Invert that benefit!
Posted on:: December 20th, 2004
BlogExplosion is designed to boost traffic to your site by funneling members there according to how many members’ sites you visit. I’ve been playing with it for the opposite reason: It randomly shows me blogs I probably wouldn’t have found otherwise.
In their latest newsletter to members, they list the following feature enhancement:
List blogs by country
The directory got an update so that you can now list blogs by country too. This makes it much easier to locate those blogs from the same region as you.
Ack! Isn’t this feature more valuable as a way of finding blogs that aren’t from the same region? That’s really what I’m looking for.
Categories: Uncategorized dw
David, I have a better idea than blogexplosion (depending on why you want visitors from other countries). I run the progressive blog alliance, which is a blogroll of 170 interlinked blogs which communicate, and cordinate through a central civicspace site. From our beginnings, regardless of the fact that our members were 98 percent American, we opted to not identify ourselves with the USA, but rather the world as a whole.
Its strange, but it seems that no one ever wants to be “the first woman” or “the first south african” ect… Recently, a South African joined, and within a few days, one of his South African friends joined. The same has been happening with Australians, Germans, the French, and Indians. Even with ideals, say when the first feminist showed up at our alliance, suddenly 10 more popped up out of nowhere. IT would seem the same is true for nationalities. So to counter the problem, I’ve taken time exploring globeofblogs.com, looking for foreign blogs that share our ideals. Then, instead of contacting them with a message that boils down to “I think foreigners are neat, you’re a foreigner aren’t you? We should hang, cause your neat”, I’ve simply started leaving comments and talking about their posts. Basically, treating them just as you’d treat anyone. It seems to be working… last week their were only 4 other countries (we’re almost 3 months old, btw), and this week I’ve counter 12.
I’m skeptical of blogexplosion in general. Regardless of where your vistors might come from, they will be stumbling on your site for the same reason: to get visitors to their site. Watching the blog explosion statistics, I often get the feeling that my site is being constantly by people who’ve been conditioned like rats: “Click at your site, hit at my site, click at your site, hit at my site…”
Blog explosion refers about 1000 visitors to my site every week or so. Somewhere around 1 out of 40 stay for longer than 00:00 on my site counter. So if it is about stats, then I suppose Blog explosion makes me feel like I’m getting heard. (however, I never use blogexplosion, so I’ve always been confused as to why hits are so liberally directed to my site… it must be one of our members doing us a favor…
However, many of them are indeed from other countries… Unfortunatly, bridges are not typically built by people obsessively doing the “click your site, hit at my site, click your site, hit at my site” thang.
Hmmmmm….. as you may have noticed, I am not what they’d call a “pithy” one.
“Isn’t this feature more valuable as a way of finding blogs that aren’t from the same region? That’s really what I’m looking for.”
It depends on where you are – if you’re from the hinterlands, blogwise, you’re not typically going to stumble across others in the same situation. If you’re in the mainstream, you’ll meet plenty of same-boat bloggers. The value will be in finding stuff that you otherwise would have trouble finding.
Nick, great comments. And as I say every time I mention BlogExplosion, I don’t care about it as a traffic-builder, for exactly the reasons you state. It’s just a convenient way to stumble in the dark. I’m not recommending the site.
I also like your comments on how to grow international links.
Blogexplosion.com brings visitors, not readers.
It’s gonna be a lot more interesting (for both site owner and visitor) when we’ll be able to visit sites by categories because we’ll choose what we wanna see and will only see that.
Same as classic TV channels and Tivo.