I went for it. I upgraded (finally) from WP v1.2 to v2.1. Along with it I chose a new theme for beginner code. I really like that its very symmetrical. I didn’t want to change partly because it’s something different. But why not.
Upgrading Word Press was fairly easy. Just follow the steps outlined at the WP blog.
Then I chose this simple-tech theme from the Word Press Theme viewer. I chose it because it looks easier to tweak for the adsense heat map. It was hard to find themes that I liked visually, that also had a left column out of the box.
I’ve tried a few of these blog traffic surfing sites. Some have been successful. They have given me traffic etc. Some visitors come back again outside of the realm of the ’surf bars’. It’s nice to have a few regular readers. Unfortunately what I haven’t seen from this type of traffic is any affiliate or adsense revenue.
I have noticed some things. I noticed that over at BlogClicker, the credits I receive for surfing have started to ‘lessen’. Over at blogAdvance I’ve had times where my account shows I’ve earned manual credits, but I was unable to transfer them or allocate them in the control panel. The control panel would show I hade none, yet the surf bar would show at least 10 credits. At BlogExplosion I’m pretty pleased.
I haven’t gone one day without winning some mystery credits. The user interface is pretty easy. I was able to assign surfing credits and banner credits intuitively. I’ve voted for blogs in the ‘battle of the blogs’ contest. (I’ve won and lost some of those battles as well). You can even rent your blog, or have your blog rented. The rentor gets a position on another bloggers page for a fee of credits. That also generates some traffic. I saving up my credits for a reputable page to hopfully rent some space. There are many opportunities to gain credits.
Today I received a newsletter from BlogMad. I signed up there after finding out they haven’t launched yet. After all the experiencees I’ve been having, I’m quite curious how well their service will work. I hope it isn’t a letdown. They are promising a 1:1 ratio! The newsletter included some screenshots of the soon to be launched site.
News and main page
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Directories
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Your referral Page
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IRC chat Page
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The newsletter also included a list of sites that will be Beta testing. I would really like to be part of that. It would be nice to be able to give input from a ‘users’ point of view. They are including a mascot naming contest which the prize is of course some credits and bragging rights. They are also still accepting signups with bonus credits for referrals. As far as the irc thing goes, I’m not too sure about that. Iv’e seen quite a few channels get taken over. Hopefully that no longer happens. If your still interested in signing up, you can still get in on the early referral credits. Just give the button a click 
A new service is about to launch similar to the services of Blog Explosion. I’m not quite sure what’s all involved in it. They are allowing free signups right now before the launch, promising credits before the launch. I’ll give it a go and report on it. Click the banner to get in now.
BlogMad, Blog Traffic
Thanks to TDavid for finding this cool game at Custom Quizilla!. Have a little fun with this Blog Explosion Puzzle. It’s real easy. You can upload an image, or link to one if you like. Fill in the blanks, and viola! They give you the code to paste!
Puzzle
So I gave the Battle of the blogs a go over at BlogExplosion. IT was fun. I won some, and lost some. The cool thing was that it definately brought traffic my way. The bad news is that it brought traffic my way. Saturday morning when I logged in, I found 79 comments waiting for moderation. Each and every one was spam. I’ve had comments like that before, but not 79 of them!! It was time for action!
I downloaded and installed Spam Karma 2.0. The install was pretty typical. Unzip the package, and install it in your plugins folder. Then access, and activate it in the plugins screen of the WP manager. I noticed it listed all previous comments that I marked as spam, the date it occurred, and the comment. Honestly, it’s way over my head… but all Iknow is that for now, it works.
Wordpress plugins, comment spam
