Widgets, Blidgets And Advertising - Do You Really Need Those?
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Of course there are many others you could add to your sidebar. But thing is, people might leave your blog even before it’s finished loading. My guess is you don’t want that.
Social Networking/Blogging Widgets
The Mybloglog and Blogcatalog ones really go well together, you can see that in my sidebar. They look quite similar and you can customize the look, so it’s pretty cool.
Unfortunately when one of those 2 is down, your sidebar won’t load completely. Probably many people took them off their sidebar for that simple reason. I still use them, and I have to say I’m quite happy with them, compared to other services.
I Haven’t Started Using Those Yet
Well, I think there’s no need to put 10 social networking widgets on your sidebar, and that’s probably why I have only 2. But still, there are some I will probably try out soon.
The first one is TheGoodBlogs. Basically what it does is display links to other blogs from similar niche on your sidebar, and of course your blog appears on other blogs. I find this interesting, as both you and your readers, could discover new sites, meaning more exposure and more traffic for everyone, provided people actually look at it and click.
The second one is BumpZee. This one is quite popular, but I have not installed it yet, simply because I’m satisfied with the MBL and BC ones I already have. But I noticed more and more blogs have the BumpZee widget, so I might try it out eventually, see how it goes.
Advertising Widgets
I’m definitely not a fan of advertising widgets, as a lot of them make your site load slow. Have you heard about Advertlets? Maybe it’s just me, but all the blogs that have this are loading extremely slow. There are tons of advertising widgets out there. But I think you should carefully chose which ones you use, as they can make your site load slow, which would make your advertising efforts worthless, since people would just click away from your blog.
Your Turn To Talk
Which ones do you use? Social networking widgets? Advertising widgets? Have you tried simply removing all of them from your sidebar, to see if it helps make your blog load faster? It probably would. :)
Many blogs I read on a daily or weekly basis don’t have any widgets at all, and you know what? They load fast. And their design is nice, and don’t look too “busy“. What do you think?
Take care! ;)
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25 Responses to “Widgets, Blidgets And Advertising - Do You Really Need Those?”
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As my site is so full of large pictures I’m thinking of removing all widgets to make it faster.
I noticed when I came here that your site was trying to load something from netscape.com. It took 1-2 mins before the sidebars appeared.
Hi Thomas, yep you’re right that Netscape thing (a “vote up” button) I’ve been having problems with that for a couple of days now, I just removed it from my blog, seems to load faster now :)
Your blog loads pretty fast even though you have a lot of pictures :)
I had all those button/ top 100 blogs/ bump me/ MBL widgets/ etc I had it all on my blog when I first released
then I had complaints that it took time to load, which then I took it off and my traffic was still steady
I decided that I do not need those buttons or widgets, bumpzee/plugg/sphinn/ etc
I think it will just clutter ruin layout - if they want to score me on digg me then they can bookmark me from a link :)
its just hard to see my blog turn into a clutter - jon you are right there are a lot of them out there and some blogs I see add all of them at once, spicypages widgets gosh too much - just my 2 cents
Hi Ian, I totally agree buddy, I’m even thinking of putting all the “badges” I have there on a separate page, just to make sure my main page loads faster.
MyBlogLog, Blog Catalog and Bumpzee seem to work ok.
There is almost a Social Networking group spring up everyday. How many can you sign up for and participate in at once.
I think you can put them at the end of your sidebar and everything should load ok if you have it set there.
Part of this whole Web 2.0 is the social aspect of it. That’s where you make connections.
John Clark
http://www.lifetosuccess.com
John, absolutely, you’re right on the money! What is interesting about blogging (well, at least to me) is the connections you make and the interaction.
You’re right, how can someone participate in every single community there is. I,m already a really active member on many of those. But at some point there’s only 24 hours in a day ;)
I try to clear my sidebar up so it’s free of “junk” like useless widgets, etc. I only have the MyBlogLog and Blog Catalog widgets up, and that’s about it. I like my readers’ attention on my content; not anything else.
Grace, same here, it’s awesome being able to connect with people on community sites, and have all those widgets, but overdoing it can kill your blog.
