DISCLAIMER : The Blog Explosion Guide For Newbies is in no way affiliated with Blog Explosion and should be considered as merely a parody of that excellent website. If you have a blog and you want traffic – a LOT of traffic – then Blog Explosion is the way to go! I have had many thousands of hits to this blog, and in a relatively short time I should add, because of Blog Explosion. Click the banner above to check it out yourself, and start driving traffic to your blog. Go on. It’s free. You know you want to!

Blog Explosion is a website for promoting and showcasing blogs from all over the world. New members will need to sign up for a free account before they can expect anyone to be even remotely interested in anything they do. If you decide not to sign up to Blog Explosion then you’re basically condemning your blog to Blogosphere hell and you will certainly pay dearly for it. Specially trained Blogosphere Agents will be summarily dispatched to the site of your blog where they will then be required to report on all blog conditions and check for any abuse that may be present. You may even have your blog confiscated and your Blogging Rights revoked if the Blogosphere Agents feel that it is warranted. In less severe cases you will most certainly be fined and a Burn’d By Blogg’d Rating will be applied in some instances. Take heed. You have been warned!

Once you are a fully card carrying member of Blog Explosion you will probably be ridiculed by your peers for being a dumb-ass nerd as Blog Explosion doesn’t actually issue cards at all. After you have that sorted out you can then start to add details to your account. At this stage you might also wish to add an actual blog to your account because failing to do so is just ridiculous and a pathetic waste of both your time and Blog Explosion’s.

After you’ve entered your details you can start surfing other member sites to earn credits which you can then waste on Battle Of The Blogs at a later stage. Click the “Surf Member Blogs” link to start and this will take you to a new page where you’ll see your main Surfing Bar and, possibly, your first horrid weblog complete with colorful text, obnoxious animated gifs and, hopefully, a crappy audio file. If you’re on dial-up this is especially rewarding.

To the far left of the top Surfing Bar you will see a confusing group of random numbers and instructions to click a certain number value once the countdown has finished and the “Go” button activated. Clicking on the correct number will take you to the next site. Clicking on an incorrect number will also take you to the next site but you will not register your credits for the site that you were just on and a random vote will also be generated in the Battle of The Blogs, resulting in even more people hating you. Clicking on the “Go” button doesn’t actually do anything except make you look stupid.

Each member site needs to be viewed for at least 30 seconds for you to receive any credits for that site, however some sites may shock and scare you sufficiently enough that you feel you must click the appropriate number value before your time is due. This is OK and we’ve all done it at one stage or another. You won’t be awarded any credits for this but at least your eyes will appreciate it. For each site you visit you will receive .5 credits – so surfing 20 member sites will yield you 10 credits, surfing 50 member sites will get you 25 credits and surfing 100 member sites will make you wish you’d stopped at 50.

Once you’ve accumulated a pile of credits you can then assign them to your own blog or do what most people do and blow the lot on Battle Of The Blogs. If you assign the credits to your blog it should be noted that each credit represents one hit to your own site by another Blog Explosion member. If you assign all of your credits to Battle Of The Blogs the equation is thus:

There are some other useful features located on your Blog Explosion Surfing Bar. To the top right hand side you will often find some atrocious banners created by the Blog Explosion Pre-School Creche. These can be easily identified due primarily to their high annoyance factor. Occasionally though you’ll see some very well designed and professional banners which you should immediately click on because you’ll never know when you’ll see them again. These banners will then take you to some pretty cool blogs if the Gods are smiling upon you. If they aren’t smiling then you’ll probably go back to that very first blog you started off with. The one with the crappy graphics and blaring music. Rest assured though that you can never be taken to your own blog so this is good if you just want to torture others without the fear of harming yourself.

Along the bottom edge of the Surfing Bar there are several useful links where you can rate the blog you’re viewing at the time, save the blog in your favorites for future viewing, links where you can allow or deny audio sites, adult sites and sites with profanity, a link where you can read comments about a blog or leave your own comment and a link that will allow you to block the viewing of certain blogs. Unfortunately you are limited to blocking a mere 50 blogs so this gets used up rather quickly.

There is also a totally useless – and quite dangerous – link which will let you see, and unfortunately re-live, every crappy little blog that you tried to forget over the past 24 hours. For God’s sake DON’T click on this link. You have been warned!

Blog Rocket is neither a blog nor a rocket. It is however a clever feature that enables you to have people completely ignore your blog without spending any credits whatsoever. The idea is simple – you click the link to list your blog along with the other 24 blogs currently listed. Your blog will appear down the bottom at number 25 and will start to make it’s way up the list with each new blog that is added to Blog Rocket until it reaches the number one position and then disappears. This can take anything from between 0.7 seconds (resulting in you having to re-submit your blog almost immediately) and several days. Other members will then click on your blog unless they realize that it was you who caused them to lose their Battle Of The Blogs challenge due to your ineptitude in clicking on the wrong number while surfing for your own damn credits!

