Reviews Exchange

How to increase blog traffic without financial investments

Article 5

In the fifth part of the research, we will continue investigating the most promising ways to increase traffic flow to the Blog. In this chapter we will review the reviews exchange approaches.

Sponsored Reviews
Recently, this method of the Blogs promotion gained an enormous popularity. As Blogs eventually became the powerful and the wide-spread way of the content delivery to the readers, some Blog owners started to invest on ordering the sponsored reviews from other Bloggers to be posted on their sites on the promoter’s Blog. Usually, it means that for your money you get a nice attractive review on your site and its content that supposed to bring additional traffic to the site, and consequently additional income source that should justify the monetary investment. It also became an additional income source for the fellows’ bloggers, while they can find the “orders” on multiple “paid reviews” sites. This method of the blog promotion, while being quite effective and popular, does not fit well to the main idea of this article to include just free methods of the blog exposure. There are also warning voices claiming that sponsored reviews, while not violation the business laws, are “contaminating” the free and non-biased spirit of the information exchange in the bloggers’ communities. With all respect to the revealed concern, I personally consider this method of advertising to be completely acceptable, as far as the posted review or article is marked with clearly-visible and well-articulated disclaimer that the post is a part of the “sponsored” or the “paid-per-review” advertising campaign. Let the reader decide than, what credibility to be granted to the sponsored post.

List of the several Web Sites where you can order sponsored reviews, was posted at RateItAll:

http://www.rateitall.com/t-24403-money-for-sponsored-blogging.aspx

Reviews Exchange Communities
I think the review exchange through the specializing communities might give a really good exposure boost to the freshly created blogs with good content. Unfortunately, there are not many sites, I could find in this category, for this presentation. The brief listing is hosted on RateItAll as well:

http://www.rateitall.com/t-24370-reviews-exchange--free-online-services.aspx

The biggest advantage of this promotional approach: your visitor are not just clicking on your page and passing it through (like traffic exchange), but are actually reading the content, as they need to write something in the review later about your blog. Some of readers use the shameless tricks, posting the generic common phrases to describe any blog, they have reviewed. But, blog owner might be rewarded by really thoughtful comments and suggestions and by gaining devoted return readers, deciding your content is valuable enough to be bookmarked. In most cases, you can also choose the topic for your reviews, so you can also gain interesting new insights in the area of your interests. Per my practical observations, this is one of the methods of the site promotion, you should seriously consider in your marketing campaign.

Reviews Exchange with other Bloggers
This approach differs from the described above, as you exchange the reviews with other blogs. Every beginner blogger will benefit the reviews exchange with the better know blog, can be characterized by bigger traffic flow and higher rating. In exchange, the “Big Brother” is getting an additional exposure by reviewing many new and less “famous” blogs and journals. The certain disadvantage of reviews exchange with other blogs is a necessity to fit the review posting with the general direction of your own blog, otherwise this post will be visibly out of the main posting stream. Keep in mind, that you are responsible to the blog, you are exchanging reviews with, but you are also responsible to your readers that are accustomed to your style, topics presentation, else. Every perceived false will not serve good neither your blog, nor the blog you are reviewing. Therefore, I would recommend seriously taking in account not just the potential advantages of your blog review being posted somewhere else, but also your ability to incorporate the new review in your blog canvass.