Blog Link Trades Question

[phuckbunny]

I'm sure I'm being a complete idiot about this and will be the first one to admit but here goes anyway.

I posted about using a toplist script for blogs but there were no responses. This is an example of what I mean.

On this site:

http://www.freshjugs.net/

He/She has a toplist of referrers on the left hand side close to the top. Clicking on "your link" takes you to a trading script signup form. Now I'm awful with traffic trading but I understand that you can use a trading script to manage a toplist. However in this case, it seems like with a signup form that's automated it doesn't fully make sense. Ex since tgp traffic is bollocks and blog traffic much more valuable what is the value of using that script for the fresh jugs people? Ditto, what if you start getting hits from a site completely unrelated to yours at best and illegal at worst. What if you just don't like the site and don't want to trade with them? I don't see how trading scripts even for a toplist on your blog are a good thing, though they can move your referrers up and down, I feel maybe I should stick to adding links more or less randomly without special preference - but how do people feel about that?

Also, the top referrer there on the jugs site is indienudes which works solely on actual manual hardlinks. Indie just has a link up to him and must use other ways to determine if jugs stays up or moves down the list etc.

Any help is appreciated b/c I'm working on trying to get inbound links and link exchanges but I come across this kind of situation often enough.

Also my google sucks on new blog yet again but that's another story.

[Hammer]

He's calling it a toplist but it's not what most of us refer to as a toplist, it's a top referrers list and lots of blogs do that. College Humor has one and I trade tons of traffic with them.

All he's doing is giving better positions in his blogroll to sites that send him the most traffic which is a nice idea. There are several scripts out there for adding a top referrers list to a blog. Instead of someone having to send you an email requesting a link exchange, they just add their link to the list and start sending traffic and it's all automatic.

You can certainly delete any link from the list that you feel is inappropriate.

[phuckbunny]

Thanks Hammer. That makes sense now. So all that script does is give better positions to the people who send him more hits. Do you need to reciprocate with a similar script?

Though with a good blog where every post is interesting and there's a sidebar going with all the exchanged links, all along the side what determines what's a good position? I guess being at top is a nice idea... although maybe those 'cloud' things that make the text bigger is even nicer.... Well, I suppose it's not 100% necessary for my purposes right now.

So do you return the favor and use the same script on Uncut for trading with sites like College Humor?

Also, can I still just add a hardlink on my end and sign up for a recip through that form that Jugs uses?

I guess if you're picky about the links this isn't for you, right? But does that stop you from signing up with someone who isn't? I'm hesitant about using this to stay on top of stuff b/c I "still got my day job" (and will for a while at the rate I'm going), but I don't want to keep an open form if my top referrer ends up being bestiality forum dot com.

So can I still sign up through his form and just manually punch in an a href on the side bar on my end? Sorry if I'm being so dumb about this.

[Hammer]

You don't need to use a top referrer's script in order to trade with someone that does use one.

[phuckbunny]

U Rock. I suck. Thanks Hammer. May hit you up on the ask Hammer line for some seo help this week. Take care.

[gazza]

Most top referrer scripts give you the option to approve a site before it appears on your list.

Most also count the 'productivity' of the hits that are being sent to you, this is the number of links that each visitor sent by the link partner clicks on your site. So for example if oldjugs.com sent 5 uniques and they clicked on 7 of your other trade links, and if freshjugs.com sent you 3 uniques but those 3 unique visits clicked on 12 of your other links, freshjugs would appear higher than oldjugs.

Of course this still isn't exactly the same as what you mean as 'good' traffic, ie. traffic that converts into sponsor sales. The script that I use 'autolinks', allows you to place each link partner into a particular category and then give more weighting to one category than another. So you could easily tell your script to give more value to blog traffic than to tgp traffic in determining the order of your top referrers list.

[phuckbunny]

OK I pretty much get it, though I think the automation process does take away from the 'good traffic' - as you said - and also from the 'personal' aspect of a blog. Again, a little too tgp oriented. But....

...I'm on my third vodka drink and I'm overheating so will have to re-read this tomorrow, but the first thing that I'm going to do right now is go to register.com and buy OLDJUGS.COM

OMG I'm cracking up oldjugs is awesome