Using Widgets For Traffic Generation?

As I try to generate more traffic to my blog, I find that there are really a ton of different ways to do this.  On this very day as I was trying to install some necessary widgets on my sidebar, I had an idea.  What if there was a way to have my blog posts in a widget that someone could then put on their website?

As I searched in Google, I came across Widgetbox.com.  In about half an hour I came up with this little widget that shows my most recent posts and has links directly to the post embedded in the widget.  Also I have a logo at the top that links to my blog.

People who have websites that need content can then grab my widget and they are redirected to Widgetbox.com so they can change the color, look and feel of my widget to better fit their own website or blog.  Below is a screenshot of options to change the widget.

I was wondering, “Why in the world would someone want to place content on their website that takes the visitor away from their site?”  It dawned on me that many people just need more content to get visitors to the website in the first place and they don’t care that the added content goes to another website.

Just look at the popular EzineArticles.com.  They get boatloads of traffic and make tons of cash by adding Adsense to the articles that other people publish.  At the end of every article, the author leaves a resource link that takes the visitor back their own website.

EzineArticles doesn’t seem to mind too much and the reason is because they get tons of traffic by offering other people’s content.  Adding widgets like mine to your website is a good idea if you need more content so your website or blog ranks higher.

It doesn’t make sense to put widgets that directly compete with your site but if you use integration marketing, you can add fries to your burger so to speak.  Add a widget that complements your site or blog and your visitors will love you for it.  I hope mine do.

I’m sure there are more effective ways of getting traffic to your website or blog but what the heck, I’ll give this a try and see what comes of it.  Widgetbox even has tracking stats for your widget so it will be easy to see if people are viewing your widget or not.  It’s free to sign up and your widget goes into a much bigger database of widgets where people can search for what they want and need.

After you create your widget it goes into their database.  See the screenshot below to see how many visitors the business section of this site gets.  Notice that I am the 243rd member and the widgets get 17,674 views per day.  Also notice the other categories.  Your blog may have more or less views depending on the category chosen.

After clicking on the business category you can see even further how many unique visitors see this business section each day.  See the screenshot below.  For 243 members 7616 unique visits is pretty amazing.  If my blog posts are interesting and worthwhile, then I “should” see my fair share of traffic.  Again I will keep you posted as to whether this is worth the effort.

I welcome your comments and if you have any experience with custom widgets, I’d love to take a look at them.  If you have some free time you might want to go ahead and create your own.  Widgetbox is not limited to just blog posts.  You can add html, video, images, or anything else you can think of.  It just takes a lot of imagination and just a little bit of effort.  Until next time…