Blog traffic exchanges are one of the best ways for new blogs to get noticed and for medium sized blogs to get more readers. They work by users surfing blogs for a specified time period in exchange for credits. Those credits, in turn, bring visitors to one's own blog. The key to maximizing traffic is using all of these simultaneously to drive the most unique visitors to one's blog. For Firefox users or IE7 users, tabbed browsing allows you to surf all the exchanges at the same time.
Every blog exchange has a community that populates the service, and such, each exchange has its own flavor. At present, there are five such exchanges and these are presented according to current Alexa traffic rank as of this writing.
Surfing rate: 2 sites for 1 credit, 30 seconds each.
BlogExplosion is the first of the blog traffic exchanges and it is by far the largest. It features games such as a lottery, Battle of the Blogs, and Blog Tycoon. However, as of late it has had performance problems and many users are less than happy with the service. More importantly, there seems to be not enough views being generated with the service. It has too many people and not enough surfers to really drive readership up. However, it is the stable of blog traffic exchanges and has a great community that uses it. It has the widest variety of blogs in the exchange.
Surfing rate: 1 site for 1 credit, 25 seconds each.
BlogMad is a relative newcomer that has had a real successful marketing effort that has driven up its traffic quickly. Many of the users are very passionate about the service and surf it religiously. This results in a great deal of hits that can be generated per day. It also has a 1:1 surf ratio which is the highest around and allows a blogger to build a great deal of traffic quickly. It has a sleek interface, by far the best among the exchanges, and offers a few games that can be played for credits. For the most part, it's been stable but as this is being written the service is current down. The community tends to be of the liberal political persuasion.
Surfing rate: 1 site for .75 credits, 20 seconds each.
Full Disclosure: I own BlogSoldiers, so I'm taking this review from a popular blogger, Slightly Drunk.
Blog Soldiers is a Manual Traffic Exchange designed to generate visitors to your website. It appears to be a very bare-bones service which does exactly what it advertises. I found the Blog Soldiers layout to be very simple to navigate & non-descript as they appear to have a very limited number of services aside from the blog rotations.
I was unable to find the official number of active users however I estimate it to be lower than the other two, based on my own traffic. Although the number of users appears low, the quality of traffic I have received either through comments or emails seems to be very good. This service could easily be number one if they continue to focus on their core business, add a few supplemental services and advertise in order to attract new members. I am quite satisfied with their service. Based upon my own experience the customer service appears excellent. Quick turn-around with no issues.
Article comments
1 - Elvira Black
Nice piece, John. One question--what about BlogClicker? Didn't that used to be a fairly big service?
2 - John Bambenek
Last few times I checked blogclicker, they were down. I assumed they've been out of operation. I've tried from a few different places... am I wrong?
3 - Tom Bailey
This is all very interesting stuff driving traffic. I never really thought it mattered if you had decent content. I have heard the traffic follows.
My blog still has quite a bit of time to go. I would appriciate any advice on improving mine.
4 - RJ Elliott
John -
I signed up for your blog exchange several months ago. I was supposed to receive 25 free credits for signing up (or something like that...I don't recall exactly).
Well, I never got those 25 free credits, but I gotta say your blog exchange is great otherwise.
I have gotten thousands of hits from Blogexplosion, which is a great service...although the site owners can take weeks to answer a simple question. Otherwise, it's wonderful.
Blogmad is okay...I obviously like their clicks-to-hits ratio, but the site itself is relatively difficult to navigate.
I haven't tried the other two you mention in this article.
Anyway, just thought I'd give you some feedback.
Best,
RJ
5 - John Bambenek
RJ-
send me a ticket from inside BS and I'll get you those credits.
6 - RJ Elliott
Thanks! :)
7 - mobile depot
Thanks for the links.
8 - IludiumPhosdex
For the record, Blogazoo was wound up over the summer, citing the unprofitability thereof.
Hence, you may want to delete Blogazoo from the list and replace such with something equally viable.
9 - Afam Uzoechina
Thanks for the hints.Its expository and informative.
Afam
10 - rjjrdq
Hmm, blogazoo.com isn't loading right now.
Blog Explosion is offline right now.
Blog advance has never sent any traffic
Blog Mad is "coming soon"
Blog Soldiers has sent a total of 4 visitors in 2 weeks.
Haven't tried Blogazoo
That's my personal experience.
11 - Mar Matthias Darin
Along for the Ride! (AFTR) is a new and innovative blog traffic exchange that works differently. Rather then being owner driven as the ones in this excellent article, AFTR is user driven. Which means no clicking or spending all day busting your backsire with little gain. Check it out, its 100% free so there is nothing to loose.
12 - Chris
BlogClickers is back up and they are the first exchange I ever used. I think that they must have gotten hurt when they went down because it's a lot of repetition and not many members.
13 - Simon
Some great links in this post, I had no idea that there were specialist blog traffic exchanges. I've just been marketing my blog in standard traffic exchanges.
Thanks
14 - Fran
Thanks, very nice article. I too hadn't given this a lot of thought. I tried to go to blogsoldier but for some reason couldn't get there, maybe you are having a 'slashdot' effect?
Will check it again later.