Can Anybody Help Me?

I consider myself to be reasonably computer literate. This is my toy, and over the years I've figured out, without much help, how to create a webpage, run an email list and now, keep a blog (well I've figured out how to type entries, but I'd say "keep" implies that they are regular, and they really aren't) and more, but what I can't figure out is how most bloggers get that row on the right hand side that lists all the blogs they want to advertise, or the links to good websites. I'm not interested in learning html--that seems too much like work-but if there is an easy way to that, I'd appreciate someone telling me.