Why so many "dead" blogs while traffic-exchanging?

Actually, to clarify my headline question above, it's not so much "dead" blogs as blogs that need some attention and perhaps some updating (some of which haven't been updated in weeks or even many months), and yet... those same blogs are showing up in traffic rotations on blog traffic exchanges (Blog Mad, Blog Explosion, Blog Clicker, Blog Advance, etc.)

First, I'm left to wonder if some of these people have just dropped off the face of the earth? It's as if they don't respect the audience enough to take a few minutes to post some new content, or, failing that, at least take a few minutes to visit the blog exchange sites to "pause" their blogs, or update their credit allocations to save the credits for a time in the future when their site might be updated.

Continued in article comments Please see comments for more details and space to add your own thoughts on these issues.

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... continued from original article

I can certainly understand not having time to blog. That happens along the way, sometimes for a few days, sometimes a week or so at a time.

I can also understand just not being inspired to blog. The muse just isn't there, the news hasn't been worthy of comment (or you don't have a blog that is aimed at current events), the entertainment world isn't providing material for discussion, etc. That happens to people, but at the same time -- unless you are a very narrow focused individual -- there are normally other issues to blog about. Sports, family, medical issues, politics, money (or lack of it), entertainment including TV and movies, and so much more.

Maybe some people feel less inspired to update their own blogs if they are seeing discussion on friends sites (which sometimes happens to me as some of the other fine bloggers I know, many with links over in the side bar, beat me to some topics and cover them well enough to help avoid the need for an article of my own on the same topic).

Regardless of the reason though, I have to say it is somewhat rude of the bloggers that aren't updating their sites to continue to be sucking up slots in the traffic-exchange rotations. It's rude to the readers, and it's more rude to the other bloggers that are out there trying to bring in traffic to their own sites -- sites which are being updated regularly.

I wish there was something (other than blacklisting sites within the traffic exchanges) that could be more easily done to drop inactive sites from the exchanges. Maybe some sort of "last updated" flag that gets checked so that old content is slowly but surely dropped in favor of active sites. It may come to pass (if it does, then I claim a patent on the idea and offer the concept for free use by any all traffic exchanges I participate in

) but in the meantime I sit and wait for the counter on the dead sites to run out asap (both credit counter and current visit counter, as I expect eventually those sites will run out of credits and stop wasting our time).

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I'm yet to be convinced of the value of all these traffic exchange sites.

I'd say the jury is out for me in the area as well. I do occassionally run into some interesting and different "stuff" out there, including finding some sports related blogs from people in the D.C. area that get updated every now and again with some interesting points of view.

Whether or not these exchanges are really bringing more traffic to my own site, I couldn't really tell you for sure. It does seem that I can build up quite a bit of points, allocate them and then not see that collection of points disappear for a long time (which seems to imply the rotations aren't working in my favor at all).

It is definitely true that sites along the way will get themselves blocked and "blacklisted" by members that are turned off by the sites. There's a few "ultra liberal sites" that have come close to hitting my own blacklist, but so far I've reserved the spots on the blocking lists for keeping away from a few totally inappropriate (in my view) sites. I'll spare the details, but would just say that those inappropriate sites aren't "mature themed," aren't "politically themed," and aren't the type of materials that most people would ever find useful or entertaining. How the sites ever even got accepted into the exchange services, who knows, but freedom of speech and all that jazz I guess.

I do find a lot of great content here at JU, but tend to lurk and not say a lot as I read through. Over some of my "spare time" I catch up on the reading here, and then cruise the net a bit to see what others are saying, thinking, etc. If I get a few new readers doing the same thing, then it's worth the little effort involved in signing up and clicking some silly numbers on the screen.

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