Saturday, March 26, 2005
How's your Traffic Exchange?
I use a couple of blog exchanges. I'm not a real heavy user, and I don't have a lot of time to spend on it, but if you don't get your stuff out there, people can't see it. It's just a way of getting your blog to pop up in front of somebody's eyes. I've gotten some regular readers, and found some sites I read regularly, using the exchanges. I've also noticed that the law of diminishing returns sets in pretty quickly.
I haven't done a scientific study, but I suspect that the membership is fairly static...new members come in, of course, and a few drop out, but probably the core membership stays about the same. After a while, everybody has seen what you have to offer. Those who like it become regular readers. Those who don't just click on by to earn their credit. We all operate that way, and we all know we all do it. After while, though, your odds of getting a new reader get smaller and smaller, because as membership grows, new users should actually become a smaller percentage of potential visitors. Which is fine if what you're after is watching your counter spin, but not much use in finding new readers as opposed to collecting "hits".
Over in the sidebar I've posted links to two exchanges I tried out on a lark this past week. Both are free (of course) and neither one is a blog exchange. Both are "general traffic" exchanges, which means you get a lot of "make a billion dollars by lunchtime" and "15,000 level commission structure - get rich today" type stuff.
BUT...I am getting (according to Sitemeter, for what it's worth) some really surprising results. The return visits generated so far by any given session are showing about five to fifteen times the number of multi-page view visits that I get from the blog exchanges. I have visits lasting 20, 40, even 60 minutes, and I am getting folks who are coming back later to take another look. One guy has been back three times, and has now apparently read the entire blog, archives and all!
My theory, and again, I haven't done any research, I'm just looking at the stats, is that I am reaching an entirely new audience. Not only have they not seen MY blog fifty times, they're new to the concept of the blog. They surf along and instead of "oh God, it's that idiot that talks about social security all the time again" it's "where's the multi-level structure...wait a minute, I never thought about THAT... I didn't know THAT...". So anyway, that's my theory.
Both of these sites have "new member specials". TrafficAxxiom (where I have gotten some EXTREMELY surprising stats) has a plan (it ends in like six days or something like that) to let you get really quickly to a lifetime 1:1 surf ratio for free, and WebCentreSurf makes you look at 100 sites before they activate yours, then they give you 1,000 free bonus banners and some other stuff. They also have a "Surfsites" page, sort of a control room to coordinate your use of multiple traffic exchanges. I'm not THAT big into exchanges, and I haven't checked it out yet, but it seems like it would have potential. TrafficAxxiom also let's you "pace" your pages at so many views per hour. One drawback, from my perspective: no "blogmark" function, which I use A LOT. I've sent mail recommending they add it.
If your traffic exchange just isn't doing it for you, you might want to try these. After a while, go back to your original exchanges, and you'll probably get a "bump" in performance because of changes in membership.
By the way, yes, there's a downline structure, so if you sign up through these links I get some kind of credit, but I honestly couldn't tell you exactly how it's set up. But I AM a great believer in disclosure, so there you have it. If you do decide to try one or both of these, I'd appreciate it if you'd get back to me in a couple of weeks and leave a comment with how YOUR experience worked out.
I haven't done a scientific study, but I suspect that the membership is fairly static...new members come in, of course, and a few drop out, but probably the core membership stays about the same. After a while, everybody has seen what you have to offer. Those who like it become regular readers. Those who don't just click on by to earn their credit. We all operate that way, and we all know we all do it. After while, though, your odds of getting a new reader get smaller and smaller, because as membership grows, new users should actually become a smaller percentage of potential visitors. Which is fine if what you're after is watching your counter spin, but not much use in finding new readers as opposed to collecting "hits".
Over in the sidebar I've posted links to two exchanges I tried out on a lark this past week. Both are free (of course) and neither one is a blog exchange. Both are "general traffic" exchanges, which means you get a lot of "make a billion dollars by lunchtime" and "15,000 level commission structure - get rich today" type stuff.
BUT...I am getting (according to Sitemeter, for what it's worth) some really surprising results. The return visits generated so far by any given session are showing about five to fifteen times the number of multi-page view visits that I get from the blog exchanges. I have visits lasting 20, 40, even 60 minutes, and I am getting folks who are coming back later to take another look. One guy has been back three times, and has now apparently read the entire blog, archives and all!
My theory, and again, I haven't done any research, I'm just looking at the stats, is that I am reaching an entirely new audience. Not only have they not seen MY blog fifty times, they're new to the concept of the blog. They surf along and instead of "oh God, it's that idiot that talks about social security all the time again" it's "where's the multi-level structure...wait a minute, I never thought about THAT... I didn't know THAT...". So anyway, that's my theory.
Both of these sites have "new member specials". TrafficAxxiom (where I have gotten some EXTREMELY surprising stats) has a plan (it ends in like six days or something like that) to let you get really quickly to a lifetime 1:1 surf ratio for free, and WebCentreSurf makes you look at 100 sites before they activate yours, then they give you 1,000 free bonus banners and some other stuff. They also have a "Surfsites" page, sort of a control room to coordinate your use of multiple traffic exchanges. I'm not THAT big into exchanges, and I haven't checked it out yet, but it seems like it would have potential. TrafficAxxiom also let's you "pace" your pages at so many views per hour. One drawback, from my perspective: no "blogmark" function, which I use A LOT. I've sent mail recommending they add it.
If your traffic exchange just isn't doing it for you, you might want to try these. After a while, go back to your original exchanges, and you'll probably get a "bump" in performance because of changes in membership.
By the way, yes, there's a downline structure, so if you sign up through these links I get some kind of credit, but I honestly couldn't tell you exactly how it's set up. But I AM a great believer in disclosure, so there you have it. If you do decide to try one or both of these, I'd appreciate it if you'd get back to me in a couple of weeks and leave a comment with how YOUR experience worked out.
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