Widget placing in the side bar

Hi!
I am beginner in WordPress and I hit the wall recently with widget placing on my blog.

What I am trying to do is to place the widget showing me daily new Word of the Day – you can find quite many ready made widgets like that.

BUT – when I choose the Text widget and paste the code there I cannot see the widget on the blog, but only a link – when I click it I can see the widget, but this is not what I would like to do. I want it constantly visible at the side of my blog.

Does anyone have any step-b-step tutorial? Or maybe some advises what should I do about it?

Thank you for help!
J.