, I received this message: I am not amused. First of all there is the fact that the guy that referred me knows/sees the website that I registered to WB with? With that information, plus the fact that he receives 10%, he can easily calculate how much $ I'm making with WB and with what website. I feel that this information is personal and maybe even valuable, and now it could easily end up pretty much anywhere. (I'm not saying it will, but it could...) Second, the fact that this person knows my website, he knew how to get in contact with me. In 1 year I'll make high XXX$ for him. I had the decency to respond kindly to his message, and asked kindly for a decent backlink on his website, as a thank you. It's been for a week now and no response... How do you guys feel about the fact that a program like WB shows your personal valueable information to others, is this normal? And about the fact that this referred dude contacted me, it shows he has some balls But I don't really know what to think of it... I get him free cash and he asks for more I'd like to know some of your opinions and reactions on all of this... Thanks!
I have noticed that one or two of my referrals are shown by email address instead of WB account number. You have probably been one of the unlucky ones who's email address was shown. He would have no way of knowing which sites you were using WB on unless he Googled your email addy and found it on one of your pages somewhere.
That's a lesson learned. I signed up with an emailaddress like . So it's not very hard for him to figure that out. But he should have never been able to view my address in the first place. I love it how you make your point, good arguments... Why are you glad you didn't sign up? Only problems that I know of are the banning of accounts. That hasn't happened to me, so no need to bother with that. All people that I know off that didn't get banned, got paid. So I see no problem there either. The only thing that remains is their very slow response time from their support desk. And now this matter... I have dropped them a message about it, but what can they do. It's already too late. My address is out in the open plus the income from the month of january, enough damage done imo. They should cut his percentage back to 5% and give me the other 5%
because I don't want random people knowing my email I use a "secret" email different from all my other ones for things like widget bucks and adsense why? so if someone cracks the email, they don't get access to everything about me and steal the things that make me money
They have had lots of teething problems and although we've noticed the privacy issues with this it's possible that they haven't. Get in touch and let them know and I'm sure they'll fix it - albeit a bit late.
Thanks for elaborating You're right, that's a good thing to do. I also do this sort of... I use email different addresses with forwarders, so there is not much to crack there. 'Cause the addresses don't really exist.
Yup, done that and we'll see what happens... But how do you feel about this dude contacting me, it's rather bold isn't it? I don't know what I would have done, but if I did have the guts to send him a message asking for his advice and he responded. I would surely have the decency to thank him again for his message and for the cash he's bringing in. (offtopic: thanks for that link in your sig for godaddy coupons)
Well just an update, I got a reply from WB. In my opinion it's a very bad thing to share personal information by default. I have not seen anything that stated I had to uncheck that box if I didn't want my information to be seen by the referrer...
Although WB might not know how to do this, I think the ideal thing to do is have all contact run through the WB website with actual user information other than perhaps the screenname kept private. That's how eBay and a lot of other popular sites deal with this type of situation.
So the default setting is to share your personal information with other internet marketers/competitors? How convenient... :/ Edit: mine was unticked
Well I can't remember that I ticked that box... And it seems very unlikely to me that I did that unintentionally Most of the time those boxes are something like "keep me updated with daily emails about everything that is going on"... So I stay far away from them... Maybe they've changed it or something. Good that your box was unticked MTbiker!
I was thinking about using Widget Bucks (I got banned from Adsense which is really annoying) but now I don't think I will... It also seems a little crazy to turn a revenue sharing thing like that into an MLM setup. But maybe that is just me.
MLM setup? .. Edit: Google is my friend: multilevel marketing or network marketing Well WB is okay, it pays good for certain products while others are crap... You just have to dodge some bullets lol