AdaptiveBlue Widgets For Bloggers
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AdaptiveBlue has just released some fantastic widgets that add value to any blog or website. I talked with Adaptive CEO Alex Iskold today and he was very excited about the growth of Adaptive, Smartlinks and particularly about these latest features. These widgets are for books, movies, stocks, recipes, stars and celebrities and other interests. In a world of widgets, these are perhaps some of the most useful and quick out there.
There are two basic types of fully customizable widgets. Every item within the widgets has a Smartlink that allows a preview and a description of the item and allows the user quick access to relevant information. Relevance is what is hot this year and AB has come up with some fascinating widgets to save users time and suffering, these include: Amazon, Blockbuster, Epicurious, iTunes, Last.fm, Netflix, the New York Times, Rhapsody, Snooth, Wallstrip, Wine.com and Yahoo.
The two types of AdaptiveBlue widgets available so far are:
- a personal widget that allows displaying Netflix Queue, Amazon Wishlist or Last.fm Top Artists
- an automatic widget that illustrates things like Amazon Best Selling Electronics, the New York Times best selling books and also recipes from Epicurious.
Adaptive’s spotllight widget is the Netflix Queue which is featured on their blog. Any Netflix user can just grabs the RSS feed and pastes it into the input screen - the widget is then instantly ready. Bloggers who want to make money will find that the AdapötiveBlue widgets provide a simple way to plug their Amazon, ebay accounts in using the widget configuration screen.
All in all, Adaptive continues to provide us easy, useful and interesting tools that are not a pain in the neck to use. Sometimes the most simple tools do the best work for us. I look forward to what Alex and his team come up with next. For now these widgets have made life simpler for a great many bloggers.
Note - AdaptiveBlue is a Phil-Butler Unplugged supporter.
I took a look at the plugin last night and I thought I installed it properly but I have not yet seen a difference on my site.
What concerns me is that this is something readers will find useful when leaving the site but how does it work to keep users on site?
I also saw mention of stocks on their site but nothing about monetizing that traffic. I have a stock blog that turns a good bit of profit but if I was to use this I would want any outbound links to only go to sites that I have aff deals with. Call me a miser if you want to but my goal is to live off of my blogging income and do it full time.
With that said, of the three aff options in the widget I do have accounts with all three. They also do state that you can email them with other aff account information and they can work something out. This tells me they know where to go even if they are not yet there yet.
Good find Phil!
I have had a few issues like this Steve and I agree that the widgets do have a tendency to attract viewers on the way out. I will talk with Alex about this or perhaps he will see this and respond.
Thanks for the feedback my friend.
Phil
Hi Phil, thanks for the warm write-up. You’re right that the widgets are dead simple to create and bring real value to blogs. Thanks for the kind words about the company!
Steve, those are some good questions. Regarding keeping users on your site: all windows open in new tabs (or windows) so that individuals have to return to your site. If you’ve sent them to a valuable place, which SmartLinks help facilitate, then you’ve strengthened your connection with that reader.
The value of the widgets is that they update automatically. So if you add a personal list, as your netflix queue changes so to will your widget. Automatically. And you can also monetize your widget with a number of affiliate IDs so that you’re constantly bringing new, rich content to your site that’s monetized.
At this time we don’t support any way to monetize stock SmartLinks - but we’re always open to suggestions!
Let me know if you like the widgets and need any help with them.
Best, Fraser
You are more than welcome Frazer and I know Steve will have some good suggestions, he always does. Adaptive is a great group of people doing fine work.
Always,
Phil