If you arrive at this post via Alpha Inventions please leave a comment - this is an experiment! I am trying to determine how much true interaction can come from Alpha Inventions referrals.....
Here is some background:
Tonight, just after I made this post I noticed a significant increase in hits to my site in a very short period of time. I have noticed this before; especially when I post in the evenings. So where did all of this traffic coming from? Alpha Inventions. Have you heard of this site yet? It is a kind of neat concept. I admit, though, that I am still trying to figure it all out...especially about the interactive quality of the traffic.
Here is how site creator Cheru Jackson describes Alpha Inventions:
Here is how it works. (simple as possible I hope).. Ready?
Let’s go…
If you update or publish your blog at the same time my visitors are
browsing blogs in my site then my visitors will get a chance to see
your blog in real-time. BAM! (the entire blog is in their face
instantly) It’s not even annoying to watch. Is it alpha addicts??
I also provide a link to your blog in case they want it to open your
blog in a new window, or bookmark your blog . The links provides your
title, and description to help my visitors get a better understanding
on what your blog is about, and get more interested.
Alphainventions.com is useful for wordpress.com , typepad.com,
spaces.live.com, and blogger.com I love it, and want to grow it like a
tree. Yahh!
To get more traffic from alphainventions.com just keep your blog
updated or go to the homepage, and notify readers about your blog. It’s
so simple.
So after this increase in traffic tonight, I decided to look for other blog posts on Alpha Inventions. Clearly other bloggers are noting an increase in traffic as well - but at the same time there is also debate about what exactly all those extra hits are achieving. Are they just momentary hits? Are those who arrive at blog posts via Alpha Inventions actually reading content? Are they commenting? All good questions. I certainly have been wondering about this. To date I have not had any comments (that I know of) as a result of Alpha Inventions; but I have had return visitors to my site via this referrral source. Here is an example of one returning visitor from my stats page. (I use StatCounter - which I love!)
Tulsa, Oklahoma, United States, 0 returning visits
One post that I came across on Build Your Traffic caught my attention. Here is a portion of that post:
QUESTION: AI
seems to be very very effective in getting my blog loaded and offers
the potential for the person watching to pause long enough to be
tempted to engage.
On the times I have made use of AI I have been quite impressed with
it’s effectiveness - but alas I have not seen that been translated into
consistent readership outside of AI and better still interaction
through comments - which to me is what I am interested in.
Have you seen this translation?
ANSWER: My statistics say, YES!
I am running statistics on my
traffic through wordpress which shows me the referral sources that
brings people to my sites; the number of total views (which includes
each time your page displays on Alpha Inventions, I am pretty sure) and
also the number of pages that are visited.
I am seeing several things:
- Alpha Inventions has brought
me huge traffic views when the topic is eye catching (eg Dolphin
Slaughter in Japan - 1900 in one day);
- Alpha Inventions brings
additional traffic after you write about them in your blog - even if
you have not submitted your site through them on that occasion
- A submission to AI always brings some additional traffic (views)
Another post on seasons of the heart said this:
My blog counter had been going haywire again laitly. I was silly
enough to head over to alphainventions and condron.us again the other
day, to browse through some blogs while holding my cranky teething
baby. (i don’t normally have time for this, i promise! LOL). Well,
needless to say, that ended up brining me heaps of visitors here.
Apparently when you are on their site, and you have your site open on
your computer, they feed your site through theirs for others to view
and thus, providing you traffic. Interesting and complicated
process…so needless to say, my counter shows many hits that I wouldn’t
count as real traffic. I don’t consider myself real traffic to a site
that passes through their system. Only when I click on a site to
actually read it’s content do I consider it a hit. Regardless, i’m
feeling mighty popular.
So it is interesting...clearly Alpha Inventions results in hits - which is good if all you are doing is looking at your numbers pure and simple. If, however, you are looking for actual reads, comments and interaction it would appear that not all are convinced that this increased traffic is of interactive quality. I am not totally convinced - one way or the other yet. I will post this and see what happens....I will report back on my hit levels and we will watch the comments section to determine interaction levels!
Wait...I was just about to hit Save on this post and decided to have one more look at other posts on this topic....
I am so glad that I came across this one on etre...
I’ve come to understand that lots of traffic isn’t necessarily a good thing can actually generate some quality conversations when you echo what others are noticing.
Of the 4000 12000+ hits I’ve received in the last couple days, thanks solely to alphainventions.com, I’ve received 0 around 40 comments.
I’ve always preferred dialogue to monologue. And I still think that
alphainventions.com is a really cool idea. However, just because a blog
gets huge boosts in traffic (some by actual humans) doesn’t mean it’s
actually contributing to the conversation. If “hit count envy” is
something that afflicts you, then by all means, alphainventions.com is
a potent weapon supporting your ultimate dominance. But I would suggest
that a high hit count alone does not make any statement about the
quality of your contribution to the conversation.
From the stats that WordPress provides, I can see that folks are
actually clicking around through some posts, clicking some links out of
the blogroll… but no one is saying anything. Of course, that could be
simply because I don’t say anything of interest to them… 
Well, well, well...maybe Alpha Inventions does actually work for hits AND quality conversation...we will see what happens here! Pressing Save now...
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