The continuing sidebar widget clean-up has me looking at Blog Catalog.
Blog Catalog is a lot like MyBlogLog and Bumpzee in that it is a social networking site where people can browse profiles and see what a blog is all about before they click through. You can message other bloggers, start communities, add friends and "neighborhoods" or just browse around for someone or something that interests you.
They bill themselves as "the premiere social blog directory on the internet." I'd be inclined to agree. Aside from search engines, Blog Catalog is the single largest sender of traffic to the Hot Dog Truck! With 100 visitors per month, they blow the other social networking sites away! Blog Catalog visitors tend to hang around for 3-4 minutes and read 2-3 pages per visit.
This is a quality site that sends quality traffic, you bet it's STAYING!
Blog Catalog
Bumpzee
In the continuing quest to clean up the sidebars, I take a look at Bumpzee.
Bumpzee is kind of like MyBlogLog or Blog Catalog only it's more focussed on the community. When you join Bumpzee, you can join or start your own community. The idea is that bloggers with similar interests can get together and create dialogs and "Bump" the best posts (move them up the list of posts in the community) so they're seen.
I manage the "Day in the Life Community" on Bumpzee which is a group of blogs "with a humorous, edgy, provocative, unique and interesting outlook on life." There are currently 135 blogs in the community. It's a great way to get introduced to other sites.
As far as traffic goes, I get 10-15 visitors a month on average from Bumpzee. I joined when it was still relatively new (it's about a year old) and I'm committed to the concept and, in turn, the widget.
Bumpzee stays.
MyBlogLog
MyBlogLog is very familiar to many bloggers out there. I see their widgets everywhere I surf. For the longest time, I couldn't even sign up for MyBlogLog. I finally figured out I was already signed up for it through my YaHoo! account.
MyBlogLog will stay for its ubiquity in the blogosphere, not for its performance. I get only 1-3 visitors per month from MyBlogLog. Not a lot, but it is so popular I'm willing to stick with it and see if more come to visit.
Ezine Articles
Another widget I have that I plan to keep is my Ezine Articles widget. Ezine Articles is a site where you can publish an article about something you (hopefully) know a lot about. The site gets lots of visitors looking for "expert" information.
All you do is write your article, post it and wait for approval. Once approved, your article (and a link to your site) is published. Ezine Articles sends me 9-10 visitors a month. The best thing about it is those visitors read 3 additional pages and tend to hang around for 5 minutes or so on the site. Not only do I get traffic, I get people to READ my stuff beyond what they came looking for.
Ezine Articles' widget stays!
Technorati
In my continuing quest to evaluate which widgets to delete from my site, I turn my attention to Technorati.
If you don't know what Technorati is, you've probably been living under a rock for quite some time. This site tracks links to your site and has search functionality.
According to them:
"Currently tracking 112.8 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media.
Technorati is the recognized authority on what's happening on the World Live Web, right now. The Live Web is the dynamic and always-updating portion of the Web. We search, surface, and organize blogs and the other forms of independent, user-generated content (photos, videos, voting, etc.) increasingly referred to as 'citizen media.'"
OK, so they track me, and everyone else. Aside from the ego boost I may get when I view my blog's "authority," what do they do for me? 10-12 visitors a day, that's what! Despite many internet 2.0 geeks trashing Technorati, I'll keep them!
I WILL be getting rid of the "What's my Blog Worth?" Technorati widget. I just think it's getting a tad egotistical to display it!
Linkworth
I am on a quest to clean up the widgets in my sidebar.
Today I'm looking at Linkworth.
Linkworth is an advertising affiliate deal that claims I can sell ads on my blog with "little or no effort" and make some extra money. I registered with them, wrote an introductory post and displayed their widget prominently in the left sidebar for months. I checked in fairly regularly and stuck with it.
The result? NOTHING. NADA. Not one click in or out.
Bye bye Linkworth!
BlogRush
Continuing with my sidebar evaluation/widget clean-up, I turn my attention to BlogRush. For those who don't know, BlogRush was a heavily hyped widget that came out a few months ago which promised to dramatically increase traffic to blogs who had the widget installed.
There was an increase, but it was not dramatic. Unlike Criteo, which does essentially the same thing, BlogRush made a HUGE SPLASH on the scene and touted a lot of outrageous promises about "a flood of targeted readers" to blogs world wide. At 1-3 visitors a month, I'd call it more of a trickle!
While that may not seem like much, I'm sticking with BlogRush for the time being. I just wish they wouldn't promise something they can't possibly deliver.
Bidvertiser
In my quest to clean up the sidebars, I turned my attention to Bidvertiser yesterday. For those who don't know, Bidvertiser is a pay per click advertising program similar to Google Adsense. I have Adsense on the site and it performs quite well-$100 to $200 per month in revenue.
Bidvertiser is another story. Their ads are what I'd call "hokey." Lots of "get rich quick" programs, free ringtone ads and other such nonsense. Not a lot of value to the reader. I have had Bidvertiser ads on the site for over 9 months-TOTAL REVENUE= $3.10. Not a lot of value to me.
$3.10 over 9 months is a little bit more than 34 cents per month. No value there. The ads display intermittently and they don't earn their keep. The referral widget has generated 4 clicks in 9 months and NO referrals.
Bye bye Bidvertiser. Google earns, you don't.
Criteo
I am starting to clean up the old side bar a bit to remove some of the "clutter." Part of that process is evaluating which widget works (say THAT ten times fast) best for me. For a widget to "work," it needs to provide either me or my reader with some value.
Value for me would mean the widget either sends me traffic or makes me money. Value for the reader means they get further information or entertainment from the widget.
I already removed the Blog Explosion Widgets from my sidebars, because they suck.
Today I am going to talk about my CRITEO AUTOROLL WIDGET which is half way down the page in the left sidebar. The header of the widget says "Random Blogosphere"-I edited it from the default header. It displays other people's blogs who have the widget installed according to a set of criteria I entered in their registration. My site is displayed on other sites as well. This one stays. I get 2-4 visitors a day from this widget. It doesn't seem like much, but it does add up! They are also developing a tag cloud that will enable bloggers to earn money based on click throughs. I'm not sure how it's going to work as they have not launched it in English yet.
I'm a bit sentimental about this widget too. It was one of the very first I installed on my site and I've made a couple of blog buddies that I found through this widget initially.
