Helping You Rock Out Your Site Like A Rockstar!

BlogGlue is a project that opened in 2008 to allow blogs to connect and promote each other’s content through a related post type setup… much like YARRP (Yet Another Related Post Plugin.) In fact, the very author of YARRP recommended in an earlier update to use BlogGlue. The system is built to improve conversion for blogs.

So, when you sign up, you enter your blog’s info and To be a free member, you get 5 free partners who had the ability to recommend your posts. The posts they recommend would appear in an unordered list format, much like YARRP with the title and link out to all the posts that the partner recommended.

Also, BlogGlue only crawls 400 blog posts and puts them into their system to potentially be recommended by any partner.

BlogGlue has 3 different packages: free, basic for $9.97, and Unlimited for $19.97.

So, I took a month to test the Unlimited package. Before taking on the challenge, I had the free package for a while, but felt it was extremely limiting… even for a novice blogger. While I am no novice, the 5 partner limit leaves little to be desired. It would mean being very picky on who to partner with and changing partners to get better ones with better traffic. This is not a nice way to network.

While BlogGlue did crawl my site and I got to accept more partners, there really was not much of a change in traffic to my site. Also, when I went to look for relevant partners, there were a lot of repeat users and spammers in the mix. There were sites listed in categories that were not relevant to their sites and it was just a pain to carefully sort through to find true sites interested in networking, instead of ones who failed to grasp the concept of BlogGlue. Also, I found from time to time that the posts recommended were not related in any manner. YARRP is sometimes like that and I wonder if sometimes it is based on specific keywords relevancy. For example, maybe general terms were used instead of what the article was truely talking about.

As for the SEO Checker that is optional to use, I found it quite buggy. I am not sure if it was conflicting with my WordPress SEO plugin, but it was not picking up the correct title. So, obviously, that needs to be looked into by BlogGlue developers.

BlogGlue really reminded me of banner exchange sites. It is better to personally network outside of paying $19.97 per month. Truthfully, I think that should be a yearly price instead to at least have some worth.

While I am not totally against using BlogGlue, it really is not worth the investment at this moment. Perhaps they may be worthwhile in the future, but it needs some tweaking to the system as well as moderating. Also, BlogGlue could benefit (and their users too) by writing more articles to educate users on how to use their system to their advantage. BlogGlue definitely has some potential to do better, but at the moment, it really is just

The Listing has finally taken over as the final merge of the of Acid-Lemon.com directory and Pixelled Listings. Because of some 502 issue that originated from the account of Acid Lemon, I had to terminate the account. The site was running several out of date scripts like SimpleDir (a webdirectory script that was popular several years ago), and PHPFanbase (a fanlisting script). The scripts had been exploited and there were mass emails sent out from the account. I could not let it go on and it was hurting everyone on the shared server.

There are some things I still have on my to-do list for the site. I still have over 600 members to inform of the change. So far The Listing in less than a month has risen to 100. That is awesome as I have not went out and affiliated with other webdirectories, or listed the site with anyone. The site is using NinjaLinks and it is great, very simple and customizable. I am hoping that the site will continue to grow and one day be far better than both of the sites combined.

If you are not listed there, consider listing. It is free and the only requirement is at least linking back to the site.

I added 2 more Computer Desktop Wallpapers to Blondish.net. Both are simple, but I think they are cute. They are offered for download in 3 resolution sizes (800×600, 1024x768x and 1280×1024), and are free to use. If you cut them up and use for graphics, please remember to give credit back.

One wallpaper is called ‘Ice Cream Cone’, and the other is ‘Paper And Markers’. So far Blondish.net offers 5 wallpapers, but since the beginning of February 2009, I have added the majority of them.

If you have any ideas for wallpapers, I can do requests, even fanart for celebrities, but only if they are using my vector method. I will not use the photos and do blends. I know most are girly, but most of the people who do visit Blondish.net are between 14 to 45. If you are a guy visiting, do comment here and make a request. I would like to face the challenge of making other types of graphics too. Again, just in case you missed it, you can view and download these wallpapers in the Wallpaper section.

As for more site news, there are a few WordPress Tutorials in the articles section of Blondish.net for your perusal.

The vectors tutorials I mentioned on the way will be ready this week. As usual, if you would like me to try to take a stab at creating a tutorial, I would be happy to hear about it.

Also, I may soon be a guest blogger over at WPThoughts. I encourage you to check it out as I think it is a promising site. I answer more han a dozen questions about WordPress in Twitter on a daily basis. Might as well write more about it, right?

As for Blogrity.com, I am thinking of making it a Blog directory. However, it will be using WordPress and submissions will be hand done. I would like to make a page on each site and then the page have stats like Google PR, Alexa Rank, and Technorati rank, Ability to leave a comment about the site and possibly a site rank and maybe editor rating. That is just the beginning of my ideas for it. I am thinking that perhaps the first 500 links would be free and the rest would be $5 submission fee. I just renewed it for its 2nd year and until now, I did not know what I wanted to do. What do you think?