Back in February of 08 I had posted about the iGoogle Darts Theme I had created, and later discovered went over relatively well as a traffic generator. I recently discovered a new and similar avenue in a Widget.
Widgets are nifty little scripts that run on web pages. They can have just about anything in them. Products to shop for, a picture of the day, the joke of the week etc... I'm sure you've seen more than one since you've been online today.
Having a web site that sells dart shirts and gifts to dart players, I discovered a news Widget that would allow me to enter any RSS feed into it for adding darts news snippets to my web site. A small effort to make the site somewhat "sticky" as they like to say. While surfing through my Google Reader for an RSS feed it occurred to me that I read darts news from several sources almost daily. By using the "Share" feature in Google Reader I could customize and generate my own darts news feed.
The result is a branded darts news Widget that dart players with web sites, blogs, MySpace Profiles, league web sites and other web pages might consider installing on their web pages. I know, now you're wondering how this may generate some traffic to my web site right?
Since I am generating the RSS feed through my Google Reader account, I also subscribed to my dart shirts blog. Now every time I post an announcement for a new product or t-shirt design I can share that news along with the other news snippets I share for the day. As a result, that simple click of the share button will broadcast my blog post to every web site using the Widget. And much like the iGoogle darts theme, this Widget will more than likely be placed on darts related web sites, where dart players can be found surfing the web.
I hope to update on some statistical data in the near future, in the meantime don't be shy. You can look at my Widget (yes, that does make me giggle), then browse around the Widgetbox web site and think creatively about making one of your own!
