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15 Popular Blog Sidebar Items
What to Put in Your Blog's Sidebar

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A blog's sidebar (or sidebars) can be filled with anything the blogger chooses, but there are a variety of items readers might expect to find in your blog's sidebar. There are also many items you can put in your blog's sidebar that can help you market and monetize your blog. Following are 15 of the most popular blog sidebar items.

11. RSS Subscription

Make sure your readers can subscribe to your blog through a feed reader or emails by putting your RSS subscription options in a prominent location on your sidebar.

12. Search Box

Make it easy for your readers to find old content through keyword searches by putting a search box in your sidebar.

13. Advertisements

Your sidebar can hold a lot of ads such as Google AdSense, Amazon Associate ads, direct banner ads and more. Don't overload your sidebar with ads, but do take advantage of the revenue-generating opportunities that your sidebar presents by including some ads on it.

14. Donations Button

While a donation button might not bring in a lot of money to your blog, it's very common for bloggers to include them in their sidebars with the hope that someone will make a donation one day.

15. Social Web Links and Feeds

Many bloggers use their sidebar as a way to promote their various social networking and social bookmarking activities. For example, you might want to include links to your Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg or other account profiles in your blog's sidebar, or you may want to include your Twitter feed in your sidebar.