If you’re looking for an effective solution to help get your blog noticed then the Contextual Partnership Plugin for WordPress bloggers could be well worth consideration. Perhaps the most attractive aspect is that there is no cost involved.

According to the developers the plugin is designed to;

Drive more targeted visitors to your blog (or blogs) by strategically linking your blog to and from other bloggers participating in the network. The exact method used to achieve this remains confidential but apparently it’s not a basic reciprocal link exchange – nor the more common 3 way linking arrangement often seen between bloggers.

Enhance the user experience for your blog visitors by providing them with links to other high quality blogs for further information on subjects of interest (and it can do this without you actually loosing the visitor which is a great feature).

Indirectly increase your search engine rankings by building highly relevant incoming links to your blog for keyword terms you define, related to your own niche market.

Not a bad indirect benefit at all.

To better understand how the network works, first you need to know what a “contextual link” actually is. A contextual link is simply a link “within content” of a blog post and “within context” of specific keyword terms in that post. For example the term “dog training” found within a blog post becomes a link out to another blog (related to “dog training”) within the network. Contextual Links are found all over the internet – bloggers interlink their own pages contextually, there are paid advertising programs that allow you to place contextual advertising links and earn per click, and bloggers naturally link out to other websites they find useful “contextually” as well.

This is the key to the “Contextual Partnership”. When you install and setup the WordPress Plugin, you’re asked to provide the URL’s you wish to advertise on other partners blogs, and the keyword terms you want those blogs to use to link back to your own. When a match is found within the network for the keyword terms you provide (and assuming it meets with the Contextual Partnership’s strategic linking methodology), a link back to your blog is assigned, and your account has a credit removed.
The amount of credits your account holds appears to be directly related to the number of links you’re providing to other partners in the network for the keyword terms they themselves are looking to use to advertise. Apparently for every link you provide for another partner, you earn 1 credit. That 1 credit is then “cashed in” to assign a link back to your own blog from other partners whenever a match is found for your own keyword terms. So if you already have 100 posts in your blog, and each of those pages finds a match to provide a link to another partner, then technically you could receive 100 incoming links to your blog as soon as you’ve been approved to participate in the partnership. You also continually earn more points and incoming links as you continue to blog and add more posts just like you usually do.

That’s the basic overview and you’ll find more specific information on the plugin website including details of many features not mentioned here (like the ability to select specifically which blog posts you want to include – or nor include in the network)…

http://www.contextualpartnership.com

Uptake by the blogger community seems to have been extremely good and this new service looks to become very popular. In the first two weeks of launch the partnership already had over 54,000 individual places to place links throughout the network, and within the first 4 weeks over 10,000 advertising links had been allocated between network partners. This is most likely a result to how easy it is to actually setup the plugin and participate – it literally takes 5 minutes to install and setup – although approval can take anywhere from 24-72 hours depending on the moderation queue as only high quality blogs are accepted to participate to keep out the splogs and spammers.
This seems to be one of those services worth giving a shot for a few months, and by the looks of things the developers have some exciting new features in the pipeline to make things even more effective for partners in the future.

You can find out full details and download the plugin below…

http://www.contextualpartnership.com

Or alternatively you can download the plugin directly from WordPress…

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/contextual-partnership-link-exchange-plugin/

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Back in the days JOAB was snark blog par excellence, mainly excelling in it’s offensive style. Ran and edited by a snark master who we rather prefer to ignare and totally blank nowadays, JOAB was feared and every problogger or A-lister in the ‘about blogging’ scene became the victim. But times have changed and all these bloggers have become a snorefest. With Jeremy’s change in position the last of the failbloggers has died and taken down Jack of All Blogs at the same time.
Before I dive in to an identity crisis after yesterday’s event, I would love to thank JOAB’s preferred victims.

Scrivs and Mike Rundle.

Jack of All Blogs indirect being a creation of Paul Scrivens and his Fine Fools network we have to thank Scrivs for good fun times and much laughter on New Year’s Day 2007. Never mind that Splashpress acquired the Wisdump less than half a year later.

Foot-in-the-mouth-blogger par excellence, Mike Rundle always was omni-present in JOAB comments, often trying to return how much JOAB would love to be a member of 9rules. Mike we love, you. If not for your witty comments, for your funny banter in the B5Media – 9rules war.

Sadly both Rundle and Scrivs have retired in boredom.

Matt Craven

Being a friend of the original JOAB editor, Matt Craven always was good sport and often first to comment on rumours, snark. Matt is a great personality and was an awesome Blog Herald owner/editor. Sadly he seems to have retired in to WoW. I wonder if he’s looking forward to have Twitter stations in WoW or the next Elder Scrolls.

Jeremy Wright

Main culprit of the death of JOAB1.0, Jeremy Wright was maybe our favourite commenter here at JOAB. Always the first one to hit out at Scrivs and Rundle, stirring the fire in the comments and making sure we had many a great day. Often we had more fun in the commentfire between Rundle/Scrivs, Craven and Wright.
Rumour goes that Wright used to send internal emails about JOAB entries to B5Media contributors and channel editors.

