Blogging Sueblimely

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New Ripple Widget

Thanks to a great new blogging forum (still in beta so not yet open for public registration) I found out about a new Google Search alternative, Ripple. Using the Google search engine, all searches done through Ripple generate funds for Australian Charities ( all are charities that operate internationally) as does clicking on sponsored ads on the Ripple site. 100% of the money earned goes to the charities. The widget currently displayed at the top of the right sidebar is only one of a few available “splashpond” buttons available.

Criteo Widget

So far the results of using the Criteo widget (top of far right sidebar) have been disappointing - it has not resulted in any visitors at all to this blog. Here are the stats:

Criteo AutoRoll generated 0 visit on this blog, by 0 unique visitor. This blog link was displayed 12753 times on other blogs using Criteo AutoRoll and was seen by 3002 unique visitors.

This blog is getting plenty of exposure, having been displayed nearly 12753 times but it seems that no-one has been clicking on my link. Although Criteo is meant to intuitively match you to blogs similar to your own, I have not seen this happen. There have been lots of mobile phone sites listed??. I am going to continue to monitor the results, having changed my category choices in Criteo options. I have now chosen more general categories rather than web and tech. Criteo allows you to delete sites from the widget if you do not think them suitable. The term it uses for this is “blacklisting” a term, which is a little off-putting as I do not like the idea of “blacklisting” perfectly valid and often good blogs just because the subject matter is not relevant to this site.

One feature I like is that Criteo widget loading does not hold up the loading of the rest of the this page. It appears after the rest of the sidebar has loaded. Much better than the slow loading widgets that do delay page loading. MyBlogLog and other social networking sites should take note!

I notice from the Top 500 English-written blogs using Criteo AutoRoll list that a couple of people I know are also using the widget - Colin of Adelaide Green Porridge Cafe and Lady Banana. Perhaps you could let me know if the widget has been of use to you? The same goes for anyone else who uses the widget reading this post. Your feedback would be appreciated. I will not give up on the widget yet but continue to monitor it to see if my preference changes make any difference.

Feedjit Widget

Although I could get similar stats from other programs I am enjoying this widget. Not only is it interesting finding out where my visitors are coming from geographically, it has been very useful to have a readily available source of information on where visitors are hailing from and which posts they are reading. It is a little large and therefore intrusive so if I do decide to keep it I will move it further down the sidebar.

Entrecard

The Entrecard widget has produced a reasonable amount of visitors to this blog. The nature of the Entrecard program does mean that members will have a look at other member sites, but this does not necessarily translate the visitors into readers. Members check out sites to see if they are worth spending their entrecard points on to advertise their own sites - they may have no interest in actually reading the blog they visit. This is no different to most traffic promotion sites/schemes; with most of them it is the number of visitors that matters. The more visitors that arrive, the more likely hood there is of at least some of them returning as regular readers.

I am going to keep this widget in place for a while longer. One advantage it has over other traffic exchange type programs is that you can choose what blog is going to appear on the widget - you do not have to compromise your blog’s integrity by advertising sites for the sake of it. My initial enthusiasm for checking out and accepting or rejecting requests for others to advertise on my widget soon waned however. This is why you are mainly seeing my face instead of another blog’s logo.

I am going to the Entrecard site now to approve some blogs that I think are appropriate to advertise here; those that are either of use in contributing to my blog topics or those that are just good reads.

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