Andy Beard - Internet Business Systems Discussion - Latest Comments in Traffic Or Topical Community – What Comes First?

Re: Traffic Or Topical Community – What Comes First?

AndyBeard — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 09:22:03 -0000

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.

Re: Traffic Or Topical Community – What Comes First?

AndyBeard — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 09:22:03 -0000

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.

Re: Traffic Or Topical Community – What Comes First?

Dallas Web Builders — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 08:11:01 -0000

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.

Re: Traffic Or Topical Community – What Comes First?

Dallas Web Builders — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 08:11:01 -0000

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.

Re: Traffic Or Topical Community – What Comes First?

Vlad — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 01:17:17 -0000

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.

Re: Traffic Or Topical Community – What Comes First?

Vlad — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 01:17:17 -0000

Re: Traffic Or Topical Community – What Comes First?

Dane Morgan — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 01:02:06 -0000

Scott has this pretty high up on his todo list for this fall from my understanding, Vlad.

Re: Traffic Or Topical Community – What Comes First?

Dane Morgan — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 01:02:06 -0000

Scott has this pretty high up on his todo list for this fall from my understanding, Vlad.

Re: Traffic Or Topical Community – What Comes First?

Vlad — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 23:44:16 -0000

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.

Re: Traffic Or Topical Community – What Comes First?

Vlad — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 23:44:16 -0000

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.

Just throwing some ideas, not even sure such things are possible to accomplish.

Re: Traffic Or Topical Community – What Comes First?

AndyBeard — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 23:38:34 -0000

http://www.blogcatalog.com/...

Re: Traffic Or Topical Community – What Comes First?

AndyBeard — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 23:38:34 -0000

http://www.blogcatalog.com/...

Re: Traffic Or Topical Community – What Comes First?

Dane Morgan — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 23:30:37 -0000

Hey Antony,

I can't find a widget group. Could you link me?

Re: Traffic Or Topical Community – What Comes First?

Dane Morgan — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 23:30:37 -0000

Hey Antony,

I can't find a widget group. Could you link me?

Re: Traffic Or Topical Community – What Comes First?

AndyBeard — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 23:21:40 -0000

I have added a spring widget now as well

Re: Traffic Or Topical Community – What Comes First?

AndyBeard — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 23:21:40 -0000

I have added a spring widget now as well

Re: Traffic Or Topical Community – What Comes First?

AndyBeard — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 23:07:56 -0000

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.

Re: Traffic Or Topical Community – What Comes First?

AndyBeard — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 23:07:56 -0000

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.

Re: Traffic Or Topical Community – What Comes First?

johnfurst — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 22:56:02 -0000

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.

https://adwords.google.com/...
"How do I exclude my internal traffic from reports?"

Re: Traffic Or Topical Community – What Comes First?

johnfurst — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 22:56:02 -0000

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/...
"How do I exclude my internal traffic from reports?"

Re: Traffic Or Topical Community – What Comes First?

Antony Berkman — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 22:36:51 -0000

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.

Re: Traffic Or Topical Community – What Comes First?

Antony Berkman — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 22:36:51 -0000

Andy S/U Widget?

Are you suggesting something like the following:

Re: Traffic Or Topical Community – What Comes First?

Dane Morgan — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 22:23:29 -0000

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).

Re: Traffic Or Topical Community – What Comes First?

Dane Morgan — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 22:23:29 -0000

I'm headed over to find and join that group after I post this ;)

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).

Re: Traffic Or Topical Community – What Comes First?

Dane Morgan — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 22:14:02 -0000

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?