[Mistakes #2] Five Common Sidebars Mistakes – and How to Fix Them

Posted: 13 Dec 2013 06:22 AM PST

This is the second post in a series of common blogging mistakes. If there's a topic you'd like us to cover in this series, drop a comment below or email ali@dailyblogtips.com.

Most blogs have either one or two sidebars, which appear on every page (or most pages) of the blog. These sidebars contain “widgets” that each perform a different function.

Your sidebar or sidebars are an essential part of your blog. Unfortunately it’s easy to get things wrong. A poorly-structured sidebar will, at best, not add anything to your blog – and at worst, it will put new visitors off sticking around.

Note: To edit your sidebar, login to your WordPress dashboard and go to Appearance –>Widgets. You can drag and drop widgets into and out of your sidebar.

Here are five common mistakes that bloggers make with their sidebars. Do any of them sound familiar?

Mistake #1: Adding Too Many Widgets

The biggest mistake I see on blogs is cluttering up the sidebar with too many widgets. This is definitely a case where less is more.

Although WordPress comes with lots of built-in widgets, and there are plenty of plug-ins that add new types of widget, it’s a good idea to stick to just a few crucial ones and leave out those tag clouds and calendars.

Fix it: It's easy for "widget creep" to happen over time. Review your sidebar ever few months and ask yourself whether you can ditch any of the widgets.

Mistake #2: Leaving All the Default Widgets in Place

When you first install WordPress, it comes with certain default widgets such as the "meta" widget. Leaving this widget in place makes your blog look amateurish, and is unlikely to add anything to your readers’ experience.

The "Recent Comments" widget is also enabled by default – you may not want to give readers' comments this much prominence in case a spam or abusive comment sneaks past moderation.

Fix it: Make sure you remove any of the default widgets that you don’t want as soon as you've set up a new blog; don't leave them hanging around for weeks. It takes seconds to drag them out into the "Inactive widgets" section (where they keep all their settings).

Mistake #3: Putting Your Widgets in a Weird Order

Blogs have developed a convention for where certain elements are placed. For instance, in navigation menus, the contact link is usually the one on the far right.

In your sidebar, you should have your subscription widget at or very near the top: this is where readers will look first. If you're using a search widget, that should normally appear just below the subscription one.

Fix it: Take a look at major blogs in your industry and see how their sidebars are arranged, then stick to anything which appears to be a common convention.

Mistake #4: Not Having an Email Subscription Option

Having your RSS link clearly available is useful, but many readers will prefer to subscribe by email. If you use Feedburner, it only takes a few minutes to activate email subscriptions and copy the code Feedburner provides into a text widget on your blog.

It's generally a good idea to make your email subscription option more prominent than your RSS option: take a look at how Copyblogger do this.

Fix it: Even if you read blogs by RSS, keep in mind that many of your readers (or would-be readers!) will prefer to use email. If you don't have time to set up email subscriptions today, put a note in your diary to do it next week.

Mistake #5: Stuffing Your Sidebar With Google Ads

There's nothing wrong with running ads on your blog – but stuffing your sidebar with Google Adsense widgets won't do much for you or your readers. Too many ads will block out other important content – as readers may ignore your sidebar entirely.

Fix it: A classier option is to sell 125×125 or 250×250 banner ads in your sidebar: these look neat (if you make sure you line them up nicely!) and, depending on your theme, can add colour and visual interest.

Have you come across any of these sidebar mistakes, or do you have another one to add? Let us know in the comments.

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How to Make Money Blogging (It’s Not What You Think…) - DailyBlogTips

How to Make Money Blogging (It’s Not What You Think…)

Posted: 12 Dec 2013 01:19 AM PST

This is a guest post from Tom Ewer.

Becoming a professional blogger is a dream career for many people, but making enough money from your blog to provide a full-time income isn’t easy.

If you’ve been reading DailyBlogTips for a while, you’ll know it’s possible to make money from your blog and you probably have a good idea of how to do so in theory. However, it’s an all too common story for bloggers who have done everything by the book for months or even years to still be struggling.

Maybe you’ve built up your traffic, promoted your site and monetized your blog but still find you’re stuck earning peanuts for all your efforts. Sound familiar? You’re not alone.

But don’t throw in the towel just yet — it is possible to make money as a blogger. Not only that, it’s possible for you to be making a full-time income within just a couple of months.

