Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Blog Soldiers Just Got a Lot Better!

Earlier this summer, before I left on vacation, I put up a post reviewing some of the blog traffic exchanges that I use regularly. In this popular entry, entitled "Blog Earthquake: Create a Traffic Temblor that Rocks Your Sitemeter to its Foundations," I laid out the reasons why I prefer surfing Blog Soldiers over Blog Mad.

Both services work well and I've gotten good results all around. Yet at Blog Soldiers surfers tend to linger on my page quite a bit longer, and this happens frequently. Also key is that at Blog Soldiers surfers earn big bonus credits the more they surf -- users are credited with 250 hits each time one moves up in the cool surfer rankings, like Aggregator, Feedburner, and RSS Junky. In my review, I also laid out a critique of the self-interest principle driving all traffic exchange services, for both blog and Internet marketing exchanges (so it might be worth looking at, if you haven't already).

Well, as most of you know by now, Blog Soldiers is under new ownership, and they've made some attractive changes to the service, like increased sign-up and bonus credits for new members, new surf contests (upcoming), and more attractive pricing for purchasing credits. I've noticed, as well, that quite a few bloggers have made announcements of the sale on their pages, perhaps a sign among traffic-hungry surfers for more corporate attention to the site.

What no one has mentioned -- or they haven't really surfed enough today to notice -- is that John Bambenek, the new owner, has already done some aggressive recruiting to get some of the blogosphere's most popular and important blogs rotating on the service. I am serious! In surfing today, I viewed blogs among the elite of the elite cycling through with the rest of us regular, everyday bloggers, newbies and journeyman alike.

It's a superstar roster of blogs, really! On Blog Soldiers today I viewed -- to take just to take a few examples -- Andrew Sullivan, The Huffington Post, Little Green Footballs, Michelle Malkin, and The Volokh Conspiracy. I also saw one of my all time favorite blogs, Power Line. But that's not all. As I was sitting there clicking, and thinking about this viewing bonanza, I wondered if I'd see Instapundit, and then presto, it popped up, as did The Daily Kos -- a blog, frankly, that I really dislike, and hadn't thought about as I stared at my screen with considerable interest.

This has to be considered a coup for Blog Soldiers. One of the key drawbacks of surfing the site was the few blogs that normally were in rotation. That should be fixed now. Just surf Blog Soldiers for a bit every morning or afternoon and you'll come across most of the best blogs on the web. There's seemed to be more blogs rotating lately, in any case, and that situation might mean that users' credits aren't eaten up so fast by multiple hits from the same viewer in a single surf session, the other main drawback in using the service (a problem that can be remedied by releasing just 30 or 40 hits at a time after accumulating some extra credits on account).

If you're not a member of Blog Soldiers, what are you waiting for? This is a great development for all blog exchange surfers! Now, if anyone has a clue as to how Bambenek got all these blogs rotating on the site, I'd appreciate being let in on the information -- because believe me, none of the owners of these elite blogs needs to be clicking blog surf exchanges to drum up some hits!

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