Could floating sidebar increase click-through for your Ads and prime content? I’ll show you how to make your sidebar floating and scroll automatically so that the sidebar contents are always visible.
Why Floating Sidebars?
Blogs by their nature have long pages. The post itself is long enough and a good number of comments plus discussions add up to its length even more.
Blogs generally, in design, have a header, post body and comments cum discussions sections as major part of layout. One or two sidebars on right, left or both are used with almost all blog layout.
When a visitor reads through a post and scrolls it down, the sidebar becomes blank. The content presented there is already over. You can’t think about filling up a sidebar for whatever length of page.
Now how about this solution? If your sidebar is floating and scrolls down/up automatically depending upon what part of post is displayed on screen?
Want to see a live demo? Go, visit SEO MMO Tips blog and move up and down the page. I’ve implemented different sidebars for front page and posts page. So, don’t forget to visit any of the recent post there and scroll it down. I hope it can be a good example to implement Ads that can earn you more. Will appreciate if you leave some comments there!
Benefits of Floating Sidebar
Sidebar are very important to display the different information and options available in your blog. People often use sidebar to display the recent posts, comments, categories, Ads and many other information.
Floating sidebar makes it possible to always display those content irrespective of what part of page is currently displaying. Sidebar contents are always there when you are reading post or writing comments and even when you are skimming and looking what else is useful on the blog.
Making your sidebar always visible to your readers improves the chance of increasing click-through. The number of clicks on Ads placed on floating sidebar is much improved than it was in a normal sidebar.
Don’t you think it’s a better way of promoting your prime content and Ads to increase blog revenue?
How to Make Floating Sidebar for WordPress Blog?
If you really think floating sidebars are useful, you’d certainly like to have it on your blog too! Why not?
What you need to make your sidebars float? Simply a plugin.
Francesco developed this useful plugin that does some magic to your blog and makes the sidebar floating easily!
Strx Magic Floating Sidebar Maker
It is a nice plugin that you can search for from the Add New page of Plugins in Dashboard or download it separately and install. In my case it was simply activating the plugin to make it work, that’s all!
However if your theme uses something different from expected, you may need to find the div ID of sidebar and fill it up in settings page.
Talking about setting, it is very simple. There are a few options you can change to play fun with the plugin. Configure the delay for the plugin to spell its magic.
Following is a screen shoot of its settings page on my blog SEO MMO Tips.
How much the plugin costs?
The good thing is, it does not cost any money 
The plugin is available for Free! Thanks to Francisco.
However you can donate him some money if you really like it and want to appreciate his time and effort.
Where to download?
It’s available to download from WordPress repository or his website. For your ease, following is the link:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/strx-magic-floating-sidebar-maker/
Make your sidebar floating and enjoy blogging!
Image: Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Twitter: CyberGanesh
May 5, 2012 8:13 am
Nice plugins…! as I saw in one of your site..! Hope this floating feature help to increase ad revenue…! I’m going to try this in my blog…!
Thanks for sharing…!
Ganesh Maharjan recently posted…MCQ of Computer Networking – Set 3
Twitter: udegbunamchuks
May 5, 2012 2:17 pm
Sounds cool unfortunately such tricks cannot be used with Google Adsense ’cause it violates their program policy
Twitter: bivori
May 5, 2012 2:27 pm
I don’t think it violates any policy as we are not doing any modification on code and not forcing anybody to click on ads. We have not used any iframes to deliver ads. All we did is displayed Ads on widget of sidear and managed the sidebar to float to be always visible.
So, Udegbunam, do you know anything against the Adsense policy?
Twitter: udegbunamchuks
December 3, 2012 5:54 am
Sorry I never responded goes I never got an email alert after your response. The thing is it is against adsense policy to draw undue attention to your ads and that is literally what this trick will be doing *keeping the adsense ads constantly in the view of your readers*
How successful have you being with it without getting banned? Please tweet me when you reply. Thanks
Twitter: bivori
December 4, 2012 7:33 am
Well, it may be because my site is pretty small, Google did not take any notice of. Revenue is certainly improved by a couple of folds. But after I review the things I realize, yes, it may be risky to keep it static.
BTW, I have already sold that blog and no longer operated by me. I guess he will change the theme and everything very soon.
Thank you Udegbunam for the comment (love you come back even after bit longer
)
Suresh Khanal recently posted…Twitter Tools to Increase Followers – Twiends
Twitter: udegbunamchuks
December 4, 2012 10:38 am
I’ll do my best man. For some reason I forgot to add you to my RSS reader but I’ll do that asap. I also checked out the blog and noticed the ad implementation you talked about wasn’t there anymore. Good for you anyway. Would have been sad to hear your account got banned.
Hi Suresh,
At first have a nice day..
I saw this in SEOMMOTips and it’s looking fantastic there. This will definitely increase our ad revenue. I think this will not be a problem for adsense users. Because we are not changing anything there. If one still have doubt then try with other ad networks.
Thanks for this share brother,
Abhijit
Abhijit recently posted…Webfire Review
Hi Suresh, I didn’t know a plugin like this existed, I’ve been planning on promoting a Clickbank product from the sidebar on my site but didn’t think it would be obvious enough and as a result get a very low click through rate. This should improve the visability of any ads in the sidebar.
Beth recently posted…Getting Him Back After A Breakup
Hii Suresh, I have also doubt about this sidebar to use it for Adsense Ads. will it be a good idea?
Rituparna recently posted…How to earn double with Infolinks
Twitter: bivori
April 11, 2013 6:17 am
Hi Rituparna,
Adsense has clearly stated that you can’t float or popup Ads, it is against the TOS. However, I run Ads on sidebar and my sidebar was floating for some time. Google did not notice it or did not cared. If it is not your Ad units only in sidebar and if the sidebar is floating, I guess Google has no grumbles. Still, it is better not to use this way if you really risk the Google account.
Thanks for comment and your query.
Suresh Khanal recently posted…5 Tips to Build an Eye-Catching Blog