Promotion Is Free — Traffic Widgets

Today I’m going to talk about traffic widgets. These are little snippets of code that you put on your website, perhaps in your sidebar, to bring traffic to your site. This a free way to promote your site. There are dozens of traffic building widgets out there and I have tried quite a few. They all work pretty much the same way. You sign up for the site, add your blog with information about it, and put the widget in your sidebar. The idea is that your posts or headlines will be shown on other blogs, while you will showcase others’ posts and headlines on yours.

The key to using these systems successfully is to choose the right category for your blog. In the past, I have found that being lumped in with different kinds of blogs means that the people whom I would like to connect with don’t see my blog. However, I will say that if you have a new blog, or a blog in a popular area such as blogging or technology, there may be some merit in using widgets.

I wasn’t always a cynic. I tried widgets and enthused about Blogrush, Entrecard and others. However, I didn’t find that they worked well for me so I have decided not to put any more on this blog. So why am I mentioning a promotion technique that I no longer use? Because it might work for you. For every person that says that a particular widget doesn’t work or is a waste of time, there are dozens more who enthuse about it. So I’m leaving the choice up to you, and I’m inviting anyone who has used traffic widgets before to weigh in with their opinion.