If you want to make your blog a success, there are several important factors you need to pay attention to. One of these factors is your sidebar, which you can use to optimize your blog, market and/or monetize it.

Below, I listed a couple of my favorite sidebar-related WordPress plugins.

Widget Logic:

This plugin gives every widget an extra control field called "Widget logic" that lets you control the pages that the widget will appear on.

This way, you can optimize your sidebar and display certain widgets only on the homepage, or only on single post pages, the search results or archive pages, or a combination of pages.
 

KB Advanced RSS:

The KB Advanced RSS widget gives you more control over how the feed shows up in your sidebar.

• Decide which RSS fields to display (as opposed to the default RSS widget, which limits you to link, title, and description)
• Decide how to format the fields (it doesn't have to be a list if you don't want it to be)

WP related Posts:

This WordPress plugin provides multiple options to show the via tags related posts of a post.

It contains a sidebar widget that is only visible when viewing a single post and displays a list of posts that are related with the current post via the tags.

It is also possible to insert the list of related post in a post via a placeholder. You can also embedd the list of related post in template files to add it to the bottom of each post page.

MaxBlogPress Optin Form Adder:

This plugin allows you to create optin forms to match your blog’s look and feel in just 4 easy steps.

(In fact, MaxBlogpress offers many more, very useful WP plugins – most of them free. Go check them out.

WP Listbuilding Plugin:

WP ListBuilding Plugin is a revolutionary new plugin that allows you to create eye-catching, subscriber sucking optin banners that stick to the base of your blog and virtually force your blog visitors to join your list!

MONETIZE YOUR SIDEBAR

RAPBank plugin:

Use this plugin to get RAP Bank Products listed on your WP blog simply, easily and with flexibility by placing a block of RAP Bank ads in your posts, pages, or sidebar 

The products listed on RAPBank pay out up to 100% commission instantly.

MaxBlogPress DealDotCom Widget:

Using this plugin, you can easily put DealDotCom’s deal of the day at the sidebar of your wordpress blog

The nice thing about this plugin is that it will automtically show the latest deal every time a new deal is on sale.

DealDotCom offers you 35% commission of the profit and 15% commission on the 2nd tier.

All in One Adsense and YPN:

All in One Adsense and YPN is a Free and Open Source WordPress plugin which is able to automatically insert google adsense ads or yahoo publisher network (YPN) ads in to your posts on the fly. It doesn't matter if you have 1 post or 100,000 posts, it will insert your ad code into all of them automatically.
 

OIO Publisher:

Control your ad space with the OIOpublisher ad manager. Sell advertising on
your blog or website and keep 100% of the revenue. (Fully template based, so easy to set up)

Coupon Code for April 2010:  BLOOM-OIO125
(Changes every month – contact me for the new code)

If you've spent any time at all learning about copywriting, you know that the core of any great sales letter lies with an IRRESISTIBLE OFFER. People can't resist it. It continues to draw them back time and time again, long after they've finished comparing prices and scrutinizing bonuses to see which deal gives them the best "bang for their buck".

Listen, it doesn't take a copywriting genius or a programming guru to help you create an irresistible offer. All it takes is Exit Offer Generator and just a minute of your time. Test out different offers and find the one that really pushes your customer's hot buttons. With Exit Offer Generator, you'll never have to wonder "what's working" and what isn't.

Plus, if Exit Offer Generator doesn't pay for itself within the first two months – you're entitled to a 100% refund, no questions asked. There aren't many software companies out there that can make a claim like that and back it up – but once you see the testimonials (and the earnings!) from some Exit Offer Generator users, you'll see it really does live up to expectations.

lick the banner to visit the page where you can download the software (and at the price, it's a STEAL!)

These last few weeks, twitter and my website flipping adventures are taking up almost all of my time, yet my eye fell on a little tool Google added to their search result pages: The Wonder Wheel (sounds promising, doesn’t it?)

You can find it by clicking the ‘show options’ link underneath the Google logo on the search results page. In the menu that appears, you’ll find a link to the wonder wheel.

When you click it, the wonder wheel will open, and you’ll be able to dig in deeper into your subject, and find some popular related search terms.

Just try it out. it’s a nice little addon!

Generally, I get the creeps whenever I hear the word ‘guru’, but this little game is the exception to the rule!
Check it out, it’s hilarious! (Not to mention a very cool marketing tool!)

I must warn you… it’s pretty addictive 

How many Guru’s can you kill?

My top score:32 – Can You Beat It?
(Post a comment to let me know)

I’m not really the type of person that has ‘idols’ – and the word guru is enough to give me the chills. In fact, there are very few people I actually follow in their daily or weekly actions. I rather take things as they come. Successful products and brilliant ideas often come from people you’ve never heard of before, while I’ve seen more than one so called ‘big name’ deliver a product that wasn’t worth even a single dollar.

So I try to keep an open mind and try to not to get influenced by a marketer’s name when I look for info or check out a new product.

There’s one exception, however…

Ever since I first laid my hands on one of Robert Plank‘s eBooks (I think it was ‘Sales Page Tactics 3′), I’m a huge fan of his work.
And with me, loads of others.

His PHP- and Java script guides all sell like hot cakes, and the same goes for the scripts he creates. In just a few years time, he has sold thousands of products. Of course there’s the ‘name fame’-factor: he sells hundreds of copies of his ebooks and scripts, just because they have his name on it. But there’s a good reason for that, since what he delivers are quality products – every single one of them!

Several of my own products – 1-2-3 Dimesale, Panic OTO and Framebrander were based on scripts published in his ebooks (Thanks, Robert!).

But enough about Robert, I don’t want him to get all snobbish…

 What I actually wanted to tell you is that Robert recently released two new scripts/WP plugins that can really help you to boost your (blog) mailing list.

Action Optin allows you to stick email subscription forms on your blog/sales letters that make sure people won’t be distracted and click away: when people click the submit button, your form disappears and is replaced with a customizable thankyou-message. You can see it in action on this page. This tool comes both as a PHP script and a WordPress plugin.

Action Comments is a WP plugin that allows you to:

- place a checkbox underneath the comment form. It’s already checked, so after someone leaves you a comment, they have to uncheck the box to stay off your list. Chances are if they are taking the time to leave you a comment, they’re already hungry for information.

- show an "alert" box to get people to sign up. The comment form looks like a regular blog comment form, but when they try to submit that comment, an unblockable JavaScript box pops up on the screen and asks if they’d like to sign up to your list – with whatever message you choose.

This plugin works with any autoresponder service.

If you are trying to build your list, these scripts are definitely worth to check out!