This is a guest post by Mark Schumann the owner of the Publicity Wheel website.

Traffic exchange programs have remained relatively unchanged over the years.  In general, you’re asked to place a piece of code on your site to generate a banner link to other participants’ sites.  In most cases, you’re required to show two ads for every one you get in return (or a 2:1 ratio).  Of course, many people abuse these systems by artificially inflating their own impressions, and even when it’s not abused you’re never really guaranteed much more than a trickle of traffic, especially when you run a low-traffic site yourself. 

The Publicity Wheel puts a new “spin” on this concept by boosting a single site’s traffic and exposure for several days.  It works by promoting a 125×125 pixel banner ad for the featured site across the entire network of sites within each category.  Since the ad is displayed for several days on a multitude of other sites, the chances are you’ll be receiving a considerable amount of targeted visitors.  In addition, you’re gaining valuable ongoing exposure (arguably just as important as clicks) to solidify your branding.  In effect, you’re receiving a kind of prolonged Digg-effect or Stumbleupon spike without the high bounce-rates.

Every few days, the Publicity Wheel “spins”, generating a new set of winners to be featured until the next spin.  It’s a “wheel of fortune” of sorts, but there are key differences.  You have a much better chance of winning if you’ve been actively promoting previous winners through your site, as each click your visitors make earns you “publicity points” - effectively extra tickets, or chances, to win.  You can also earn points by referring other members.  What’s more, you don’t lose your points each spin if you don’t win (winner’s points are reset to zero), so over time you’ll have a better and better chance. This gives everyone a great opportunity for a traffic and exposure boost, not just the popular sites.

Signup is a simple process.  After creating an account, you’ll be asked to supply your site URL, title and category, along with an optional description and of course a 125×125 pixel ad that will be displayed across the community of sites when featured.  A small snippet of HTML code is provided to you for inclusion onto your site to generate the 125×125 winner’s banner and earn you points each click. 

After spending a few minutes creating your profile, you’re pretty much set.  You’ll have access to a multitude of valuable information through your Dashboard, such as interesting statistics and your publicity point history.  One particularly useful statistic is your “Expected Exposure Level”, a percentage value that measures how much exposure you’re expected to receive in comparison to the amount you give to others.  For many users, this could be in the several thousand percent range.

The real value in the Publicity Wheel is that the system cannot be abused like other traffic exchange programs, and the traffic and exposure generated is highly targeted.  Why not give the wheel a spin?

I’ve gone through the site and done a few updates, removing old widgets from the sidebar. I found a few new widgets to take their place. One of the widgets, the Publicity Wheel, will have its own post later this week.

I added a widget called EntreDroppers. Some of you may be familiar with it. It displays links to the last ten EC droppers on my sidebar, directly underneath the EC widget. So if you’re dropping on me, you can expect to see a link back to your site on the sidebar shortly afterwards. I think it’s a good way to give back to anyone who drops. What do you think of it? The links are no-follow.

The Boom Shelter

I also updated the Boom Shelter with some announcements and new links to popular posts on the blog. I have a few things going on this month for my readers. If you want to have me review your blog, then just send me a note through the contact form. I haven’t received any messages yet, so I have four spots still open. It’s your chance to get a free Powder Keg Review.

Also, Si Philps announced he’ll be giving away EC credits when my next Boombox Podcast airs. I suppose this is both an impetus for me and for you. I have to create it, you have to submit it. Be on the look out for that.

I received the emailed announcement this morning, as all Entrecard members did, that the new toolbar has been released. Is this Sitehoppin? I went to the Entrecard post and read about the new toolbar. It sounded cool. I have a lot of toolbars installed in Firefox and wasn’t too thrilled to add another, but it’s Entrecard, so I made an exception.

