BlogExplosion is a free traffic-sending service for blogs.
Yes, the question is straight and clear, Is BlogExplosion ethical?
First, for those who do not know, some introduction. BlogExplosion is a free service that sends traffic to your blog. The mechanism is simple. First, you sign up for service and submit your blog address(es) to the directory. After then, you can surf member blogs when you want. On top of the page, there is a bar that displays random numbers and a countdown along with other information. After 30 seconds, the counter says go and you can click the required number to go to another page. For each page you visit, you get 0.5 credits. One credit is equivalent to one visit to your blog. You can also distribute credits if you have multiple blogs. Credits can be used to advertise on site. You can also buy credits for cash.
So what is ethical or unethical in this service? Blogger is happy, visitor is happy and site owner is happy. I am sure most of you have same feelings. But think deeply. Are you getting real traffic as you get from search engines or other referring sites. According to me, the answer is No. Most of the BlogExplosion traffic you get is because someone wants to bring people to his blog.
That was about service. Now, the main question, Is this service Ethical?
There are many arguments that support that this service is unethical. Getting traffic from BlogExplosion is like forcing people to visit your page. The difference is that here on this site, people willingly get forced. But it is just about individual interests. People get some extra hits and some of them get paid from advertising networks who pay per thousand impressions. This is like cheating the companies. What difference does it make to big companies? It makes Dear Reader, it makes. Big things are nothing but a collection of tiny little things. Such small loses for any company can come out as big in long period.
There is always second side of the coin. Many arguments support this service. After all, when people are willingly visiting a page, what can be the problem. But what is surety that people actually read your content. In this age of tabbed browsing, people can simply switch tab and wait for 30 seconds and then visit another page. I can say this because I have done it myself.
So at last, it comes down you my Dear Reader, what do you think? Do you want less but useful traffic to your blog or do you want to be happy with meaningless traffic only meant for statistics?
July 14th, 2008 at 2:13 am
I agree. I get a lot of traffic from Blogexplosion but still I do not seem to get comments or any clicks on ads
October 29th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
You are talking about ethics while you are forcing me to look at all of your ads on this page? (Just a rhetorical question, there.)
People have choices in life. With every choice made, there are advantages and disadvantages. But they are choices. You either live with them or move on.
I honestly don’t understand your ethics issue you bring up – well, at least by MY definition of ethics. I found the best quality political blogs on BE that I couldn’t find anywhere else, so I actually read many blogs on that site.
Do you actually expect someone to comment here that they like “meaningless stats” and that is why they use blogexplosion? What is a meaningful stat? You mean where one makes a comment on your blog? See, with BE, we don’t know if someone is reading or at least looking around for some interesting content, or they are doing something else while the timer is running.
As for me, I am not looking for comments on my blog as much as I want people to know that it is out there, and if someone at least acknowledges one post of mine (even better reading it), that is great. I don’t judge my blog’s success by how many comments I receive. I just want people to read me, and if only 1 out of 10 read me on BE, mission accomplished!
I have met some REALLY nice blogging freinds on BE. So, yeah… I like “meaningless traffic” and looking at “unethical ads”.
December 30th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
Many visitors from BlogExplosion are asians who have no clue what to click to comment and many asians just copy paste English language content from other blogs to promote their own. Also many newbies who have no clue are BlogExplosion members. Those from Europe and some from the States actually spend time, but similar services like BlogSoldiers have the same concept but blogsoldiers traffic are more experienced bloggers that actually spend time reading. So like everything else on the net blogging is a groupie thing that attracts clans of bloggers and you have to pick the right one. Experienced bloggers get most of their quality traffic from search engines that is true, but these other groupie services will give you maybe 10% of your readers over time, but you have to comment on their blogs and they will eventually direct link you and bypass these other traffic exchanges!
January 30th, 2009 at 8:17 pm
There’s no ethical question at all. I use BE. I read some blogs and some I don’t. No different to me than doing a search and having 50 results I have to sift through to find what I wanted. 10 years ago that was not the case. Now there is such a proliferation of junk on the internet promoted by geeks who know a lot about SEO. At least with BE one knows what to expect. Although there are some junk blog, I have subscribed to many blogs as a result of BE.
October 19th, 2009 at 3:22 am
Thanks for your explanation.