I’ve been busy the past couple of weeks guest posting on a new blog called PluginZilla where I’m posting reviews on WordPress plugins.

So if you are looking out for information regarding some plugins, or need more on any present ones you are using, then head over to the blog and check out the content there. It’s only a few weeks old at the time of writing this post but more content is being added.

You can subscribe to that blog RSS feed by clicking here.

A lot of times blog owners tend to add too much to their blog. Tendencies to do this vary, from the need to monetize their web property as much as possible, to having the latest widgets on your blog.

9 out of 10 times the casual reader will not pay attention to any extra element apart from your content.

While there is no real winning formula, most will agree that less is more. Think about it yourself. You are more prone to react to something you see if nothing else is happening around it.

Take a look at your blog and just remove any elements that you can’t bear to look at yourself, or haven’t helped you or your blog in the past month. Below are some tips to help you out -

Sidebar

• Have your “Recent Posts” only show the last 5 recent posts. If you are not displaying any other text based widget then you can show more of your recent posts. The same can be applied to your “Recent Comments”.
• Use the AdRotator Plugin to rotate ads, this way you can show more ads in the same spot and have a clean looking sidebar.
• Remove any unnecessary badges showing that you are “No.25″ in some top list. Nobody really bothers about that stuff anymore.
• Consolidate your RSS subscription options by burning your feed with Feedburner and showing just one button. Feedburner takes care of providing the various options to your subscribers. Don’t forget to activate email delivery as well!

Home Page, Post Area & Comment Area

• Use minimal to no advertising within your posts on the home page. Instead try and show advertisements only in the single post pages. Keeping your home page clutter free will invite people to go in further.
• If you want to use advertising to monetize other areas of your blog, try and experiment in a few spots, one at a time, with various forms of monetization techniques. Stick with the spot that worked the best for you.
• Don’t add any extra bells or whistles in the comment area. If you want people to comment then don’t distract them from their thoughts.

Hope these tips help you get a clutter free blog.