It should also be noted that with Blog Rocket members don’t even have to spend the required 30 seconds it takes for your blog to load before moving on to the next blog. This has the added advantage of saving you bandwidth. All that is required of Blog Rocket is for the “Bonus Credit” screen to load. Once that’s done you can dispense with anything else.

Battle Of The Blogs is where all of your hard earned credits can be finally wasted in a truly meaningful manner. It can give you a warm fuzzy feeling inside or it can rip and twist at your guts like a cougar on smack! The Blog Explosion crew have worked especially hard to improve this wholesome game of speed, endurance, luck and Payola.

The concept is simple – two blogs are pitted against each other in a do-or-die fight to the death with the best blog – and we do use that term loosely folks – winning 75% of the credit spoils. The remaining 25% goes to the nine voters who voted on the battle. Believe us when we say that there is no faster way to lose your credits than this delightful distraction. It’s been scientifically proved in fact! It’s highly addictive and a hell of a lot of fun – unless of course you’re losing 95% of the time in which case all you want is for all of the other blogs to DIE DIE DIE!

But fear not fellow bloggers, for there is always room for the “sympathy vote” – in which the crappiest designed and most banal blog in the world can still triumph over a beautifully constructed, gorgeous looking, insightfully witty and wonderful written blog ever known to man. Indeed the combined and cooperative blog team of William Shakespeare and Leonardo DaVinci have had their blog trounced many a time by David Drewsbury’s Castings and Stool Sample Site*. This is what’s referred to as “The Great Equaliser”, in which eventually all blogs on BotB will be voted into mediocrity, evening out at an average 50/50 win loss ratio. The higher your wins, the higher fellow bloggers want to make your losses. Rest assured no-one is immune!

It should also be noted that if you’re one of the fortunate few who have a very high overall score it is VITAL that you stop battling IMMEDIATELY for fear of a strong reprisal from other bloggers who have just realized that you’ve flown under the radar to snag a top five spot. Now that they’re aware of you they’ll do their very best to tear you down off your perch again! Likewise those bloggers who managed to get in early on BotB before the bitchiness began should also rest on their laurels and not battle again. It just doesn’t make sense, dears!

One of the “special features” recently introduced to BotB is the inclusion of the results for the last 50 Battles. This has proved to be a boon for Battling bloggers as it allows them to see just who the bastards were who voted against them, thus ensuring a high “Revenge Factor” the next time around. All thoughts of retribution and hatred are quickly dispersed with after a while however, when bloggers of all walks of life can rest and discuss the days events in the SHOUTbox at the end of each battle.

The SHOUTbox is the “voice” of Blog Explosion and it’s often the place where weary BotB combatants vent and rest up before throwing themselves headlong back into the fray. There are some truly charming people who drop by there sometimes with a cheerful “I frickin’ hate you, you scum!” after a particularly nasty battle. Lord knows the love that will be summarily thrown around now that bloggers are able to identify more accurately just which frickin’ scums are who, thanks to the improvements in BotB. The SHOUTbox is also THE spot for friendly collusion amongst bloggers. Don’t like that site with a 92.84% rating? Then blast it back down to the mid 50’s with the help and organization of 3 or 4 like-minded bloggers. Go on! Why not? After all they beat you two weeks ago before the other 200 blogs beat you so all’s fair. It doesn’t matter that their blog is simply stunning while yours is a festering pile of regurgitated quag!

Some of the thoughts and ideas expressed are particularly insightful and so a special Shout Box Wisdom blog has been set up, where many of the gems can be saved and commented upon, thus ensuring that such harmony and love for your fellow blogger has never been healthier.

But it’s not all pain and sorrow and hatred…..There’s also credits aplenty when the MC Fairy (Mystery Credit Fairy) is around. This delightful little character haunts the Blog Explosion SHOUTbox and awards mystery credits to those she feels are worthy of the love. The MC Fairy is also known to award credits to bloggers while they surf, as well as on the Blog Rocket. What a lovely soul! Unfortunately though there are bloggers who wish harm upon the MC Fairy as they vote against her own blog in BotB. How fickle some people can be!

Well that wraps up this Blog Explosion Guide For Newbies for the time being. I hope all newbies to Blog Explosion find this guide helpful in some way or another. It was a pleasure for me to present it to you, and thanks to all the admins at Blog Explosion and the bloggers for making the magic happen.

* NOTE: There’s no such blog as David Drewsbury’s Castings and Stool Sample Site. It is totally fictional.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 15th, 2005 at 10:14 pm and is filed under Blogs, The Web. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.