There has certainly been a trend to load up your blog’s sidebars with Widgets … there are widgets for everything … Ok … to tell you the truth, I briefly succumbed to Widget mania myself …but only briefly. Remember all the hype about Blogrush? I had Blogrush on my sidebar. Made my page load a lot slower and got ZIPPO … nada … Zilch … zero … hardly any traffic from it, but the A-listers were always there, sitting on my widget for free. The people who needed exposure the least were getting what amounts to free ads on my blog. Good-bye Blogrush.

Then I experimented with the “Get in My Top Spots” thingy. Who wants to see a widget with 5-10 spaces that says Get in My Top Spots? Hardly anyone that I’ve noticed has a full Top Spots widget … gone … got rid of that useless widget also.

Widget Bucks … oh my God was that a slow loading widget. You have to think about user experience when you put stuff on your blog. How many people are you going to annoy with widgets that take forever to load? Also, it was ugly … unattractive. I got rid of that one pretty fast also.

I also had Bidvertiser for a day or two along with an Amazon widget. What is boils down to is … I am now widgetless. I don’t really like widgets. They’re ugly and they make pages load slowly. Some of the blogs I visit look like a carnival of widgets. They’ve got every widget available on their blog and frankly … it’s too much to look at. You have to become more focused when you are trying to sell on your blog. Concentrate on some quality offers that are well placed and attractive and that don’t interfere with pageload. When you place something in your sidebar or ad spots, give it some time to analyze it … don’t marry it. If the benefits don’t outweigh the disadvantages, get rid of it.

Above all, don’t make your sidebar so distracting that people barely notice your content. Content is what will bring visitors, get people to subscribe to your blog, get them to return and become loyal readers. You don’t really want a one night stand, do you? Bookmark