Controlling the Explosion

There's no doubt about it: autumn has arrived. I can tell, despite the fact that the demands of blogging keep me glued to the computer. Instead of trees changing their colors and the temperature dropping, in the blogosphere the words "fall" and "autumn" start appearing in blog after blog. So I know that autumn is here.

On those occasions that I do venture outside, it is not so obvious. In Lawton it is a bit cooler than a few weeks ago and there is just a suspicion that the big oak across the road has lost some of the brightness of its green foliage. But many of the trees are evergreens anyway and the grass has not yet assumed that dull and dirty yellow of its winter hibernation. It could just be a pause in the fierce heat of summer.

But no, I know it's autumn. Confirmation comes as photographs of dazzling autumn foliage in New England spread throughout the blogs. And this means that winter approaches, of course.

Ah, winter, the season of plenty for the blogosphere, when the cold and damp will keep people indoors and turn them into potential readers. Happily we prepare for the onslaught, secure in the knowledge that we have survived the drought of summer.

So magnanimous does this make me that I contemplate sharing one of my secrets of the blog harvest field, a chance discovery that has allowed me to keep the hit crop growing throughout the summer. For a moment I draw back, afraid that I might kill the goose that laid the golden egg; but then common sense prevails for I speak of hits only. They look pretty in the statistics but have little real impact upon the popularity of the blog. And, anyway, I have developed a few other little tricks over the summer that can fill any gap that might result from my indiscretion.

It all began with BlogExplosion's redesign a few months ago. BlogExplosion (BE) has long been the best of the blog traffic exchanges and thus the mainstay of many a blogger's quest for traffic, and the sudden drop in hits that resulted from BE's altered systems caused considerable consternation amongst BE customers. Accustomed to receiving an average count of around a hundred hits a day from BE, suddenly we were scratching around in the teens. The resultant dent in the stats was painful but BE promised that things would improve as they adjusted the new systems, so I held on and waited.

It was perhaps a month later that I noticed an odd phenomenon. During the days of plenty, I had been in the habit of keeping a large stock of credits available for all the hits BE sent me, but the slowdown had made me lazy and I allowed the credits to drop dangerously low. The inevitable happened; one day I found that the cupboard was bare - my BE credits were non-existent. I had no way of knowing how many hits I had missed in the previous few hours so I quickly went surfing to build up a few credits.

After twenty blogs, I went back to see how I was doing. To my horror, the credit count was still zero! My first thought was that I was not being credited; I went surfing again immediately, determined to break through this strange problem. Back again after another twenty blogs, I found the counter still sitting obstinately at zero. But this time I noticed the hit counter as well. It was already showing twice as many hits as I would have expected at the time.

It dawned on me then: the credits were being used up as fast as I could make them. Quickly, I went back to surfing. For over an hour I surfed, checking the figures occasionally, watching the hit count move inexorably upwards as the credits stayed on zero. Eventually, I was able to build a small cushion of credits and, at the same time, the mad rush of hits stopped. By then the hit counter stood at over one hundred.

I thought that it had all been the product of coincidence; that, for some reason, everyone had gone surfing at the same time and thus caused the unexpected windfall of hits. Over the next few days, BE returned to its grudging handout of a few hits here, a few hits there.

But a week later it happened again. I had kept the credit level a bit higher after my experience, not wanting to be caught out by another sudden rush, but once again I was confronted with a zero return on one of my regular checks. And the next hour or so was spent in frantic clicking through blogs as I tried to get ahead. Once more, it ended with a haul of about a hundred hits.

In the following weeks this happened with increasing frequency and I decided to try an experiment. I would allow the credits to drop to zero and then see if the hits began to flow when I tried to build a cushion. It worked! It was as if I'd found a trigger to release BE's potential for hits; as though BE was entering a contest with me, determined that I should not build a reserve.

All sorts of theories occurred to me. Perhaps BE had built this into the new systems so that free users like me would be persuaded to pay for credits to stay ahead. But I'd noticed that, as soon as I built a cushion of any size, the hits would stop flowing. So I'd actually be limiting my hits if I went the paid route (not that I ever would - the whole idea is to get everything for nothing).

Maybe BE had designed this to make potential leavers stay. Perhaps it was just a glitch in the program. Or this could be the first signs that BE's promises of more hits are about to be made good. But, whatever the cause, I am not about to complain. I changed my strategy and now spend a couple of hours every day, milking BE. Results vary but I'd say the average hit return is about a hundred.

Of course, it's a time-consuming strategy but I'm tied to the computer anyway; might as well make my blog-clicking as profitable as possible. The stats love it!

If the good folks at BE ever read this, they might well block my little loophole. But, what the heck, I've had a good run and I really ought to stop being so hit-centric anyway. It's regular readers that matter, not hit rate. And with winter on the way, the hits should be going up for everyone. So there's my little gift to BE bloggers for the autumn. Enjoy!