Wright now has become a member of the B5Media board. We think he should become a consultant of Splashpress Media as well… and ghost contributor to JOAB.

Matt Mullenweg

Matt, sadly you have never been enough on the JOAB radar, but we recognize that you have matured admirably over the last years and now even would not want to have you on our snark attack radar anymore. Please create some more controversy as we really do not want to start reading Om Malik’s snorefest.

Franky

Last but not least there’s Franky. Nowadays he is Assistant Editor in Chief at Splashpress Media. Ever since he started writing here at JOAB his aggressiveness has gone downhill as weeks passed. Once shit-stirrer par excellence he then took over Wisdump from his idol Scrivs and since then things have gone downhill to say the least. Rumour goes he even doesn’t believe in snark anymore. We bet he must have a LiveJournal blog now or writes on MySpace. Or maybe he works for LiveUniverse and maintains train-wreck BlogExplosion. Probably the blogger’s union deal has gone to his head.

RIP JOAB1.0

Dear Jack of All Blogs V1, it was an awesome ride and we certainly will miss you. Feelings are split, divided between ‘how can we revive the old snark and offense tradition’ and ‘This is it, I’m having an identity crisis’.

Thank you for all the fun we had… and stop whining now. Arrington and Riley are still posting! Get in there!

Photo credit: Mike Abundo.

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3. Clipping from the past. ( a look into my inbox)

For probloggers there’s another issue: disclosure. Here at JOAB we obviously couldn’t give a rat’s a$$ about disclosure. Proud we are about it as well, because imagine how silly things are if you become one of those people who really tell everything they are not supposed to even share with their friends, unless they really want to. Today I stumbled on one of these examples. TUAW’s Robert Palmer has since a long time been running a series about His Dad, the switcher and recently bought his dad’s switch mini Mac. Now he hooked it up to a new TV and tis is where the all telling comes in:

This was the new arrival. It’s beautiful, but a little spendy, at $2100. The 120Hz refresh rate is amazing, and works great with the Mac mini. (A version with a respectable 60Hz refresh rate is much less at $900.) Full disclosure, though: I got mine through a cousin who works at a Sony plant here locally, and was able to shave nearly half off the price through a friends-and-family sale.

I do not understand why the fact of having friends/family who can do a favour needs to be disclosed. It’s life, not a conflict of interest. Grow up, you darn bloggers!

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I’m not sure if this is a true story or not, but somewhere along the way I picked it up and have remembered it ever since…

Baseball player Jeff Kent was once mired in a dreadful slump while on the New York Mets. Fans, who can be relentless when players don’t perform up to their standards, decided to share their displeasure with Kent. How? They got personal. After getting wind that Kent’s dog Gunnar has passed away they broke into a sing-songy chant. “Gun-nar…”

Ouch.

Kent might be a millionaire and part of a fraternity of several thousand professional baseball players, but he’s human. And not deaf.

Shortly after the cruel chant, Kent was traded away, vowing to never play for a New York team again.

It’s easy to be super-critical of public figures. After all, we expect great things from them since they make great money. The misconception that they are immune to criticism is foolish. They might be more used to it than us ‘regular folks,’ but that doesn’t mean the daggers don’t hurt.

And speaking of us, the same goes for blog writers and blog commenters. The more I blog, the more I realize that blog commenters are more likely to leave a comment if they disagree or take issue with something you write. That’s cool. But there’s no need to get personal.

Before you pull the trigger on that comment asking ‘who the heck I think I am’ – let me tell you. I’m a hard working, regular guy who likes to blog as a therapeutic outlet. I enjoy writing and need the few extra dollars (literally) that this hobby affords me. Slicing and dicing my writing style, pointing out typos or arguing with my angle on something just for the sake of arguing sucks. Comments make blogs great – just don’t get personal. Think before you post.

Related posts:

1. The NY Mets Need a Blog
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There’s an alarming trend that is taking place at venues around the globe: massive audience sing-a-longs that drown out the real thing.

There is a similar movement within the blogosphere. Your favorite blogger begins to drift off into the distance, as “guest” bloggers start to fill the space. Before you know it, you rarely hear from the person who was your entire reason for reading in the first place.

Building an ensemble cast is nice, but if your favorite character goes away, you might not be as inclined to read or watch. Imagine LOST without Jack. You would probably still watch, but if he was your favorite character, you might lose interest.

A blog is an even more personal experience. Writers build bonds with their audience, and should be very careful when phasing themselves out of the equation.

I’m not fooling myself, I realize every blogger is replaceable. But keep in mind that your visitors are there to hear you sing – not the audience. Before you pass the mic to another performer, make sure you’re not damaging your overall product.

Related posts:

1. Blog Commenters Pray on Thin Skin
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