[Blog Services Review]: Has this happened to you?
You spend all night setting up your very own blog, but in a short time you realize nobody is coming to read it. You jealously watch the biggest blogs out there getting tons of attention but how can your blog get noticed too? - [excerpt: BlogExplosion ]
That's the front line tag on the home page at one of the fastest growing blog traffic exposure exchange systems on the web right now, BlogExplosion. Since they are in a high growth phase at the moment, and hot within amateur blogging circles right now, we thought we would take a stab at a short critique. We also have a few sites monitoring the performance of the service's claims for us and will provide feedback in a upcoming article here on Blogcritics along with results of our poll over at the ZZ NewsPortal. We are using it ourselves to assess the system's ROI. Return on Investment? Yes, ROI, but this is NOT a financial investment I am referring to. What's intriguing about BlogExplosion's business model is the investment is in your own personal surfing time, rather than in your dollars paying for pop ups or banner serving! You CAN, however, pay for increased visibility time if that's your thing, and they appear to be generating some additional revenue from other sponsors in their approach.
The system is really designed for BLOGGERS, and the business model used seeks to capitalize on the common frustration of the many bloggers out there who are in search of visitors who will comment on their posts. (For good or bad I might add.) In fact, their model is designed so that the more you surf within their "system," the more credits you accumulate, which in turn can be apportioned to any number of sites a blogger may be maintaining. This translates into more exposure of your own site in proportion to the time you invest reading and surfing other blogs in the membership. Sort of an "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine" philosophy. Pretty sweet. There are similar services out there, but this one seems to be on fire right now!
The principle behind this service is a mutual exchange of surfing exposure monitored by a "timer" applet that ensures visitors don't just click and run. The visitor can read the site, rate the site on a crude scale of 1-10 based on their own personal preferences, (from "It needs work" to "Great") or as is often the case, comment on the posts if they are interesting. The "timing" feature monitors the visit time with a visible countdown of about 30 secs in a java applet (we think) in a surf bar added to each site's impression. You are not directly on the visitor's site's url but instead are getting an indirect feed via BlogExplosion servers after registering your site, and after their screening process to ensure the site IS a blog.
Article comments
1 - Sapere Aude
I'm new to blogging and since setting up and writing my first blog, I'm having a wonderful time and feel that I've found something to finally keep me writing on a daily basis.
I read as many articles as allowed, given my limited time, and I learn more and more each day.
This is a very informative article and I thank you for it.
2 - Eric Olsen
thanks ZZ, excellent job and information, just goes to show that I don't know squat
Some of the changes we hae made to the layout lately have been specifically made to encourage more comments and time-spent - we have the advantage of being a sort of BlogExplosion in one location
3 - TDavid
I've followed Blogexplosion fairly closely for a little while now and you can exhaust the number of sites in the queue within a day or two of even marginally busy surfing and then you'll begin to see that's it's pretty much the same blogs over and over again. I assume this is the most active blogexplosion participants.
The golden goose seems to be the referral system where a percentage of the surfing other blogexplosion members who sign up under you (five tiers, BTW) and the traffic lottery where you can enter in to win thousands of visitors for free.
Buying visitors is pretty inexpensive as well, though I don't have enough data yet really to measure the quality of this traffic for the money spent.
4 - Eric Berlin
ZZ - Great post, thanks.
BlogExplosion sounds like an improvement upon BlogSnob, which is a more passive way to advertise your blog amongst bloggers. Basically, you agree to have ads on your site for other blogs, and when others visit your blog you are awarded credits which allow your ad to pop up on other blogger's ad space.
BlogExplosion also sounds like a great way to cash in on the growing communities of bloggers out there.
Eric Berlin
Dumpster Bust: Miracles from Mind Trash
5 - k.r.
I recently requestsd for blog explosion to post my writings (blogs) i was denied twice once for only having one post and once for my post geing to long! I must object to the later due to the fact that i have recieved comments on other pages and all said they were very taken by my thoughts! But you see thats just it, i sat down and wrote things as they happened to me in my life and just recently decided to let others experience my woes with me and offer any help to them or recieve any encouragements from anyone who would like to fooer me any remedies for my emotional rollercoaster that for somereason i cannot seem to get off of! So i ask you please do not censor me but allow the readers the chance to experience my life with me as it occurs! thanks for listening and i'm hopping for the best for us all.
6 - Cinley
Mens Wear
Ladies Wear
Kids Wear
7 - The Artist
Enjoyed your article. Have connected in to Blog Explosion myself & hope it will be a success. My new blog is also with Blogcharm which is linked to Blog Explosion & plans to give bloggers a share of the advertising revenue, another new concept, best wishes, Winsome Gunning.
8 - Elvira Black
I signed up for Blog Explosion and Blog Clicker several months ago, but only checked it out once or twice. Something about it rubbed me the wrong way--I couldn't help but get the feeling that most people were not really interested in persuing the sites they were connected to for 30 seconds. However, other people I know use it and seem to love it.
One feature I've seen fellow bloggers take advantage of (and I think Blog Explosion has this) is renting a space on another person's blog. The "landlord" touts your blog and there's a neat link/button at the top of the blog so people can access the "tenant" blog easily. I've seen that kind of thing work really well, and it seems to build a lot of camraderie.
Another phenom that can help build links and traffic are webrings--I belong to a few, including one for people with bipolar disorder. I've made a lot of blogpals through this one.
Thanks for this! Maybe I'll give it a whirl again.
9 - Sidney Gendin
Good. Now that I have finished reading all the above, I haven't the foggiest idea how to get started.
10 - Z.Z. Bachman
Here this will make it easy for you to get started... Follow the links "click on the chicklets" at the bottom of any of the posts.... http://zardozz.com/zz/
There are a number of blog surfing services listed there you can sign up for... Enjoy...
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ZZ Bachman / ZardozZ News & Satire Portal