This week seems to have been an interesting week around the blogosphere. Entre Card is in difficulties, Alexa has gone through a mind warp, I have put this blog on the market (will be interesting to see if I get any offers), SocialSpark seems to be receiving heaps of negative vibes meanwhile Smorty have gone into beta with an interesting link exchange with a difference program.
Starting with Smorty. They are now beta testing a novel link exchange program that I have been trying to get off the ground for months. It is a very easy concept. You advertise your site with preferred URL, keyphrase and short description. Like many pay for posts, it gets advertised and bloggers accept the job of writing a review of your site with the correct links and keywords. In return, you have to accept a job to write a review of another site.
I like this concept. First, it spreads the word about your site. Second, the jobs are from within your own niche. Third, this is not a ‘link exchange’ as the site you write about is not necessarily the site that writes about you. In fact, search engine spiders will not find any real patterns to these links. End result, more traffic and higher page ranks. I hope this does become successful.
SocialSpark on the other hand seems to be getting up everyone’s nose. Nearly all pay to post sites have issued warning about placing the SocialSpark banner on your site. They are basically saying, use their banner then do their work, don’t expect any pay for posts from us. I have not yet a positive review of the SocialSpark banner. Perhaps a rethink is due there.
Meanwhile over at Entre Card reputation management has gone out the window with many users now complaining (I did a week ago I think) about lost credits whilst transferring. Others are complaining of dropping cards and not receiving their credits. Some may have noticed a strange phenomenon in the section that shows who has dropped cards. For some accounts, this section is showing one person making six to ten consecutive drops.
These are all glitches which I am sure will be worked out. However, it has taken over a week for the site managers to acknowledge the problem. Good reputation management suggests you try to put out any fires as they happen, not wait for a massive scrub fire before acting. Some bloggers have been reporting issues for about a week with no response from Entre Card. I think they will have a lot of work to do to restore consumer confidence. If they fail in that area, Entre Card will die a slow horrible death. A little more in the way of interaction guys and we may just stand behind you.
As if that isn’t enough, Alexa have changed the way they now calculate your rank. Gone are the days when your rank was determined by the number of visitors who had the Alexa toolbar installed. Your rank is now calculated using a number of factors (not declared by Alexa?). This is a change that many have been asking for. The rank may now show a more realistic view of a web sites presence on the web. I know my rank here has blown out from 91k to 125k – thats life. Perhaps Alexa can now challenge Google for ranking importance.
Finally, after much thought, I have decided to place myradicalblogs on the market. It pains me to do so but I am finding I cannot now dedicate the time to maintaining it. I have several blogs that I want to concentrate on so this one has to go. I would like to see it move on and grow. Hopefully someone will have an interest and take over from me.
Thats my view of the blogging world this week. Have a good one next week.
Wow… please let me know where you’re moving to so I can keep on following you. Cheers!
Hey Les,
The feedback loop from private alpha was to decouple SocialSpark’s “Blog Welcome” from its bottom banner display ad — allowing blog sponsorships to include one or both. As an SS blogger, I was one of the decouple advocates and impressed that the team heard the alpha feedback and will improve SS as a result.
That said, as an SS investor I don’t mind smaller competitors being worried about SocialSpark — in fact, I prefer it that way. Competitors can’t be real happy that SocialSpark offers the industry’s only 100% no-follow marketplace for all bloggers and advertisers who want to build buzz in a Google-approved manner. In fact, the Blog Sponsorship is the easiest monetization tool out there with zero GOOG complaints — requiring no ad placement code, one-click advertiser acceptance, and daily $.
Other than competitor worries, what do you think of SocialSpark as an advertiser/blogger social network, analytics suite and monetization option? Have you gotten a chance to try everything out yet?
In other news, Technorati hasn’t picked up my blog in three weeks and counting and I can’t fix it or figure out why.
Well that sucks that your selling the blog, can’t blame you though. When your in this game as long as well have been we realize there are better markets for our talents so we must keep pushing forward and yes sometimes that means our first passions have to suffer as a result.
Try Site Point, I think that is a place to sell blogs with good responses. If your blog has a decent rank and decent money coming in you can hit 3 to 4 k easily.
Fire me an email and let me know how that bidvertiser is working for you. I tried Adwords for Feed Flare and got 70 clicks in one day……and paid out the you know what for them too.