Just a very, very minor update tonight.

If you’re a dedicated reader, you’ll find that I’ve reverted to my old layout. It’s just temporary, turns out my 3-sidebar layout was breaking horribly in IE6 and readers were having to scroll down to get to the post. I’m going to rebuild everything into a newer layout that will hopefully be cross-browser compatible. Thankfully, Christmas is upon us and that means I’ll be getting some time off work. These 11-hour shifts plus Saturdays are killing me.

On a side note, the cheap monitor I bought about a year ago went on the blink and I had to borrow one of my Father’s old CRTs. This thing is only 17-inches, but the unit is so huge I have to place the monitor six-inches away from my face just to fit the thing on my desk. I remember when I thought LCD flat panels were completely unnecessary. Now I don’t know how I ever lived without one. Anyway, hopefully we’ll have a brand new layout that looks good for everyone by the new year.

And hopefully I’ll have a new monitor by then as well.

PS. Thank you everyone who read my post on The Notebook. It’s amazing what airing that movie on TV can do for traffic.

As dedicated bloggers, we are all looking for ways to generate more traffic to our sites. From a business standpoint, the more traffic you have to your Web site, the greater chance you have of someone clicking one of your ads. From a creative standpoint, a writer is nothing without his or her readers. Furthermore, with an estimated five million blogs floating around the Internet, we can’t simply rely on search engines to funnel visitors our way. That’s why it’s important to create your own traffic streams. One way to do that is through traffic exchange sites. While there are quite a few of this type of sites, there are more specialized sites that focus on blogs and these are the services I want to discuss here.

The way these sites work is like this: For every blog you visit through whichever service you’re using, your blog will receive a visit in return from someone else. Most of the time, it’s not a 1:1 ratio. You’re more likely to find 2:1 ratios, meaning for every two blogs you visit, your site will receive one in return. The traffic exchange site keeps track of your blog surfing through a special javascript program that runs in your browser. Once you activate the program, it automatically loads a random blog. A 30 second timer counts down and then a security question pops up to ensure you’re actually surfing and not having a bot do it for you. The timer is there to give you a chance to read the blog before moving on. The idea here is that you might find something you enjoy and now that blog has a dedicated reader. And the same goes for you when someone randomly views your blog through this system.

There are a few problems inherent with blog traffic exchange sites. The biggest problem is that the community is full of bloggers. By nature, bloggers want readers, not to become a reader. So, more often than not, you will have people landing on your blog who are just waiting for the timer to countdown so that they earn their credit. Even if this particular surfer is making a genuine effort to read blogs, you only have 30 seconds to sell them before they answer the security question to view the next blog. This problem of non-reading is further compounded by these traffic exchange sites completely randomizing their pool of blogs. It’s not surprising to run into the same blog three or four times during your surfing for credits.

Two of the more useless blog traffic exchange sites are BlogSoldiers and BlogMad. BlogSoldiers took forever to get an admin to approve my site. Once I was finally approved, any time I made an alteration to my preferences for my blog credits, it required the same interminable admin approval. Lastly, I think their community might be dead, because I’ve set my preferences to use 100 of my earned credits a day, meaning I want to have 100 visitors see my site through BlogSoldier surfing a day. Instead, I get maybe one view every two days. Last I checked, I had over 400 credits waiting to be used.

BlogMad is just as dead. While their system gives you plenty of ways to earn credits, like challenging other blogs to fights, credit lotteries and referrals, I don’t think there’s enough people using that service anymore. Once again, I only get one or two hits every two days. Sadly, they’re usually from the same few people.

The biggest, most glaring problem with these two blog traffic exchange sites is that you can permanently resize the window while you surf for credits. I was able to earn over 400 credits in one day on both sites while at work, just by keeping the surfing windows as small as possible and answering security questions every 30 seconds or so. People using those services are now truly only surfing for the credits and not for the reading.

The best bet is to stay away from traffic generating gimmicks like these altogether. They’re time consuming and don’t produce any quality visitors.

Life as a freelance writer is easily summed up in one word: temporary. One day a publication may need you to write movie reviews, the next day restaurant reviews. The day after that, they may not need you at all. That’s why you have to keep moving and keep scrounging for more work. It’s like being a shark. If you stop, you die. In this case, your writing career dies and you’re relegated to day job hell.

Anyway, when you’re first starting out, you’ll end up writing for anyone who’ll print your work. Unfortunately, the kind of publications that hire no-name writers are typically new, fly-by-night affairs that don’t pay. It’s important not to get too invested in these kinds of publications, because they rarely make it. You should be doubly wary of E-zines or Webzines, since you’ll essentially lose your tear sheet if the site goes down permanently.

Which brings us to tonight’s story. A while back I found a publication through MySpace called MNZ Magazine. They looked like a low-rent FHM or Maxim, focusing on kitschy nonsense and hiring shapely models: male thinking in a nutshell. In fact, I don’t think MNZ stood for anything. I think the MNZ was actually pronounced “menz.” Anyway, they were looking for movie reviews and I saw this as a great opportunity to get on some studio invites to film screeners. I got myself added to the Warner Bros. list for the 300 screening as well as the invite list of an LA PR firm that handles most movie events out there. I was stoked because MNZ agreed to print my reviews and now I’d be seeing the latest movie releases before everyone else.

Well, to make a long story short, after I turned in my reviews, MNZ stopped communicating with me. Furthermore, they didn’t publish my reviews. Even worse, they printed their resident movie buff schmuck’s reviews instead of mine. And this guy was horrible. His reviews barely covered the movie at all. His review of 300 went so far as to say something like, “You’ll see this movie anyway so I won’t bother telling you about it.” Ridiculous, right?

After repeated unanswered emails, I said screw it and just wrote them off. That was a year ago. Out of curiosity, I swung by their home page recently. Apparently, the site’s gone and is now being squatted on by some porn site (the model on the landing page is quite alluring). The MNZ MySpace is no longer being updated as of September of this year. Looks like another publication in a long line of crappy publications has bit the dust.

And the world is better for it.