Nice write up Andy, just to pick up on a general community thing, as you so succinctly say, much of this stuff is about activity and making the effort to get involved. This is where it's at, just like it is in the real bricks and mortar world. Relationship building and back scratching are as alive in todays online world as it is in the offline world, if not more so. It takes time and effort. Unlike the SEO of days gone by it's seldom an instant reward game, if you want the traffic then you've got to do the legwork.One can't just expect oneself to code ones way into a big stream of revenue, at least not without the consent and help of those within ones online social networks.
robwatts
· 2 years ago
Nice write up Andy, just to pick up on a general community thing, as you so succinctly say, much of this stuff is about activity and making the effort to get involved. This is where it's at, just like it is in the real bricks and mortar world. Relationship building and back scratching are as alive in todays online world as it is in the offline world, if not more so. It takes time and effort. Unlike the SEO of days gone by it's seldom an instant reward game, if you want the traffic then you've got to do the legwork.One can't just expect oneself to code ones way into a big stream of revenue, at least not without the consent and help of those within ones online social networks.
Antony Berkman
· 2 years ago
BlogCatalog at its heart is a community.
Our litmus test for new features has been whether the feature will strengthen the community. Any feature that increases connections, communication and sharing among BlogCatalog members results in stronger relationships and more blog quality traffic for involved members.
The BlogCatlog community is strong and we are at a point now where our focus is starting to shift from the single test of building a strong community to how can we drive traffic to bloggers and at the same time strengthen the community. My sense is that the best vehicle for doing this will be a widget that drives traffic between blogs, simiilar to what BlogRush has, yet adds community elements to the widget such as blogger bios, recent visitors, neighbors, etc.
Antony Berkman
· 2 years ago
BlogCatalog at its heart is a community.
Our litmus test for new features has been whether the feature will strengthen the community. Any feature that increases connections, communication and sharing among BlogCatalog members results in stronger relationships and more blog quality traffic for involved members.
The BlogCatlog community is strong and we are at a point now where our focus is starting to shift from the single test of building a strong community to how can we drive traffic to bloggers and at the same time strengthen the community. My sense is that the best vehicle for doing this will be a widget that drives traffic between blogs, simiilar to what BlogRush has, yet adds community elements to the widget such as blogger bios, recent visitors, neighbors, etc.
Dane Morgan
· 2 years ago
I'm not sure that Blog Rush can really be discussed along side the others here in a meaningful way. There isn't the opportunity for the social interaction at Blog Rush, and the clicks are completely driven by 'ad' displays on other blogs.
Lacking a central traffic "clearing house" such as MBL, BC and Bz have, the opportunity to send the same user to multiple blogs from an off blog source would also tend to leave BlogRush closer to a zero sum game in which some Blogs almost have to send more traffic than they receive for others to receive more than they send.
This is possibly mitigated to some extent by the opening of a new window for the clicks, but I wonder how many clicks are lost to MSIE/WinXP pop up suppression and whether this attenuates the possible (though probably slight) mitigating effect.
These thoughts are really all pre-publish thinking. I have the basics of what I've said here stored for a post, but I'm not quite done thinking it through.
The concept that a traffic exchange device needs a central distribution center separate from the participants to be able to send more (new) traffic than is received on a sustainable basis, seems to make sense to me, but I have a feeling there might be factors I haven't sussed out and accounted for quite yet.
If you can poke any holes in this thought, please let me know.
Dane Morgan
· 2 years ago
I'm not sure that Blog Rush can really be discussed along side the others here in a meaningful way. There isn't the opportunity for the social interaction at Blog Rush, and the clicks are completely driven by 'ad' displays on other blogs.
Lacking a central traffic "clearing house" such as MBL, BC and Bz have, the opportunity to send the same user to multiple blogs from an off blog source would also tend to leave BlogRush closer to a zero sum game in which some Blogs almost have to send more traffic than they receive for others to receive more than they send.
This is possibly mitigated to some extent by the opening of a new window for the clicks, but I wonder how many clicks are lost to MSIE/WinXP pop up suppression and whether this attenuates the possible (though probably slight) mitigating effect.
These thoughts are really all pre-publish thinking. I have the basics of what I've said here stored for a post, but I'm not quite done thinking it through.
The concept that a traffic exchange device needs a central distribution center separate from the participants to be able to send more (new) traffic than is received on a sustainable basis, seems to make sense to me, but I have a feeling there might be factors I haven't sussed out and accounted for quite yet.
If you can poke any holes in this thought, please let me know.
Antony Berkman
· 2 years ago
Dane..
Interesting thoughts. You raise the question how can a traffic distrubtion system "be able to send more (new) traffic than is received on a sustainable basis"?
If a blog generates a credit for each display of widget then there are always going to be more credits than displays unless somehow there is a way that a blogger uses up more than one credit. This is similar to an idea that RobWatts has mentioned in the BlogCatalog widget group, where he suggests that if you receive a visitor from a widget and that visitor leaves a comment or signs up for your feed, then that series of events should count for more than 1 credit.
Another option is for the widget to display more than one blog at a time. This way the blog displaying the widget gains one credit for a view and 2 credits are used.
The beauty of Robb's suggestion seems to be that it (i) adds currency to meaningful visitor events & (ii) provides a way to mitigate the problem of surplus credits.
Dane Morgan
· 2 years ago
I'm headed over to find and join that group after I post this ;)
I like these ideas. But I still think that adding the element of the central distribution point is necessary. BUMPzee handles this idea well with it's on blog discussion section, it's recent posts sections for each community (I'd love to see community specific recent on blog discussion sections added), and it's widget shows popular discussions based on calculations that include user bumps.
