WidgetBucks, who until today were featured quite prominently on my blogs, have just changed their payment policy.

Now, ad networks changes their terms and conditions all the time, but the WidgetBucks change is the most mindblowingly stupid idea I’ve ever heard:

From now on, publishers will only be paid for trafffic from the US and Canada.

For many publishers, that will completely wipe out their earnings, and they may not even be aware of the change. Meanwhile, WidgetBucks are continuing to accept clicks from outside the US and redirect them to their own affiliates. (I just checked – one of my links was redirected to Amazon via mpire.com)

In short, they’re generating money from your traffic, while refusing to pay you for it.

Now, there’s a possibility that this is just a really, really bad attempt to try to stamp out fraud and not a ’scam’, but the consequence for publishers is exactly the same – WidgetBucks is stealing your traffic and not paying you.

I’m not sure whether to remove or not all WidgetBucks widgets from my sites, but I will closely monitor their progress and statements. My personal recommendation is that you should do the same but obviously, the decision as to whether or not to remove WidgetBucks is yours at the end of the day.