SmartLinks Plugin and Widget: a Review
Published November 5th, 2007 in Reviews.There’s a cool new plugin out that automatically gives your readers extra information about some of the items you link to. It’s called SmartLinks, and basically what it does is analyze the links in your posts and brings contextually correct information directly to the blog. When the reader clicks on the little blue square next to your link, a small window like this opens up:
The window will display “relevant content from across the web that’s populated using semantic understanding of the original link”. You can provide your Amazon Associate ID, and earn from purchases made if the reader clicks through the SmartLink pane as well. There is a nifty preview option for this plugin that will give you an idea if it will integrate well into your site.
Also available for your sidebar is a SmartLink widget, that lets you put over 50 automatically updated Top Lists from favorite sites (or personalized lists from Amazon or Netflix). Want to put your Amazon wish list in your sidebar? How about the best selling books on Amazon? These links are also set up with your Amazon Associates Id, so would be an excellent way to maximize income especially as we head into the holiday season. Here’s an example using my Amazon.com wish list:
(Be sure when you’re setting it up to click on the “Show Affiliate Options” link to add your ID.)
Anyone using SmartLinks already? Care to share how it’s working for you?
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I don’t use smartlinks, but my established sites, but I always like the idea of using contextual advertising. Although banner ads have their niche, I believe a lot of readers do develop ad blindness after a while and newer approaches need to be adopted to generate revenue from sites.
This is a cool new tool, and thank you for reviewing it for us.
I do agree with gadgets though, that many readers develop a blindness to all the items on a blog page. Some pages I visit have so much stuff in the sidebars it is overwhelming. I can now visit any blog, read the post, and somehow never see the widgets on the side. This is cutting down on potential revenue for sites, so something new needs to come along to compentsate for this.