This removes the straight traffic for traffic inequities, though it does not remove traffic completely as a factor.
Since Bz can track comments (as can co.comments) it's not a big leap to mix in the elements you are describing either.
Thanks for the thoughts (yes I know this isn't my blog but still, thanks for the thoughts).
Interesting thoughts. You raise the question how can a traffic distrubtion system "be able to send more (new) traffic than is received on a sustainable basis"?
If a blog generates a credit for each display of widget then there are always going to be more credits than displays unless somehow there is a way that a blogger uses up more than one credit. This is similar to an idea that RobWatts has mentioned in the BlogCatalog widget group, where he suggests that if you receive a visitor from a widget and that visitor leaves a comment or signs up for your feed, then that series of events should count for more than 1 credit.
Another option is for the widget to display more than one blog at a time. This way the blog displaying the widget gains one credit for a view and 2 credits are used.
The beauty of Robb's suggestion seems to be that it (i) adds currency to meaningful visitor events & (ii) provides a way to mitigate the problem of surplus credits.
Dane Morgan
· 2 years ago
I'm headed over to find and join that group after I post this ;)
I like these ideas. But I still think that adding the element of the central distribution point is necessary. BUMPzee handles this idea well with it's on blog discussion section, it's recent posts sections for each community (I'd love to see community specific recent on blog discussion sections added), and it's widget shows popular discussions based on calculations that include user bumps.
This removes the straight traffic for traffic inequities, though it does not remove traffic completely as a factor.
Since Bz can track comments (as can co.comments) it's not a big leap to mix in the elements you are describing either.
Thanks for the thoughts (yes I know this isn't my blog but still, thanks for the thoughts).
I think these systems there is always going to be some imbalance, but ultimately I think the smaller blogs whose screen real estate is worth less end up doing better in percentage terms than the larger blogs.
With Blogrush this is compounded by the credit distribution.
If some of the larger blogs and those with huge email lists signed up with 10 tiers above them a week ago, to drive more traffic to some of their friends or blog networks things light balance out slightly differently, but my understanding is that there are a lot of people who were not referred.
For a while I was also running Siteneighbors but I couldn't track the clicks and spicypage. They just weren't really adding anything especially as my immediate neighbors weren't running the widget for very long. Actually Maki was my no.1 neighbors so it was really a none issue.
I think at the end of the day, if you go for fully targeted you end up always having an imbalance.
Take an extreme example, just Problogger, Blogstrokes and Myself as the only blogs about blogging in the network.
To even out the traffic Darren would have to run a widget that alternates between showing one RSS items for me, and one for Blogstrokes, probably showing my feed items more of the time.
I would have to have a widget showing maybe 15 or 20 of Darren's feed items, and one of Blogstrokes.
How big would the Blogstrokes widget have to be so that the traffic distribution was totally even?
One alternative is for Problogger to show some untargeted traffic from other categories.
Now Darren isn't showing the widget on Problogger, but he does have it on his LivingRoom camera site. That is actually a "money blog" for him.
So there is a relevance problem that is always going to be a problem for the larger blogs, and in many ways the referral system of Blogrush is smart because it pulls credits out of the system allowing slightly more relevance, and people have the option of applying those referral credits to whichever site they like, hopefully the one they feel is getting the best relevance performance.
There are also still plenty of credits left over in the system to give away as free traffic though it might not be very targeted, it is still free.
Unfortunately there is also the issue of positioning and CTR - you need to have a way to encourage prominent position for CTR and even give incentives for the clicks.
There can be problems measuring actions because of compatibility, people using tabs and then closing them (thus giving no time on site or misleading time on site), and you can't measure subscribing with a bookmark button with current tracking in any way at all, let alone a Stumble and review.
Thus you have to build your own incentive system such as a rating system for posts that you can reliably measure.
I am sure some people don't realise that they can already list feeds from their community on their blogs, using existing widgets such as Grazr.
Dane Morgan
· 2 years ago
This is what I mean by approaching a zero sum game. It's unlikely that any workable solution could provide equity between Blog Strokes and problogger.
Possibly valuing credits on a currency exchange system could bring Andy Beard and Blog Strokes into some parity. Something on the order of 50-60 Blog Strokes credits to and Andy Beard credit. But then the other variables enter into play. Your readers might be more likely to visit a WordPress blog than Mine to visit a Niche Marketing Blog.
I suspect that even fiddling with the credits we would see a disparity develop that would cheat you and rape Darren and leave me sitting like a thief.
Now, I don't have a major problem with this when it's applied to a blogger to blogger situation. You know when you link to me I'm going to take more traffic than I give and you make the decision to do so anyways. And probably don't lose much in the process because most of the traffic you send me is not one off visitors. It's regular readers following a recommended link.
That dynamic is altered when it's part of a larger traffic distribution network.
My thinking is that the simple addition of a central exchange location can alter this effect by normalizing exposure between all of the blogs in the network.
Your blog is going to receive more exposure on Bz, for example than mine because by virtue of more frequent comments and posts you are going to show up more frequently in the discussion area. Also you will receive more bumps (as few as that may be) and show up more often in the widget.
In this way it is the readers directly driving the distribution somewhat democratically. I guess what I'm saying is that incentivizing user interaction on a central distribution point should serve to direct not only a more realistic distribution, but can serve as a perpetual motion machine returning more energy (views/clicks) than the sum of the input. While I perceive the straight widget to widget model as a standard loss involved energy transfer. not only will there be less output than the sum of the input, but because of the nature of the variable, it will be in-equably distributed.