The content and the interaction with the readers are what matters the most ;)
I have mybloglog with everyone’s little faces, and a few little buttons. I don’t like clutter. In fact, even with as little as I have now, I still feel like my sidebars are cluttered.
Hi Angela, I also feel my sidebar is cluttered. I changed my design and put 2 sidebars, and now I feel there’s too much stuff on there. I’m thinking of going back to a 1 sidebar layout and keep only the essential stuff.
The big value in the widgets is 2 fold. They give social proof to the blog and they decentralize social networking to some extent … both really good things.
But to slow down the load time or prevent parts of the blog from loading is a big tradeoff. I’m probably going to tuen my theme into a 3 column one at some point, and I think it might be a good idea to put recent comments at the top of one of those columns.
Then you get some of the advantages of the widgets without the headaches.
Hey Shane, you have a really good point there, social proof.
Putting the recent comments at the top of the sidebar (or close to the top) is a good idea, and can probably help make people wanna comment more, and interact with each other.
BTW, this is off-topic, but you might want to see about using alternative ads for adsense ‘cos at the moment it’s showing a public service ad.
This is something that I’m going to be setting up on my own sites.
Hi April, thanx for letting me know about this, I thought I changed that, but seems I forgot to modify some of my “adsense deluxe” code units. Will fix that :)
hey jon.
i have to go with ‘keep it simple, keep it real.’ i guess it depends on why you, personally, have the blog. is it to make money? is it to teach others? is it an online journal for friends and random visitors? i think therein lies the answer. how vital is it to you to know who, where, when, and why? i have to say, i prefer to read simple and keep my blog that way.
great questions and you bring up a great issue.
ps. i ‘tagged’ you on my blog. you can thank christine at cbg for that one.
Hi Erin, you’re right it does depend on the goals you have for the blog. I agree I like the “simple and real”. although on SWR I like to see all your lil pics on the widgets there, since it’s sorta like a conversational blog, not really “authoritative” let’s say. But on other niche blogs I probably wouldn’t put any widgets.
:)
It really also depends on the people who visit your blogs. For example, many of the people who visit my blog don’t have MyBlogLog accounts as such so there’s no use for me to keep such a widget. On the other hand, statcounter (something that counts the people coming to your blog, sources etc) let’s you mark your regular visitors with names (based on IP adresses), so if one really wants to mark their regulars one could do that. The best thing is, that you really don’t need for them to have an account.
Obviously tho, MyBlogLog looks much cooler.
Hey King, good point there, if you run a niche blog and visitors have no idea what mybloglog is, no use putting the widget there.
I use Performancing Metrics, which is sorta like Statscounter :)
Is it necessary to have your own hosting to install these widgets? Do they not work on shared hosting from wordpress.com?
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Hi BW, I’m not sure as I’ve never used wordpress.com, but I saw some blogs hosted on wordpress.com that had community widgets like MBL and BC, not so sure about advertising widgets though.
I don’t use any widgets at all any more.. all they do is slow down my blogs…
Hi Nils, yeah they can slow down you site, though 1 or 2 widgets won’t kill it :)
I use MBL and BC, Google ads and a couple widgets. I try to keep the site clean, relevant and unobtrusive. I ave about 15 widgets active though! :)
As you know i have several blogs, my first ever blog is Veggie-Blogs a blog run on the blogger platform, and i went widget wild when i first learned of widgets and blidgets. I had one widget i got off of widgetbox, an ebay tower that displays items based on a keyword you give it. It is a pretty cool gidget, but alas my blog was NOT loading for folks who use IE. I didn’t know this till someone informed me of it, and i immediately removed it. I try not to get attached to these things and really focus on the content, layout, feel, and advertising space instead. On my Groovy Vegetarian (which you so graciously installed 4 me, thanxs again) i’m using BC, MBL, Bumpzee, Spicy, a graphic widget, Technorati and RSS buttons, and Google Adsense. I’m still getting a feel on how my blog comes across to others, so none of these items are set in stone.
Eventually i will get it right. heehee.
Missy.