Make sure you enter the contest to win a Nintendo Wii if you haven’t. I’m also seriously considering that membership course, so if you have any suggestions for me; you know where to go.
Today what I’m going to talk about is a slightly shady tactic to exploit your fellow bloggers for exposure. Note, this is not illegal, or unethical, but it is a little… shady, shall we say. 
I bring you guys these kinds of ideas for your own knowledge; even if you never plan to use them, it’s always interesting to know about things that you didn’t before.
Anyways, a few weeks ago I was talking to a few buddies on instant messenger, and one of them pointed me to a Firefox extension that I had never heard of before (I’m still getting into all the technical side of things… ) – the extension is RefControl.
It may be an old, old, old extension for a lot of you, but here’s how you can use it for your advantage.
Basically, what Ref Control allows you to do is to ‘fake’ a referrer – you set where you look like you come from. A big part of checking traffic statistics is to see where exactly your traffic comes from and those sources are known as referrers.
So, for example – I could set this blog as a referrer for every single website I visit.
Now – wherever I go, people will think I came from http://www.theuniversitykid.com
How do we use that to our advantage?
Two ways.
The first way, is by setting your referrer as your website and visiting blogs like you normally would.
Now, a lot of blogs do an end of month post thanking top commentators, talking about top sources of traffic etc. Here’s where you gain some exposure.
If you’re a top ten referrer for a blog, and they do such statistic posts monthly, you’ll get some exposure. Generally, you won’t need more than 50 visits to become one of the top ten referrers for most medium sized blogs.
I visit a lot of blogs, something like 30 – 50 blogs, 2-3 times daily for the ones I like a lot out of those. So I’d be sending around 60 – 150 visits monthly to my favourite blog – more than enough to get on their top ten referrer list.
However, if you’re lazy to visit blogs manually… here’s what you do.
The first thing you can do, is use the Entrecard Credit Generator created by The Germz. Simply open a new Firefox window, and click all of the batch buttons once a day for a full month. You’ll be visiting, and thus showing up as a referrer on around 200 – 300+ blogs, and thus will take you less than a minute daily depending on your computer.
The second thing you can do is manually set a few hundred (or even more) blogs under your Firefox Bookmarks as folders, and then open all folders once a day for thirty days. Over the course of a month, you’ll rack up around 30+ visits (you could do the above thing twice a day – 60 visits – thrice a day – 90 visits – you get the idea).
By doing this, you work your way into the top ten of all those bloggers, and even if just 10% of them blog about their top referrers, you get 30 odd blog posts linking to you. How’s that for free exposure?
Okay – now the problem with this is that although you’re faking referrers, you probably won’t see results until the end of the month; and even then those results are iffy (unless you target blogs that do such kinds of statistic analysis posts, you can no guarantee anyone will blog about you).
Here’s where we use RefControl for immediate gains.
Now, some bloggers use a widget called FeedJit… which shows where recent visitors to your blog came from.
An example, is a friend – Jay @ Dat Money. Below is a screenshot of what it looks like.
I visited the website directly, but you can see that it shows where people come from if they’ve clicked through from a specific website.
Now, a Google search for Feedjit reveals 9,470,000 results (note, may differ depending on where you are). That’s a lot of blogs talking about the widget.
What you do is find blogs with the widget, and set them under a bookmarks folder in Firefox. Every day, you open them once; every day, you’ll pop up in the sidebar (with your blog link). You can also do this for blogs with MyBlogLog, Blog Catalog etc. Think of this like Entrecard dropping with real exposure for your blog.
If you were really evil, you could setup a macro to do this automatically.
Again, I’m not recommending you do this; I’m not advising against it either though. Completely up to you. 
Feel free to ask any questions if you have them, or put out any ideas. Remember, if you’re already visiting websites… why not set yourself as a referrer and see some traffic sent your way? At the very least, the blog owner will visit you.
July 17th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
Hehe, sounds familiar.
FeedJit sounds great. Going to start Googling for blogs using that. =P
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July 17th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
Thanks for the backlink
That’s a great tip I didn’t know about Refcontrol, before I thought you’d have to hard code it yourself if you wanted to do that.
Germz’s last blog post..How YOU can save money online.