No, I’m not talking about some dodgy get-rich-quick scheme or the latest black-hat techniques to trick Google into sending your site thousands of visitors. There’s more than one way to make money blogging and if you’re having trouble monetizing your own site, it may be time to consider writing for somebody else.

How to Make Money as a Freelance Blogger

The problem with trying to make money through blogging is that in most cases, it takes a long time and a lot of content before you can build up the traffic and followers required to effectively monetize your site.

There is no easy short-cut here. You might get lucky and get picked up by The New York Times or Huffington Post and you can speed things along a little with guest posting and other promotional techniques, but in general you need to be prepared to work hard for a long time and with very little income to show for it.

However, there are plenty of blogs out there that have already achieved a level of success and are making decent money for the owner(s). Once blogs reach a certain size, they become quite a challenge for one person to manage and keep producing high quality content. What do these blogs need? Writers.

As a blogger, you’ve already proved you have writing skills. Not only that but you know how to format a post for easy reading, optimise it for search engines, find and insert appropriate images, promote it on social networks and interact with readers and commenters. All these skills make you highly qualified to work as a freelance writer for other blogs.

Finding Blogs to Write for

There are thousands of blogs out there looking for writers so it’s probably easier than you think to get started as a freelance blogger. An easy place to start is by looking through the postings on freelance job boards. One of the best for new freelance bloggers is the Problogger Job Board.

You can also have a look through the job listings on sites like Elance, oDesk and PeoplePerHour. Be warned that there are a lot of very low paid jobs on these sites and it’s easy to fall into the trap of undervaluing your services.

There’s no shame in taking on some lower rate jobs when you’re just getting started (they provide useful portfolio fodder if nothing else) but always keep in mind that you are a quality writer and you deserve to be paid fairly for your work. Blogging requires just as much effort as any other kind of freelance writing. Some job posters are simply after low-quality bargain basement blog posts for SEO purposes and these are the types of listings you want to avoid. However, there are usually a few gems if you take the time to look.

You can also try contacting blogs directly to see if they’re looking for writers. This can be effective as you’ll be facing less competition from other bloggers and you can go directly to the blogs that interest you and cover topics you’re interested in writing about.

Some bloggers advertise when they’re looking for writers but there’s no harm in sending a quick speculative email even if there’s no mention of other bloggers working for the site. Getting in first and showing your enthusiasm not only gives you a better chance of getting the job, but you may well be able to negotiate a better rate.

Advertising Your Services as a Freelance Blogger

As well as going out and actively looking for work, you want to make sure that it’s easy for clients to come directly to you. If you’ve been blogging for a while, this is easy. Your blog acts as a ready-made portfolio to showcase your writing skills and it’s simple to add a “Hire Me” page to provide details about your freelance writing services.

On your that page you should include links to sample posts that you’ve written for other blogs, a couple of testimonials from some happy customers and details about your experience and interest when it comes to writing topics. If you don’t have any samples, get some guest posts published or at least link to your best posts on your own blog.

Some freelance bloggers also like to publish their rates on their website while others prefer to give personalized quotes when they are contacted. If you do choose to publish your rates, bear in mind that while it may save you a bit of time in negotiation, you’ll lose the flexibility of setting different rates for different clients and it may make it harder for you to raise your rates in the future.

Another excellent way of advertising your services is by adding a link to your site and a couple of sentences about your services in your bylines for client sites. While this is not always possible (some blogs may hire you on a ghostwriter basis where your articles are published under another writer’s name), it’s always a nice bonus when you can get it and you may even want to consider accepting a lower rate for high authority blogs that offer you a byline on posts you write.

Get Started as a Freelance Blogger Today

Working as a freelance blogger is a great career model as there are so few barriers to entry and you can get started right away. You don’t need years of experience or big-name clients to make it as a freelance writer – your writing speaks for itself.

If you’ve been trying to make it as a freelance blogger for a while now without much success, it may be time to rethink your plan of action and focus some of your efforts on writing for others as well as your own blog. Not only is it a great way to make money but it can also help you to build your blog audience and drive traffic to your site – you may well find that after a few months of working as a freelance blogger, your own site starts making some money after all.

Have you ever thought about offering your services as a freelance blogger? If you have any other questions or ideas, leave a comment below.

Tom Ewer is the author of Paid to Blog: a comprehensive online course for freelance bloggers. He is also the founder of Leaving Work Behind.

Wanna learn how to make more money with your website? Check the Online Profits training program!

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