Bring traffic to your blog (BlogExplosion)
There are some bloggers who are content with writing a blog that only their friends and occasional stray can see, others like me find enjoyment in the interaction. I like to hear what people have to say. While good content is arguably the best way to get new and return users, if you are starting out, or have never had much of an audience, getting traffic to your site is nearly impossible. For bloggers there are services that drive traffic to your site for free. The only action required on your part is to surf other blogs. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing because occasionally you will run into gems that you would never have found otherwise with topics ranging from Politics to Golf. Different services offer different twists to the same idea, but the premise is basically the same … you surf to gain credits, and you use those credits to gain pageviews from other users.
BlogExplosion
BlogExplosion is probably the most feature filled and biggest traffic exchange for blogs out there … and for good reason.
There are two ways to gain credits, one surfing randomly and the other by surfing by category. Surfing by Member Blogs (randomly) is the most convenient though. You get a small bar on top of the page that basically works as a navigation bar and allows you to jump from blog to blog. Once a page is loaded, a 30 second countdown starts running. This makes sure that you’ll at least give the blog a chance instead of just racking up credits. It is worthwhile with all traffic exchange services that you do give the blog a chance; you might discover some really cool things and end up wanting to return. The navigation bar also gives you access to more information of the blog you are currently viewing and your options, which you can either edit on the fly via the navigation bar, or through your options page. You have the option to review, blogmark (personal online bookmarks), never viewing the page again, or comment on the page in addition to being able to allow/deny audio, profanity, and/or adult content.
BlogExplosion has tons of options. One can add multiple blogs and share by pageview credits among those blogs. If you can’t surf enough to bring the desired traffic to your site, you can also buy pageviews and/or banner impressions. These banners appear on the navigation bar and are a good way to get even more traffic to your site. There is also options to specify certain categories you would like to see. If you are interested in technology, you can choose to see only blogs in that category. On the flipside, you can also specify categories you don’t want to see in addition to 50 individual sites you can block. The only problem with preferred and blocked categories is that you only seem to be able to choose one of each. Considering the number of categories, you really can’t just view specific categories, which would be nice. Maybe they’ll read my blog and change it! Yay!
Referrals work a lot like a pyramid marketing scheme. You gain a percentage of points up to five levels of referrals. To refer someone, they basically click on a link on your site and if they sign up through that link, they start gaining credits for you. Here is what they say …
When you refer new members to BlogExplosion you will receive a portion of the traffic they generate for as long as they are a member. BlogExplosion offers 10% of the clicks generated by the people you refer through five levels. So if someone you refer earn 100 credits ( view 200 member blogs ) you get 10 visitors (10%) to your Blog site too! Remember you earn blog credits for 5 levels of referrals which means you could be getting hundreds of even thousands of free visitors to your blog every month!
Last but not least are the little games that gain the winner extra credits that they can use on pageviews. Winning is pretty slim (I haven’t won), but no one ever died from free extras.
There are other traffic exchange sites for blogs, and I’ll write about them as I use them. More to come!
