ExposeYourBlog! – What is it and why?

A year and a few months ago five people got together at my request and we put up a web site, http://exposeyourblog.com, as a traffic exchange service to help get our blogs and your blogs seen by others. We are down to two of the original admins, and one new one, but the service is still up and running and plans to be for the long term. We are not in it for the money but to help our blogs get seen by more people and to see other great blogs.

So, what is ExposeYourBlog! all about? ExposeYourBlog! is a Traffic Exchange Service that allows you to put your blog(s) in a queue to be seen and read by other people on the net. It provides another avenue to help get your site seen. This service is not like MOST traffic exchanges out there, in that it only allows for blogs to be put in rotation. Each blog in rotation is on your screen for from 20 seconds to 35 seconds giving you a chance to glance over it to see if there is new content to read. After reading and commenting, you have the option to click on a color or text to move on to the next site in rotation.

To make it work for you, what you must do is spend some time each day or week reading other blogs. As you do this, you earn credits that are automatically assigned to your blog(s) so others see yours. You do not see your blog(s) while you are surfing (so you don’t use up your own credits). So, the more you surf, the more your blog goes into rotation! Also, the more you surf, the chance of getting an extra 5 to 500 credits comes along every few surfs (~33) in a row! Don’t worry though! You will not see the same blog in a continuous three hour surfing session! Now, if you leave for any length of time over say 3 hours you may see some of the same blogs again, but that is because you have gone outside of that three hour window!

Why upgrade to a paid account? Free accounts are set to have a counter of 25 seconds for their blog(s) to be seen before the next blog can be selected. Paid members blog(s) get a counter of between 30 and 35 seconds, depending on the Pro level selected. Also, paid members get a reduction of time required to wait on other blogs of from 2 to 5 seconds, again, depending on the level of paid membership. Free members earn 3 credits for every 5 blogs they see. Pro/Paid members earn 1 credit for every 2 blogs or 1 for 1, depending on their level. (Each credit earned comes out of the viewed blogs owner’s credit using them up as the other person surfs. (Make sense?)) Free members can only have two blogs in rotation at a time. Paid members can have from 5 to 50 (ok, I know, who has 50 blogs, you may be surprised!!) blogs in rotation at any time. Free members may only have banners that point to blogs (unless they buy commercial banner credits), while paid members may put any banner in rotation. Free members only get one banner. Pro/Paid members can have 5 to 15 banners in rotation!

A VERY important reason to be a Pro/Paid member is that there is a greater chance, by 10%, that your blogs will be seen first! Yep, being a Pro member you blogs have a weighted chance of 10% better viewings!

Why have banners? Banners give you a chance, with a flashy banner, to get another chance of having the surfer look at your blog(s)! PLUS, if you keep an eye on the banners each time the surf bar loads, you stand a chance of getting from 1 to 5 extra credits added to your account if you click on the banner before the notice slips off! After it slips off the banner, you don’t get any extra credits, so look at the banner first thing!! Also, I am using those banners in rotation on other web sites soon! Remember, all banners MUST be 468X60 in size to be seen correctly! If you have banners, keep an eye on the credits available to you banners, as you may need to convert some of your surfing credits to your banners to get them seen!

Why surf daily and for at least 35 blogs each day? Well, for one, it keeps more credits in your account so your blog gets seen more often! Those that surf daily raise their blogs visibility by 5% for that day, meaning that it will be seen 5% more often that day than those accounts that have not surfed that day, so if you are a Pro/Paid member surfing daily, you are at 15% instead of 10%. After very 33 blogs you surf you will come upon a verification page that will allow you to receive from 5 to 500 extra credits, some cash and other benefits! Plus, you get to read some great blogs as you go! So, come join us and SURF AWAY!!

WOW, Clean up time!!

As I clean up “my world” and get things lined up the way I want them, I decided to start looking at all the “Users” here on Don’s Thoughts II.

WOW, well over 300 “spam bots” or what looked like spam bots anyway. I deleted all that looked like Bot accounts, and kept the rest, leaving only about 38 and some of those are probably Bots too. If I happened to delete your account, sorry, drop me a line and I will be sure not to delete it in my next clean up round! (Don’t worry thought, I seem to only do it every couple of years!)

Why do people waste their time with these spam programs? Do they bring that much money in? Isn’t it more work than it is worth? Boggles the mind…

A busy time!

Like most of you (not that there are that many readers I’m sure!) I have a lot of projects I’m working on:

First and foremost is my home based business Watkins. This is a “self employment” process that I have been working for roughly 10 years now, and when I am active, it does good, and I’m active again, or at the beginnings of being active anyway! If you are interested in working for yourself, go here. An income stream that I control per say.

TDBell Enterprises, Inc., the second part of my self employment in which I do two things: Help Start Up business find money, and fix computers (software mainly, but hardware too). Again, a revenue generating practice to increase my income flows via multiple streams of income.

