Don’t Click This

Over the past month I’ve noticed at least a dozen blogs that I frequent, add various widgets; the most popular one being the My Blog Log recent readers widget. Bumpzee has also released a similar widget, along with a digg type plugin for posts (but I can’t seem to get these to work at the moment). It seems that widgets are clearly the way to ‘pimp your blog’ and to be honest it wouldn’t surprise me if Technorati release a recent readers widget pretty soon as well!

Anyways, I was thinking about how you could take advantage of this recent widget craze from a business perspective (not in any kind of spammy way, mind). It seems to me that now is a really good time to have a blog in conjunction with or as part of your website as it’s an excellent potential source of traffic. All these communites that are popping up all over the place make it easier to get your website noticed. Just by submitting your blog or site to My Blog Log can get you at least a few new visitors.

But think about this, when someone leaves a comment on your blog, nine times out of ten you’ll go and check out their site too. The same often applies to widgets (maybe not so much on high traffic blogs as recent readers change pretty quickly) when someone sees a new recent reader they’ll often have a look to see who it is (I know I do).

So essentially you could generate traffic and get some exposure simply by logging into My Blog Log (then you’re avatar shows up) and then browsing other blogs and sites with the widgets on them. Obviously, it’s not like readers click on the recent readers widget that much (I don’t think) but still, the author might and it’s free, so what have you got to lose?