In the past few days, I redesigned my sidebar. It doesn’t sound like much, does it? But looking back, that one change has had quite an impact on the overall look.

In blogs in particular, the sidebar is a big part of your design. But also in blogs, they tend to be quite poorly done. The reason is that very few of us design our sidebars with content in mind.

I’m guilty as well. When I first designed the sidebar for this blog, I was thinking about leaderboard ads and various widgets. Since then, I’ve dropped the ads, changed the widgets and added a sideblog.

Odds are, your sidebar content has changed in the course of your blogging as well. It is important to reassess your entire blog every now and again, but the sidebar is one area that you should pay particular attention to because of its changing nature.

In this post, I want to go through how I reassessed mine, and worked to improve it. You can then apply the same process to your own blog.

Business Blog Wire is a blog run by Easton Ellsworth. The blog is focused particularly on businesses blogging, but also for any money-making bloggers out there.

So, what can be said about its design? It’s a plain design, but it works. There is a lot of content, and a lot of links to other sites in its blog network.

What Has Been Done Well?

• Post headings. Have a look at the headings and you’ll see why I think they’re great. Scanning down the home page for post titles is not a problem here.

As bloggers, many of us rely on adverts for income. A new danger is shadowing that income though; the ad blockers. We have already asked whether ad blocking is moral or not, but regardless of the answer, people will continue to use it.

If you’re looking to protect your income, you need a solution to this problem. Blocking all FireFox users is not a good solution, and even blocking only those using the extension isn’t ideal either.

The Answer Is To Hide an Image

In the morality discussion, we came to the conclusion that whilst ad blocking may not be moral, and while it may damage the internet as a whole, it will continue to be used because it suits individuals. And therein lies the answer.

Adblock Plus is an extension to the FireFox browser that let’s you selectively block adverts. It is a rather advanced plugin with many options, but is it moral to use? Or is it stealing from bloggers?

The New York Times have given some facts behind the extension. Between the details of what exactly ad blocking is, and how it relates to various business models on the internet, one quote in particular stands out, “300,000 to 400,000 new users each month.” Is that figure worrying or to be expected?

There are some strong opinions for both sides of the debate. For instance, one article says that ad blocking is not only moral, but needed, whilst another has replied back with the counter side.

Starfeeder is a fan site for the massively popular StarCraft series of sci-fi strategy games. Naturally, Starfeeder sports a very modern, techy, design to suit the series. Has it pulled it off?

What Has Been Done Well?

• Header image. Most blogs show their topic through a well-thought-up title, a good slogan, or some other sort of written message. Starfeeder however has chosen to use a striking image from the game itself. Very effective, and any long-time StarCraft fan will appreciate the joke!

Photo by -LeeB- If my theme is sponsored, will I get banned from Google?

In short, no. However, it is entirely possible that other aspects of the theme will get you banned, and even more worryingly for some is that non-sponsored themes can get you banned just as easily.

The fact that a theme is sponsored is rarely important, and should not be allowed to put you off sponsored themes altogether. The possible dangers of downloaded themes are not a myth however. They are very real, and malicious theme owners can do any number of things which could Google will begrudge you.

A Little Knowledge Is a Dangerous Thing

Most bloggers will know that when judging how to rank a site, search engines, like Google, look at links in particular. Many bloggers also know that they don’t judge your site only on the links coming in to it, but on the links going out from it. This is what has caused the commotion about sponsored themes.

Advertising and readership are the two things that most bloggers are trying to promote. The thing that isn’t always realised is that you can’t promote both advertising and readership. It is either advertising or readership.

Your blog’s layout contains a number of hotspots. Content in these hotspots, such as that above the fold, is looked at (And then acted upon) more often than content in other locations. It is important to realise that each hotspot can only contain one type of content; either adverts or readership promotion.

Promoting Readership

By choosing to build readership, you are actively choosing to put your adverts into locations where they will perform worse, for the benefit of your readers. In this way, you can more easily encourage readers to subscribe, or simply browse in non-commercial peace. In this way you are hoping to build up a good audience, discussion and contacts.

This approach is best recommended for blogs still in their infancy. You will only continue writing the blog if you feel people are actually reading, and benefiting from it. With small audience, your profits are going to be meagre no matter how well you place them, so why damage your blog’s growth potential?