Even if this inequity does favor the smaller participants, and I agree with you that this is the case, how many people signing up understand everything in play here? Even among the bigger players?
AndyBeard
· 2 years ago
I think these systems there is always going to be some imbalance, but ultimately I think the smaller blogs whose screen real estate is worth less end up doing better in percentage terms than the larger blogs.
With Blogrush this is compounded by the credit distribution.
If some of the larger blogs and those with huge email lists signed up with 10 tiers above them a week ago, to drive more traffic to some of their friends or blog networks things light balance out slightly differently, but my understanding is that there are a lot of people who were not referred.
For a while I was also running Siteneighbors but I couldn't track the clicks and spicypage. They just weren't really adding anything especially as my immediate neighbors weren't running the widget for very long. Actually Maki was my no.1 neighbors so it was really a none issue.
I think at the end of the day, if you go for fully targeted you end up always having an imbalance.
Take an extreme example, just Problogger, Blogstrokes and Myself as the only blogs about blogging in the network.
To even out the traffic Darren would have to run a widget that alternates between showing one RSS items for me, and one for Blogstrokes, probably showing my feed items more of the time.
I would have to have a widget showing maybe 15 or 20 of Darren's feed items, and one of Blogstrokes.
How big would the Blogstrokes widget have to be so that the traffic distribution was totally even?
One alternative is for Problogger to show some untargeted traffic from other categories.
Now Darren isn't showing the widget on Problogger, but he does have it on his LivingRoom camera site. That is actually a "money blog" for him.
So there is a relevance problem that is always going to be a problem for the larger blogs, and in many ways the referral system of Blogrush is smart because it pulls credits out of the system allowing slightly more relevance, and people have the option of applying those referral credits to whichever site they like, hopefully the one they feel is getting the best relevance performance.
There are also still plenty of credits left over in the system to give away as free traffic though it might not be very targeted, it is still free.
Unfortunately there is also the issue of positioning and CTR - you need to have a way to encourage prominent position for CTR and even give incentives for the clicks.
There can be problems measuring actions because of compatibility, people using tabs and then closing them (thus giving no time on site or misleading time on site), and you can't measure subscribing with a bookmark button with current tracking in any way at all, let alone a Stumble and review.
Thus you have to build your own incentive system such as a rating system for posts that you can reliably measure.
I am sure some people don't realise that they can already list feeds from their community on their blogs, using existing widgets such as Grazr.
Dane Morgan
· 2 years ago
This is what I mean by approaching a zero sum game. It's unlikely that any workable solution could provide equity between Blog Strokes and problogger.
Possibly valuing credits on a currency exchange system could bring Andy Beard and Blog Strokes into some parity. Something on the order of 50-60 Blog Strokes credits to and Andy Beard credit. But then the other variables enter into play. Your readers might be more likely to visit a WordPress blog than Mine to visit a Niche Marketing Blog.
I suspect that even fiddling with the credits we would see a disparity develop that would cheat you and rape Darren and leave me sitting like a thief.
Now, I don't have a major problem with this when it's applied to a blogger to blogger situation. You know when you link to me I'm going to take more traffic than I give and you make the decision to do so anyways. And probably don't lose much in the process because most of the traffic you send me is not one off visitors. It's regular readers following a recommended link.
That dynamic is altered when it's part of a larger traffic distribution network.
My thinking is that the simple addition of a central exchange location can alter this effect by normalizing exposure between all of the blogs in the network.
Your blog is going to receive more exposure on Bz, for example than mine because by virtue of more frequent comments and posts you are going to show up more frequently in the discussion area. Also you will receive more bumps (as few as that may be) and show up more often in the widget.
In this way it is the readers directly driving the distribution somewhat democratically. I guess what I'm saying is that incentivizing user interaction on a central distribution point should serve to direct not only a more realistic distribution, but can serve as a perpetual motion machine returning more energy (views/clicks) than the sum of the input. While I perceive the straight widget to widget model as a standard loss involved energy transfer. not only will there be less output than the sum of the input, but because of the nature of the variable, it will be in-equably distributed.
Even if this inequity does favor the smaller participants, and I agree with you that this is the case, how many people signing up understand everything in play here? Even among the bigger players?
AndyBeard
· 2 years ago
I will add a Grazr widget to the post as an example, can't get it to show in a comment
AndyBeard
· 2 years ago
I will add a Grazr widget to the post as an example, can't get it to show in a comment
John W. Furst
· 2 years ago
Hello Andy! Great info. Indeed it takes many registrations at different community sites, a lot of action and time ("legwork") before you find out what works best for your site AND which community (people and tools) you like. So far StumbleUpon does not work too bad for me (but it's not really blog centric), I dropped Digg, because I just did not like their handling, and I might register with Sphinn, BumpZee next to give it a try. But I need to limit my engagement (time) to no more than two or probably three communities, bookmarking sites. Quality before quantity.
When you wrote about your traffic from MyBlogLog, you mentioned that you had your own page request in the Analytics stats. (no IP blocking). If this is still a problem, you can block yourself from the stats with cookies. Let me know and I can post the trick. -- Adios John
AndyBeard
· 2 years ago
That cookie blocking trick for MBL would be really useful, they don't provide any details on MBL on how to do it.
With some of these communities there are ways to build things faster, such as Andy Beal giving away a Zune for MBL many moons ago, but as he is not running any of their tracking these days I believe his signups with their automatic method stopped.
My community is now larger than Marketing Pilgrim without any proactive attempts to grow it more than what is on the front page, and one meme I started which fizzled.