The toolbar installed flawlessly, but only works in Firefox 2 and 3 (sorry, IE, Opera, Flock, and other browser fans). I now have the option to view new sites, with the ability to open ten or more at a time, buy ads directly from the site I’m visiting, ad sites to my favorites, brows different categories of blogs, give tips, recommendations, and much more all from my browser. Why did Buzz My Blog appear when I hit the play button with Newest selected? Oh, because I clicked newest blog under my favorites category. Needless to say it took a few minutes to get used to, but it gives me quick access to my profile, and even quicker access to blogs.

You can one click advertise from the toolbar. This means when you visit a site you’ll see the price of an ad listed to the far right in the toolbar. One click of this button and the advert goes into the queue. I tried it on a cheap site. So if I accidentally click the button, I then have to go to my ad queue and cancel the ad. I’m not sure how I feel about this. A second click to confirm might be nice. What do you think?

Verdict? I think it’s great. It might actually get me dropping regularly again. Was the announcement worth the wait? I think so, but who am I? (Sezwho?)

Week in Review

I’m back. I can’t believe I’ve been away this long. I took a vacation from blogging it seems. No reason, just working and getting things done in other areas. I missed this blog though, and all the readers. I can’t imagine selling. Can you? I think I’ve grown too attached to everything, the hours of piddling with the template, the logo, the branding, the thousands of EC drops to promote, the Project Wonderful ads, the comments, articles, all of it! So I’m back and in full effect. I’ll hopefully be doing a podcast soon too.

If you’re new to my site, I like to write about topics that can help bloggers, either to smile or to write on their blogs. I also post reviews of blogs, in my Powder Keg Review series. I’m going to do a review once a week for the month of August. If you want to be considered for the review, please leave a comment. It’s free. I’ll choose a different blog each week. No strings attached.

Explosions from around the Blogosphere

Aside from the awesome Entrecard announcement, there’s been of interesting things going on this week.

The Big Bald Blog continued his Advertising of Yesteryear series with an installment looking at Honda’s 1965 advertising campaign and their earlier You meet the nicest people on a Honda ad campaign. It’s a good read.

Dosh Dosh talked about the key to viral marketing being emotional engagement in a new article. On a side note, I just saw his new site design. Very simple and nice.

Other things happened during the week, like the Problogger site being banned from StumbleUpon. Did you write a fantastic post this week? I’ll be linking to quality writing and entertaining bits every Sunday, so feel free to drop a link in the comments or through Twitter.

I recently bought a Microsoft Zune. I know what you’re thinking, why? Well, maybe not. I bought the Zune for research. I had an article to write about connecting the Zune to other applications. Of course, to do the work I bought the device. I’ve been very pleased with it so far. The best part of the Zune? I can carry podcasts with me wherever I go. To facilitate my thirst for fresh, exciting podcasts I’ve turned to the topic of today’s Powder Keg Review, PodcastKicks.com.

What is Podcast Kicks.com?

I received an email from a friend, Si Philps, a little while ago. He’s been hard at work creating PodcastKicks.com. Some of you may remember Si from his comments on this blog or the fact he’s helped me fix some troublesome issues throughout the life of my blog. Either way, when he told me he built a site, I fired up his site and started playing around with it.

Podcast Kicks allows users to create submissions for their favorite podcasts. It’s a community driven site similar to Digg, in that each user can “Tune In” to a podcast, effectively kicking it up. The more kicks a podcast receives, the higher it goes towards the site’s frontpage.

The Site Features

The site has many features common to community driven sites. As a user, you can post a link to your podcast, and watch as you rise in the ranks as more and more people listen to your podcast. The site holds a lot of promise for those looking to introduce their podcast to a wider audience and for the aural podcast junkie like me.

The site does differ from Digg though, as a listener might spend 10 to 60 minutes listening to a podcast. If they’re ADD they may forget to come back and vote up the podcast. It’d be good to see voting capabilities directly on the podcast owner’s blog or website, as well as a custom podcast player with built in Kicking ability. Of course, these are just ideas to keep listeners voting.

Everyone should go check out PodcastKicks.com! Give the site some love, links, posts, stumbles, diggs, or sign up and use the service. If you have any suggestions for the site, leave them in the comments.