While it is on hiatus at the moment, Circular Wind Ryu, which is my martial arts school. Another self employed job. Here teaching martial arts. I plan on re-opening this aspect of work in the very near future.

ExsposeYourBlog.com. I am the owner and one of the admins of this blog exchange where you sign up (free and paid options), surf five blogs (read five blogs) and then post your blog or blogs on the site for others to read. Each day (hopefully ) you surf a few blogs, leave comments on those you like and earn credits so others can come see your blog when they surf. With this project I also have up a forum I work on, and both aspects take time in coding, fixing, monitoring and surfing. (GREAT blogs there worth reading on a daily or at least weekly basis!)

During they day, Monday through Friday I work as a OR Supply Technician until I can get into the IRM (Information Resources Management) department. This, for now, is my main income source. Not what I want to be doing, but hope to change that soon. (See top three jobs listed here. )

I am a Sir Knight (4th Degree Knight) with the Knights of Columbus, which takes up several hours a month in various functions and events, and I’m the web master of our site (http://www.kofc1487.org).

And I am studying theology on the side via reading and researching. I plan on taking this up formally once my income stabilizes and I have enough left over each month to take the next step.

What does your week look like?

Bad Programming…

Ok, I know that Microsoft and the major software developers can get away with it, pretty much because often the end user had no choice, but small developers should look at their code MUCH closer and make sure that things aren’t broken and that the code works as advertised…

I have played with about 15 themes for this WordPress blog in the past 48 plus hours, and 98% of them were badly broken in one way or another. Now, I know the adage, “You get what you pay for”, and I didn’t pay anything for these themes, but if I had used them, I probably would have donated to the cause. These themes didn’t function as advertised, often would not even work at a basic level.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I am a programmer (although I don’t work as one) and have been known to code in bugs before, but I quickly fix them and get things right. And I try to do that before the code gets out.

I so want a simple, clean, WORKING, theme that is easy to read, sharp in contrast and accepts widgets on the right side that I currently have up, and potentially more as time moves forward… (As well as the plug ins I am currently using, plus future add ons…)

Is that too much to ask?

More Changes…

Ok, today I’ve already been tweaking and changing my blog setup.

Only down side to this, is every time I change the theme, and take it back to one I already had, I have to reconfigure it all over again. What a pain.

Can’t find a theme that I like, that is simple, small header, and clean…

Tweaking plugins too… Lots of changes coming this weekend…

Hope you enjoy them!

New Look…

Well, when I found out I had a broken widget in on my blog, the Amazon Wish List, I looked at other things and decided it was time to change the blog look to something that fit the theme of “My ramblings as I move forward in my life Journey.” and I found this blog (which is actually now part of the distribution of WordPress), and it fits that slogan… So, I changed it.

And I like it because it is clean, bright and easy to read. So I think I’ll stick with it a while…..

Hope you like it!

Is Blogging Dead?

Over on Tribal Blogs, Cardiogirl wrote this article outlining her thoughts on if Blogging was dead. Her over all review was that blogging was not dead, just reduced to those that write and those that just type have moved on.

I’m not so sure I fully agree with her. With the advent of Twitter and Facebook, I think the general population has moved away from blogging, and has moved to those venues. Even the major corporations skipped over blogging to go to these two venues. And the bloggers that are still out there seem to be writing less and less, and spending more and more time on Facebook and Twitter than their blogs.

Yes, there are still those bloggers out there that keep their blogs current with fresh content, publish often, and comment and read other blogs, but in general I think the fad of blogging has meet it’s hayday, and there will be some around for ever, but in general, I think the blogging world has pretty much moved on to other things.

Don’t get me wrong, I think that blogging is still a valid means, and I plan on sticking with it, but I do think it has had it’s day!

Growing trend?

I’ve been blogging for several years now, and recently I’ve seen a trend that I’m not sure I like. In fact, I KNOW I don’t like it.

People are writing their blogs with short excerpts on the front page, with a “read more”, “click here to continue” link at the end of the excerpt, which then takes you to the whole message they have written. When I see these blogs, unless the excerpt is EXCEPTIONALLY good and leading, I tend to ignore the whole blog and move on.

Why do this? Is it to get more entries on one page? That is the only reason I can see to do it. It is not to keep them on your blog, as they are already there…

Now, I can see submitting only excerpts to sites such as bloglines.com and such so you get the reader to come to your site, and hopefully stay a while, but in general, the front page of your blog, to me, should have the whole message there and not require me to click to read it all.

Another trend is in format, again one I’m not liking, and how the blog looks. Many people are choosing a three column format in which two of the columns have squares of excerpts with the “read more” and the third column is full of ads and junk. Looks VERY cluttered to me, and is often difficult to read, so I move on and don’t read them….

Another one of those I don’t get it days I guess…