I didn't game the system in any way and didn't go around thanking people for visiting (I get hose messages all the time, some are even genuine)
I think one of the ideal ways to make a widget is to in some way make it into some kind of Stumbleupon widget.
John W. Furst
· 2 years ago
I am not sure, if Cookie blocking in G.Analytics is what you need/want. You put a Cookie in your browser for a specific domain and no matter how you click through to your site, it won't show up in the stats. It's browser dependent not IP or network dependent. Great solution for dynamic IPs. I got it from support in May, but its online in English (not German!) on the Help site now.
All you need to do is to create a new page for setting the cookie, and request it. Then you need to set up a filter as well.
Hello Andy! Great info. Indeed it takes many registrations at different community sites, a lot of action and time ("legwork") before you find out what works best for your site AND which community (people and tools) you like. So far StumbleUpon does not work too bad for me (but it's not really blog centric), I dropped Digg, because I just did not like their handling, and I might register with Sphinn, BumpZee next to give it a try. But I need to limit my engagement (time) to no more than two or probably three communities, bookmarking sites. Quality before quantity.
When you wrote about your traffic from MyBlogLog, you mentioned that you had your own page request in the Analytics stats. (no IP blocking). If this is still a problem, you can block yourself from the stats with cookies. Let me know and I can post the trick. -- Adios John
AndyBeard
· 2 years ago
That cookie blocking trick for MBL would be really useful, they don't provide any details on MBL on how to do it.
With some of these communities there are ways to build things faster, such as Andy Beal giving away a Zune for MBL many moons ago, but as he is not running any of their tracking these days I believe his signups with their automatic method stopped.
My community is now larger than Marketing Pilgrim without any proactive attempts to grow it more than what is on the front page, and one meme I started which fizzled.
I didn't game the system in any way and didn't go around thanking people for visiting (I get hose messages all the time, some are even genuine)
I think one of the ideal ways to make a widget is to in some way make it into some kind of Stumbleupon widget.
John W. Furst
· 2 years ago
I am not sure, if Cookie blocking in G.Analytics is what you need/want. You put a Cookie in your browser for a specific domain and no matter how you click through to your site, it won't show up in the stats. It's browser dependent not IP or network dependent. Great solution for dynamic IPs. I got it from support in May, but its online in English (not German!) on the Help site now.
All you need to do is to create a new page for setting the cookie, and request it. Then you need to set up a filter as well.
Grazr has a great idea with the feeds but to me I think that they will have to have a greater selection of themes for people to really start using them. Because no matter what, the look of the page is still very important.
With BUMPzee, I guess just not that many people are in the community as compared to Sphinn and StumbleUpon and with StumbleUpon, stumbling is just so easy for people to do. Frankly, I'm also more likely to stumble or add to delicious then all the other sites where you would have to log in to [social network/bookmark] it.
Which do you think is more popular now? MyBlogLog or BlogCatalog? I still see many people with MyBlogLog widgets on their site more than BlogCatalog, maybe its just the sites that i visit but that has been what I've observed.
Jonathan Kok
· 2 years ago
Grazr has a great idea with the feeds but to me I think that they will have to have a greater selection of themes for people to really start using them. Because no matter what, the look of the page is still very important.
With BUMPzee, I guess just not that many people are in the community as compared to Sphinn and StumbleUpon and with StumbleUpon, stumbling is just so easy for people to do. Frankly, I'm also more likely to stumble or add to delicious then all the other sites where you would have to log in to [social network/bookmark] it.
Which do you think is more popular now? MyBlogLog or BlogCatalog? I still see many people with MyBlogLog widgets on their site more than BlogCatalog, maybe its just the sites that i visit but that has been what I've observed.
Antony Berkman
· 2 years ago
Andy S/U Widget?
Are you suggesting something like the following:
Let widget community members submit url's into the network. Submitted urls/blogs and their feeds are then displayed on all widgets in the network based on categories the widget subscriber selects. The widget subscribers is receives display credits based on click throughs from the her widget.
AndyBeard
· 2 years ago
You want the widget displayed prominently to increase clicks, there has to be a real incentive to do so. If votes are somehow used to display a rating, that would help clicks.
Alternatively votes could actually be used to totally control display frequency within their category and that is the option I would go for.
It still wouldn't be perfect, larger blogs might get more votes but maybe not in proportion to their real traffic, plus you would have to have membership enforced to prevent cheating.
Stumbleupon you go to a random item in a group or tag, with the widget you have a choice of 5 items.
You could probably also have a button which switches the widget from displaying related category items, and displaying items from your favorites etc.
You could also probably in some way use the Delicious API to do a little content matching, or base things around the tagging used in the blog post itself to help.
Antony Berkman
· 2 years ago
Andy S/U Widget?
Are you suggesting something like the following:
Let widget community members submit url's into the network. Submitted urls/blogs and their feeds are then displayed on all widgets in the network based on categories the widget subscriber selects. The widget subscribers is receives display credits based on click throughs from the her widget.
AndyBeard
· 2 years ago
You want the widget displayed prominently to increase clicks, there has to be a real incentive to do so. If votes are somehow used to display a rating, that would help clicks.
Alternatively votes could actually be used to totally control display frequency within their category and that is the option I would go for.
It still wouldn't be perfect, larger blogs might get more votes but maybe not in proportion to their real traffic, plus you would have to have membership enforced to prevent cheating.
Stumbleupon you go to a random item in a group or tag, with the widget you have a choice of 5 items.
You could probably also have a button which switches the widget from displaying related category items, and displaying items from your favorites etc.
You could also probably in some way use the Delicious API to do a little content matching, or base things around the tagging used in the blog post itself to help.
