Friday, November 26, 2004

BlogExplosion Features

After several days of being a BlogExplosion member I have to admit it’s kind of addictive – especially if you like to broaden your mind by exposing it to a lot of interesting randomness. But BlogExplosion has more features than guided web surfing and a clean (though somewhat wordy) interface to keep you coming back. Most of them circle around the idea of you doing fun stuff with the credits you earned by browsing other people’s blogs, and to finally draw more visitors to your own blog as well:

• Lottery: You can buy tickets for the monthly lottery. Each ticket costs 1 credit, and you can buy as many as you want. The main prize for each drawing are more credits (around 15,000 at the moment). Credits, as you can see, are the BlogExplosion currency, and they are worth having on their own.
• Banners: Whenever you browse BlogExplosion member blogs you will see a banner on top. I found these blog ads to be of above-average quality – they aren’t very professional, but they are very original – and they convinced me to click on them several times. The main reason might be that when you are using BlogExplosion, you are expecting to see random new blogs.
  For 1 credit, you can buy 25 banner impressions yourself. (And you can monitor the click rate you get for further improvements.)
• Blogmarks: This is your bookmark list. You can “blogmark” blogs you might like when you are browsing random member blogs. Note that the blogmark list will always open in a new window (which unfortunately causes some usability problems – with my Windows + Firefox settings I couldn’t even see I was browsing in a new window, and finally found I had multiple instances of the browser opened).
• Referrals: You can lead more people to the BlogExplosion site. For every 100 credits someone you referred makes with the system, you will get 10 visitors to your blog. You also get credits for referrals of referrals (up to 5 levels).
• Buy visitors: Instead of simply buying ads (e.g. Google AdWords) BlogExplosion lets you buy visitors. For just $5 you get 500 credits; 1 credit equals 1 visitor. Available payment methods are 2Checkout Credit Card, Paypal, and others. I bought 1,000 credits and am now waiting for the verification, which according to BlogExplosion takes 24-72 hours.

• Mystery winners: For as long as you browse member blogs (the basic way to earn credits in BlogExplosion) you will win mystery credits at random intervals. So instead of a blog showing when you click to continue, you will see the credits you win (these are usually small amounts like 2 or 4 credits, but several people a day also win 100 credits at once).
• Directory: You can get your blog listed in the BlogExplosion member directory. BlogExplosion does a good job of generating preview thumbnails for available blogs.

BlogExplosion Questions

What does BlogExplosion look like?

Is BlogExplosion Safe for Work?

Yes, pretty much all blogs and blog-related sites shown are perfectly safe. (Even when you browse with profanity filter off.) Still, you never know what to expect, so there might be a photo of a scantily clad lady as well. The general rule of thumb is in the official BlogExplosion FAQ: “Are sexually explicit blogs permitted? In general the answer is NO.“

Can you cheat the system?

BlogExplosion only allows you to click to the next random blog after 30 seconds. Of course you can read the current page as long as you want, but you may never just skip it if you want to earn credits.
Added to the delay there are also so-called captchas (images with text) to continuously force you to prove you are a human.

Can I close the top frame when browsing member blogs?

At the moment you can’t; a slight accessibility hurdle. You also can’t see the PageRank for the lower frame. (If you use PR as level-of-trust indicator, this is a big problem as well.)

Are all blogs fun?

Naturally, you won’t be interested in most blogs (many are personal diaries), as they are randomly shown. But you may also stumble upon a real gem which interests you but which you wouldn’t have found any other way.

Is your login saved across different browser session?

No, unfortunately you have to sign-in every time you closed the browser and entered the page again.

Does the BlogExplosion support listen to members?

Definitely! I pointed out two problems – one was a minor bug, the other a spelling error – and both got fixed the same day. The ticket system allows you to monitor your requests (slightly annoying: you can’t check answers right in your email).

How can I improve the chance of BlogExplosion visitors staying at my blog?

Of course, you need to create the content they like. But it may be less obvious that you need to make sure people instantly know what your blog is about. It helps if you have a clean design which is also strongly connected to your topics (preferably, not a ready-made template). It also helps if you include a small description somewhere close to the logo or in the navigation area (I re-introduced this feature for my own blog on this occasion).

How can I show my blog more often?

There’s nothing you can do to have your your blog be show-cased in BlogExplosion but to buy, win, or otherwise receive more credits. You can then assign credits to your blog URL to make it randomly show. Of course the number one free method to get more credits is to browse other member blogs!

Will I see the same blogs over and over, or will I see my own blog?

BlogExplosions seems to draw its random blogs from a large repository. I surfed the site for quite a bit but never got the same blog twice.

Can I manage more than a single blog?

Yes, you can manage multiple weblogs.

What kind of sites are accepted?

BlogExplosion only accepts blogs or blog-related services and directories. My own Google Blogoscoped got accepted, while my Feeeds got rejected even though it deals with blogs.

Feedback

If you have made your own experiences with BlogExplosion, I’d like to hear it! Also, let’s share what’s currently on your Blogmarks list.

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