Com’on honestly, let’s talk about that sidebar. Not about the technical aspect of it but about how ‘clean’ it is. You see, there’s no visual garbage. No buttons, no media players, no clocks and no blinkies. Nothing, only some (usefull) links. Nothing more. Actually this post is not going to be about ‘how does my sidebar look’ neither. But about traffic exchanges.
Probably you might have discovered this blog over Blogexplosion or BlogMad. I used them a lot. When I was ‘new’ in the blogosphere I surfed daily, hours non-stop, untill I had loads of credits. My blog was all over at Blogexplosion, I was battling the whole blogosphere non-stop. The higher you were rated at BotB, the faster I would take your battle. My records sucked, but my blog :: In Your Face!
Then I became furniture in BE’s (old) shoutbox. Hey it was fun, 93% of the daily freaks were total dumbasses and I started to have daily readers and commenters. w00t. My blog changed and I started to have ‘my’ fun about the whole blogosphere. I loved it, people who ‘know’ me also know how much fun I had writing posts about the whole BE scene. The scene fucking loved it, they loved it to be the fool of the day. I had an audience. Because I was surfing? No fucking way! Because I was in some ‘club’.
BlogMad came. I surfed and surfed spend valuable hours to gather some credits. I still have some left over. I will use them for some other project. But honestly, what did those traffic exchanges bring me beside loads of visitors?
Did I get regular readers because my blog was in rotation? No. How many people of BE are today on my blogroll? Actually most of them are at BE, but I didn’t discover those blogs over any rotation. No I discovered them because I spend valuable hours in the shoutbox or commenting at other blogs. My regulars? Hardly any ‘BE’ers’ left over. You leave the shoutbox, they forget you. Sounds fair to me. Tells me a lot about those persons as well.
So back too old skool digging blogrolls and commenting. Hell no, my feedreader is full. I love that thing. I don’t see ugly templates anymore and it saves me a lot of time. Maybe some day I’ll even learn to comment regularly. Hehe. But no traffic exchanges for me anymore. Takes too much time and stats don’t interest me.
11 have made me smarter ↓
1 Biologisvensk // Apr 6, 2006 at 7:20 pm// View all comments by Biologisvensk//
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I’ll admit how shallow I am: if a site is horrid, for example toxic yellow with neon green font, blinkies, and huge ass pictures in the sidebar, fuck the content. I click the “next” button or the “x” and get as far from that site as quickly as possible.
Yeah, I’m still a member of those exchanges, but I really don’t surf that often. When I do surf, I look for something that might interest me.
I suppose I should just move into the g33k-age and do the feedreader thing. I’ve got one, so I really haven’t an excuse not to use it aside from throwing a fit and screaming that I don’t want to like a fucking two year old.
Anyways, the AJAX is fucking sexy. I love it!
2 Kimi // Apr 6, 2006 at 7:31 pm// View all comments by Kimi//
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I was all about BoTB for a while, because I’m competitive like that, but I had started to notice that it seemed to be “rigged.” Not that I think my blog is super fantastic, but after I was losing all.the.time to blogs that were really poorly designed and that had boring content, I started to get a little suspicious.
I don’t mind losing fair and square, but I really wasn’t cool with the cheating thing, so I stopped competing.
3 Deb_LA // Apr 6, 2006 at 7:52 pm// View all comments by Deb_LA//
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Ahh. So that’s how you avoid my blinding purple monster! Hmm. Ok, ok I’m working on it so that someday you may grace my site with your comments.
Yeah, I just did one of those BotB things. I can’t surf anymore though, as you pointed out, my blogroll is huge. I can’t afford to find anymore blogs I like until someone on my blogroll starts to bore the crap out of me or just stops blogging.
4 Franky // Apr 6, 2006 at 9:51 pm// View all comments by Franky//
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5 suki // Apr 7, 2006 at 7:18 am// View all comments by suki//
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If I surf across a blog I like, I will first put it in my feed reader ;) Gotta love Sage for Firefox.
6 Kentucky Girl // Apr 7, 2006 at 3:52 pm// View all comments by Kentucky Girl//
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I dunno what feed reader is. :oops: Are they hard to use? I need something because it takes so long for me to read my favorite blogs. Hrmph. :(
7 Franky // Apr 7, 2006 at 3:58 pm// View all comments by Franky//
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Suki :: same here.
KG :: no, they are really easy to use, it takes some time to set them up, get all your feeds (Most of them will immediately find the feed when you visit the site). Online and free you can use bloglines, newsgator (my favourite one online) or sage (Firefox Extension). There are some good free ones (Sharpreader and Feedreader) but they couldn’t deal with the high number (mostly non-blog-related) of feeds I got. As much as I don’t like paying for software, Feeddemon is great and the best feedreader out there. Definately worth the bucks.
8 Kentucky Girl // Apr 7, 2006 at 3:59 pm// View all comments by Kentucky Girl//
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MMkay, I’ll check them out. :D Thanks!
9 Miss Ann Thrope // Apr 7, 2006 at 6:35 pm// View all comments by Miss Ann Thrope//
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I like bloglines but I still have blogroll…it was due to be paid yesterday…i’m debating whether to renew.
I think I’m getting rid of my rental box after Joe is done. I need traffic like I need a hole in my head. I like the 10 regulars LOL
10 Franky // Apr 7, 2006 at 9:19 pm// View all comments by Franky//
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Miss Ann:: I were the first to pay for blogrolling if it where an application one could host one his server. I don’t like remotely hosted stuff. But to have several blogrolls, no thank you. An exportfile I don’t need it either and I can easily generate an opml-file with my feedreader. Newsgator even gives an online opml-feed for all your subscriptions.
I have been watching for 2 days now my ’stats’ and it is amazing how many people lurk. I expected to lose a lot more ‘clicks’ but people still continue to come.
11 Cat // May 4, 2006 at 10:14 pm// View all comments by Cat//
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I like the new digs. I think traffic exchanges are good if you don’t obsess about them. Just put up some ads and move on. Many forget the ‘games’ are actually ‘games’ and the drama begins.
I am like you–I read many blogs that are my favorites but I don’t always comment. I try to set aside one day where I comment on every blog I visit that interests me. It works out good to get new readers at times.
It’s not about traffic it’s about comments and wholesome conversation. I blog b’c it’s healing to me. I enjoy the interaction. Some blog for others. Doesn’t sound fun.