AndyBeard
· 2 years ago
I have added a spring widget now as well
AndyBeard
· 2 years ago
I have added a spring widget now as well
Vlad
· 2 years ago
I wished there was some sort of filtering system on BumpZee that would allow the users to prevent post from being included in certain communities.
I have recently removed my blog from a few communities at BumpZee simply because I seldom write on the subject. I have also suggested in the past that it would be nice to have control on what community posts would appear on your widget. I guess for the bloggers that joined multiple communities there should be a choice of what is their "primary" community and thus only top posts from that community would appear on your widget.
Just throwing some ideas, not even sure such things are possible to accomplish.
Dane Morgan
· 2 years ago
Scott has this pretty high up on his todo list for this fall from my understanding, Vlad.
Vlad
· 2 years ago
That is good to know. Reading this article made me realize that BumpZee is the best community on many levels and of course the traffic being one of them. BumpZee sent me over 5600 visitors (two blogs) since January.
Vlad
· 2 years ago
I wished there was some sort of filtering system on BumpZee that would allow the users to prevent post from being included in certain communities.
I have recently removed my blog from a few communities at BumpZee simply because I seldom write on the subject. I have also suggested in the past that it would be nice to have control on what community posts would appear on your widget. I guess for the bloggers that joined multiple communities there should be a choice of what is their "primary" community and thus only top posts from that community would appear on your widget.
Just throwing some ideas, not even sure such things are possible to accomplish.
Dane Morgan
· 2 years ago
Scott has this pretty high up on his todo list for this fall from my understanding, Vlad.
Vlad
· 2 years ago
That is good to know. Reading this article made me realize that BumpZee is the best community on many levels and of course the traffic being one of them. BumpZee sent me over 5600 visitors (two blogs) since January.
Dallas Web Builders
· 2 years ago
I second Vlad's opinion. Great write-up Andy I have realized the value of Bumpzee now because I was primarily dependent on blog directories like blogarama and blogcatalog so yeah this is helpful.
Dallas Web Builders
· 2 years ago
I second Vlad's opinion. Great write-up Andy I have realized the value of Bumpzee now because I was primarily dependent on blog directories like blogarama and blogcatalog so yeah this is helpful.
AndyBeard
· 2 years ago
It might seem like a lot of traffic from Bumpzee, but in many ways it isn't.
Since January I have written close to 400 articles Whilst my content is fairly relevant to the core affiliate marketing community hardly any are as active as Vlad other than the founders.
Pure Affiliate Marketing articles based around affiliates using CPA networks such as CJ and Linkshare certainly seem the most popular in the affiliate community.
AndyBeard
· 2 years ago
It might seem like a lot of traffic from Bumpzee, but in many ways it isn't.
Since January I have written close to 400 articles Whilst my content is fairly relevant to the core affiliate marketing community hardly any are as active as Vlad other than the founders.
Pure Affiliate Marketing articles based around affiliates using CPA networks such as CJ and Linkshare certainly seem the most popular in the affiliate community.
All Comments
Our litmus test for new features has been whether the feature will strengthen the community. Any feature that increases connections, communication and sharing among BlogCatalog members results in stronger relationships and more blog quality traffic for involved members.
The BlogCatlog community is strong and we are at a point now where our focus is starting to shift from the single test of building a strong community to how can we drive traffic to bloggers and at the same time strengthen the community. My sense is that the best vehicle for doing this will be a widget that drives traffic between blogs, simiilar to what BlogRush has, yet adds community elements to the widget such as blogger bios, recent visitors, neighbors, etc.
Our litmus test for new features has been whether the feature will strengthen the community. Any feature that increases connections, communication and sharing among BlogCatalog members results in stronger relationships and more blog quality traffic for involved members.
The BlogCatlog community is strong and we are at a point now where our focus is starting to shift from the single test of building a strong community to how can we drive traffic to bloggers and at the same time strengthen the community. My sense is that the best vehicle for doing this will be a widget that drives traffic between blogs, simiilar to what BlogRush has, yet adds community elements to the widget such as blogger bios, recent visitors, neighbors, etc.
Lacking a central traffic "clearing house" such as MBL, BC and Bz have, the opportunity to send the same user to multiple blogs from an off blog source would also tend to leave BlogRush closer to a zero sum game in which some Blogs almost have to send more traffic than they receive for others to receive more than they send.
This is possibly mitigated to some extent by the opening of a new window for the clicks, but I wonder how many clicks are lost to MSIE/WinXP pop up suppression and whether this attenuates the possible (though probably slight) mitigating effect.
These thoughts are really all pre-publish thinking. I have the basics of what I've said here stored for a post, but I'm not quite done thinking it through.
The concept that a traffic exchange device needs a central distribution center separate from the participants to be able to send more (new) traffic than is received on a sustainable basis, seems to make sense to me, but I have a feeling there might be factors I haven't sussed out and accounted for quite yet.
If you can poke any holes in this thought, please let me know.
Lacking a central traffic "clearing house" such as MBL, BC and Bz have, the opportunity to send the same user to multiple blogs from an off blog source would also tend to leave BlogRush closer to a zero sum game in which some Blogs almost have to send more traffic than they receive for others to receive more than they send.
This is possibly mitigated to some extent by the opening of a new window for the clicks, but I wonder how many clicks are lost to MSIE/WinXP pop up suppression and whether this attenuates the possible (though probably slight) mitigating effect.
These thoughts are really all pre-publish thinking. I have the basics of what I've said here stored for a post, but I'm not quite done thinking it through.
The concept that a traffic exchange device needs a central distribution center separate from the participants to be able to send more (new) traffic than is received on a sustainable basis, seems to make sense to me, but I have a feeling there might be factors I haven't sussed out and accounted for quite yet.
If you can poke any holes in this thought, please let me know.
Interesting thoughts. You raise the question how can a traffic distrubtion system "be able to send more (new) traffic than is received on a sustainable basis"?
If a blog generates a credit for each display of widget then there are always going to be more credits than displays unless somehow there is a way that a blogger uses up more than one credit. This is similar to an idea that RobWatts has mentioned in the BlogCatalog widget group, where he suggests that if you receive a visitor from a widget and that visitor leaves a comment or signs up for your feed, then that series of events should count for more than 1 credit.
Another option is for the widget to display more than one blog at a time. This way the blog displaying the widget gains one credit for a view and 2 credits are used.
The beauty of Robb's suggestion seems to be that it (i) adds currency to meaningful visitor events & (ii) provides a way to mitigate the problem of surplus credits.
I like these ideas. But I still think that adding the element of the central distribution point is necessary. BUMPzee handles this idea well with it's on blog discussion section, it's recent posts sections for each community (I'd love to see community specific recent on blog discussion sections added), and it's widget shows popular discussions based on calculations that include user bumps.
This removes the straight traffic for traffic inequities, though it does not remove traffic completely as a factor.
Since Bz can track comments (as can co.comments) it's not a big leap to mix in the elements you are describing either.
Thanks for the thoughts (yes I know this isn't my blog but still, thanks for the thoughts).
I can't find a widget group. Could you link me?
Interesting thoughts. You raise the question how can a traffic distrubtion system "be able to send more (new) traffic than is received on a sustainable basis"?
If a blog generates a credit for each display of widget then there are always going to be more credits than displays unless somehow there is a way that a blogger uses up more than one credit. This is similar to an idea that RobWatts has mentioned in the BlogCatalog widget group, where he suggests that if you receive a visitor from a widget and that visitor leaves a comment or signs up for your feed, then that series of events should count for more than 1 credit.
Another option is for the widget to display more than one blog at a time. This way the blog displaying the widget gains one credit for a view and 2 credits are used.
The beauty of Robb's suggestion seems to be that it (i) adds currency to meaningful visitor events & (ii) provides a way to mitigate the problem of surplus credits.
I like these ideas. But I still think that adding the element of the central distribution point is necessary. BUMPzee handles this idea well with it's on blog discussion section, it's recent posts sections for each community (I'd love to see community specific recent on blog discussion sections added), and it's widget shows popular discussions based on calculations that include user bumps.
This removes the straight traffic for traffic inequities, though it does not remove traffic completely as a factor.
Since Bz can track comments (as can co.comments) it's not a big leap to mix in the elements you are describing either.
Thanks for the thoughts (yes I know this isn't my blog but still, thanks for the thoughts).
I can't find a widget group. Could you link me?
With Blogrush this is compounded by the credit distribution.
If some of the larger blogs and those with huge email lists signed up with 10 tiers above them a week ago, to drive more traffic to some of their friends or blog networks things light balance out slightly differently, but my understanding is that there are a lot of people who were not referred.
For a while I was also running Siteneighbors but I couldn't track the clicks and spicypage.
They just weren't really adding anything especially as my immediate neighbors weren't running the widget for very long.
Actually Maki was my no.1 neighbors so it was really a none issue.
I think at the end of the day, if you go for fully targeted you end up always having an imbalance.
Take an extreme example, just Problogger, Blogstrokes and Myself as the only blogs about blogging in the network.
To even out the traffic Darren would have to run a widget that alternates between showing one RSS items for me, and one for Blogstrokes, probably showing my feed items more of the time.
I would have to have a widget showing maybe 15 or 20 of Darren's feed items, and one of Blogstrokes.
How big would the Blogstrokes widget have to be so that the traffic distribution was totally even?
One alternative is for Problogger to show some untargeted traffic from other categories.
Now Darren isn't showing the widget on Problogger, but he does have it on his LivingRoom camera site. That is actually a "money blog" for him.
So there is a relevance problem that is always going to be a problem for the larger blogs, and in many ways the referral system of Blogrush is smart because it pulls credits out of the system allowing slightly more relevance, and people have the option of applying those referral credits to whichever site they like, hopefully the one they feel is getting the best relevance performance.
There are also still plenty of credits left over in the system to give away as free traffic though it might not be very targeted, it is still free.
Unfortunately there is also the issue of positioning and CTR - you need to have a way to encourage prominent position for CTR and even give incentives for the clicks.
There can be problems measuring actions because of compatibility, people using tabs and then closing them (thus giving no time on site or misleading time on site), and you can't measure subscribing with a bookmark button with current tracking in any way at all, let alone a Stumble and review.
Thus you have to build your own incentive system such as a rating system for posts that you can reliably measure.
I am sure some people don't realise that they can already list feeds from their community on their blogs, using existing widgets such as Grazr.
Possibly valuing credits on a currency exchange system could bring Andy Beard and Blog Strokes into some parity. Something on the order of 50-60 Blog Strokes credits to and Andy Beard credit. But then the other variables enter into play. Your readers might be more likely to visit a WordPress blog than Mine to visit a Niche Marketing Blog.
I suspect that even fiddling with the credits we would see a disparity develop that would cheat you and rape Darren and leave me sitting like a thief.
Now, I don't have a major problem with this when it's applied to a blogger to blogger situation. You know when you link to me I'm going to take more traffic than I give and you make the decision to do so anyways. And probably don't lose much in the process because most of the traffic you send me is not one off visitors. It's regular readers following a recommended link.
That dynamic is altered when it's part of a larger traffic distribution network.
My thinking is that the simple addition of a central exchange location can alter this effect by normalizing exposure between all of the blogs in the network.
Your blog is going to receive more exposure on Bz, for example than mine because by virtue of more frequent comments and posts you are going to show up more frequently in the discussion area. Also you will receive more bumps (as few as that may be) and show up more often in the widget.
In this way it is the readers directly driving the distribution somewhat democratically. I guess what I'm saying is that incentivizing user interaction on a central distribution point should serve to direct not only a more realistic distribution, but can serve as a perpetual motion machine returning more energy (views/clicks) than the sum of the input. While I perceive the straight widget to widget model as a standard loss involved energy transfer. not only will there be less output than the sum of the input, but because of the nature of the variable, it will be in-equably distributed.
Even if this inequity does favor the smaller participants, and I agree with you that this is the case, how many people signing up understand everything in play here? Even among the bigger players?
With Blogrush this is compounded by the credit distribution.
If some of the larger blogs and those with huge email lists signed up with 10 tiers above them a week ago, to drive more traffic to some of their friends or blog networks things light balance out slightly differently, but my understanding is that there are a lot of people who were not referred.
For a while I was also running Siteneighbors but I couldn't track the clicks and spicypage.
They just weren't really adding anything especially as my immediate neighbors weren't running the widget for very long.
Actually Maki was my no.1 neighbors so it was really a none issue.
I think at the end of the day, if you go for fully targeted you end up always having an imbalance.
Take an extreme example, just Problogger, Blogstrokes and Myself as the only blogs about blogging in the network.
To even out the traffic Darren would have to run a widget that alternates between showing one RSS items for me, and one for Blogstrokes, probably showing my feed items more of the time.
I would have to have a widget showing maybe 15 or 20 of Darren's feed items, and one of Blogstrokes.
How big would the Blogstrokes widget have to be so that the traffic distribution was totally even?
One alternative is for Problogger to show some untargeted traffic from other categories.
Now Darren isn't showing the widget on Problogger, but he does have it on his LivingRoom camera site. That is actually a "money blog" for him.
So there is a relevance problem that is always going to be a problem for the larger blogs, and in many ways the referral system of Blogrush is smart because it pulls credits out of the system allowing slightly more relevance, and people have the option of applying those referral credits to whichever site they like, hopefully the one they feel is getting the best relevance performance.
There are also still plenty of credits left over in the system to give away as free traffic though it might not be very targeted, it is still free.
Unfortunately there is also the issue of positioning and CTR - you need to have a way to encourage prominent position for CTR and even give incentives for the clicks.
There can be problems measuring actions because of compatibility, people using tabs and then closing them (thus giving no time on site or misleading time on site), and you can't measure subscribing with a bookmark button with current tracking in any way at all, let alone a Stumble and review.
Thus you have to build your own incentive system such as a rating system for posts that you can reliably measure.
I am sure some people don't realise that they can already list feeds from their community on their blogs, using existing widgets such as Grazr.
Possibly valuing credits on a currency exchange system could bring Andy Beard and Blog Strokes into some parity. Something on the order of 50-60 Blog Strokes credits to and Andy Beard credit. But then the other variables enter into play. Your readers might be more likely to visit a WordPress blog than Mine to visit a Niche Marketing Blog.
I suspect that even fiddling with the credits we would see a disparity develop that would cheat you and rape Darren and leave me sitting like a thief.
Now, I don't have a major problem with this when it's applied to a blogger to blogger situation. You know when you link to me I'm going to take more traffic than I give and you make the decision to do so anyways. And probably don't lose much in the process because most of the traffic you send me is not one off visitors. It's regular readers following a recommended link.
That dynamic is altered when it's part of a larger traffic distribution network.
My thinking is that the simple addition of a central exchange location can alter this effect by normalizing exposure between all of the blogs in the network.
Your blog is going to receive more exposure on Bz, for example than mine because by virtue of more frequent comments and posts you are going to show up more frequently in the discussion area. Also you will receive more bumps (as few as that may be) and show up more often in the widget.
In this way it is the readers directly driving the distribution somewhat democratically. I guess what I'm saying is that incentivizing user interaction on a central distribution point should serve to direct not only a more realistic distribution, but can serve as a perpetual motion machine returning more energy (views/clicks) than the sum of the input. While I perceive the straight widget to widget model as a standard loss involved energy transfer. not only will there be less output than the sum of the input, but because of the nature of the variable, it will be in-equably distributed.
Even if this inequity does favor the smaller participants, and I agree with you that this is the case, how many people signing up understand everything in play here? Even among the bigger players?
Great info. Indeed it takes many registrations at different community sites, a lot of action and time ("legwork") before you find out what works best for your site AND which community (people and tools) you like. So far StumbleUpon does not work too bad for me (but it's not really blog centric), I dropped Digg, because I just did not like their handling, and I might register with Sphinn, BumpZee next to give it a try. But I need to limit my engagement (time) to no more than two or probably three communities, bookmarking sites. Quality before quantity.
When you wrote about your traffic from MyBlogLog, you mentioned that you had your own page request in the Analytics stats. (no IP blocking). If this is still a problem, you can block yourself from the stats with cookies. Let me know and I can post the trick. -- Adios John
With some of these communities there are ways to build things faster, such as Andy Beal giving away a Zune for MBL many moons ago, but as he is not running any of their tracking these days I believe his signups with their automatic method stopped.
My community is now larger than Marketing Pilgrim without any proactive attempts to grow it more than what is on the front page, and one meme I started which fizzled.
I didn't game the system in any way and didn't go around thanking people for visiting (I get hose messages all the time, some are even genuine)
I think one of the ideal ways to make a widget is to in some way make it into some kind of Stumbleupon widget.
All you need to do is to create a new page for setting the cookie, and request it. Then you need to set up a filter as well.
https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.p...
"How do I exclude my internal traffic from reports?"
Great info. Indeed it takes many registrations at different community sites, a lot of action and time ("legwork") before you find out what works best for your site AND which community (people and tools) you like. So far StumbleUpon does not work too bad for me (but it's not really blog centric), I dropped Digg, because I just did not like their handling, and I might register with Sphinn, BumpZee next to give it a try. But I need to limit my engagement (time) to no more than two or probably three communities, bookmarking sites. Quality before quantity.
When you wrote about your traffic from MyBlogLog, you mentioned that you had your own page request in the Analytics stats. (no IP blocking). If this is still a problem, you can block yourself from the stats with cookies. Let me know and I can post the trick. -- Adios John
With some of these communities there are ways to build things faster, such as Andy Beal giving away a Zune for MBL many moons ago, but as he is not running any of their tracking these days I believe his signups with their automatic method stopped.
My community is now larger than Marketing Pilgrim without any proactive attempts to grow it more than what is on the front page, and one meme I started which fizzled.
I didn't game the system in any way and didn't go around thanking people for visiting (I get hose messages all the time, some are even genuine)
I think one of the ideal ways to make a widget is to in some way make it into some kind of Stumbleupon widget.
All you need to do is to create a new page for setting the cookie, and request it. Then you need to set up a filter as well.
https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.p...
"How do I exclude my internal traffic from reports?"
With BUMPzee, I guess just not that many people are in the community as compared to Sphinn and StumbleUpon and with StumbleUpon, stumbling is just so easy for people to do. Frankly, I'm also more likely to stumble or add to delicious then all the other sites where you would have to log in to [social network/bookmark] it.
Which do you think is more popular now? MyBlogLog or BlogCatalog? I still see many people with MyBlogLog widgets on their site more than BlogCatalog, maybe its just the sites that i visit but that has been what I've observed.
With BUMPzee, I guess just not that many people are in the community as compared to Sphinn and StumbleUpon and with StumbleUpon, stumbling is just so easy for people to do. Frankly, I'm also more likely to stumble or add to delicious then all the other sites where you would have to log in to [social network/bookmark] it.
Which do you think is more popular now? MyBlogLog or BlogCatalog? I still see many people with MyBlogLog widgets on their site more than BlogCatalog, maybe its just the sites that i visit but that has been what I've observed.
Are you suggesting something like the following:
Let widget community members submit url's into the network. Submitted urls/blogs and their feeds are then displayed on all widgets in the network based on categories the widget subscriber selects. The widget subscribers is receives display credits based on click throughs from the her widget.
If votes are somehow used to display a rating, that would help clicks.
Alternatively votes could actually be used to totally control display frequency within their category and that is the option I would go for.
It still wouldn't be perfect, larger blogs might get more votes but maybe not in proportion to their real traffic, plus you would have to have membership enforced to prevent cheating.
Stumbleupon you go to a random item in a group or tag, with the widget you have a choice of 5 items.
You could probably also have a button which switches the widget from displaying related category items, and displaying items from your favorites etc.
You could also probably in some way use the Delicious API to do a little content matching, or base things around the tagging used in the blog post itself to help.
Are you suggesting something like the following:
Let widget community members submit url's into the network. Submitted urls/blogs and their feeds are then displayed on all widgets in the network based on categories the widget subscriber selects. The widget subscribers is receives display credits based on click throughs from the her widget.
If votes are somehow used to display a rating, that would help clicks.
Alternatively votes could actually be used to totally control display frequency within their category and that is the option I would go for.
It still wouldn't be perfect, larger blogs might get more votes but maybe not in proportion to their real traffic, plus you would have to have membership enforced to prevent cheating.
Stumbleupon you go to a random item in a group or tag, with the widget you have a choice of 5 items.
You could probably also have a button which switches the widget from displaying related category items, and displaying items from your favorites etc.
You could also probably in some way use the Delicious API to do a little content matching, or base things around the tagging used in the blog post itself to help.
I have recently removed my blog from a few communities at BumpZee simply because I seldom write on the subject. I have also suggested in the past that it would be nice to have control on what community posts would appear on your widget. I guess for the bloggers that joined multiple communities there should be a choice of what is their "primary" community and thus only top posts from that community would appear on your widget.
Just throwing some ideas, not even sure such things are possible to accomplish.
I have recently removed my blog from a few communities at BumpZee simply because I seldom write on the subject. I have also suggested in the past that it would be nice to have control on what community posts would appear on your widget. I guess for the bloggers that joined multiple communities there should be a choice of what is their "primary" community and thus only top posts from that community would appear on your widget.
Just throwing some ideas, not even sure such things are possible to accomplish.
Since January I have written close to 400 articles
Whilst my content is fairly relevant to the core affiliate marketing community hardly any are as active as Vlad other than the founders.
Pure Affiliate Marketing articles based around affiliates using CPA networks such as CJ and Linkshare certainly seem the most popular in the affiliate community.
Since January I have written close to 400 articles
Whilst my content is fairly relevant to the core affiliate marketing community hardly any are as active as Vlad other than the founders.
Pure Affiliate Marketing articles based around affiliates using CPA networks such as CJ and Linkshare certainly seem the most popular in the affiliate community.