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July 17th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
[...] just read a great article from The University Kid on how to exploit other bloggers for traffic and [...]
July 17th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
This does sound a little shady, and I think I see a trap.
Say the blog that is getting the referrals wants to return the favor or see how you linked to them. If they check on your site and see no kind of referral or linkage, what do they think?
Nathaniel’s last blog post..Out Of Juice
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July 17th, 2008 at 6:04 pm
The question is, do you use this method Jason?
Rajaie AlKorani’s last blog post..5 Good Reasons Social Media Traffic Isn’t Useless
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July 17th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
Argh, I was just about to post this. I guess I’ll have to wait a week or two… I was going to do it from more of a blackhat standpoint as well. You win this round Jason, haha.
Jim’s last blog post..The Net Fool’s July Referral Extravaganza – Win a FREE Flip Mino Video Camera!
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July 17th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
Haha.. Jason how do you get infos about these type of shaddy method. I am glad that I removed FeedJit from my blog.
Agent 001’s last blog post..Video Jug: Life Explained on Film
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July 17th, 2008 at 7:25 pm
@ Nathaniel, you don’t really care what they think, but it’s up to you what reasons you give them (deleted post, removed sidebar link, heck – point them at this post and ask them to figure it out for themselves
)
@ Rajaie, I’ve played around with RefControl on TUK but not a lot; I have however used the combo on a few other blogs (Ref C / Feedjit) and see a daily max of 1,000 uniques. This was with a few advanced techniques which I will not put up on here, using a few different IPs and a macro
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July 17th, 2008 at 7:28 pm
Great idea. You do come up with some sneaky stuff. It would be scary to see what you could do if you were truly evil!
Sell Porn Make Money’s last blog post..Don’t Go For The Money, This Is Still A Job
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July 17th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
Isn’t this sort of tactics the reason spam exists?
Sounds a little too shady and I’m not sure if we should be teaching people this sort of stuff.
Ryan McLean’s last blog post..The Ultimate Guide to Easy SEO Techniques
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July 17th, 2008 at 8:28 pm
Lol Jason – point them to this post to figure it out. These things as you said are a bit shady, and it is too shady for me to get into. I try to rely on blogging to blog and promote with true original ways that don’t take a step towards the blackhat methods.
Nathaniel’s last blog post..Out Of Juice
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July 17th, 2008 at 8:48 pm
Hehehe, why not share your secrets so we can all benefit
Rajaie AlKorani’s last blog post..5 Good Reasons Social Media Traffic Isn’t Useless
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July 17th, 2008 at 9:13 pm
I love all these slightly shady ways to make money. But hey, it’s not illegal, and it brings traffic, so who cares!
Flimjo’s last blog post..Financial Facts About Barack Obama – Part 2: The Capital Gains Tax Hike
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July 17th, 2008 at 9:29 pm
Wow… that’s pretty cool. Didn’t think something like that existed…
Ralph’s last blog post..StumbleUpon – Overlooked Traffic Booster?
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July 17th, 2008 at 9:57 pm
hmmmm, I don’t know many blogs that post a list of top referrers, maybe top commentators. I see how it could work to ones advantage if they use that feedjit thing….but
I dunno…..not my cup o tea…. very creative though
JK Swopes’s last blog post..How to Grow your Business
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July 17th, 2008 at 10:37 pm
So I guess I’ll have to take Feedjit off my blog then?
Jay
Jay’s last blog post..Need Help Picking a Hosting? Check Out Webhostinggeeks.com for Reviews
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July 18th, 2008 at 6:24 am
*thinks* .. interesting..
ChiQ Montes’s last blog post..Upgrade to WordPress 2.6
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July 18th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Wow, very interesting post. I have never heard about this technique before, you do learn something new everyday. But whereas using it myself, I am unsure.
Craig Farrall’s last blog post..First showcase publication
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July 18th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
Did I mention I feel used…
Jay
Jay’s last blog post..Niches: MMO, Blogging Tips or Entrepreneur Blog? – I’m Considering Changing
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July 19th, 2008 at 12:40 am
Wow… that’s really interesting.
Not the article that you wrote, but the fact that I basically wrote the same thing earlier today, lol. Thats funny.
Ralph’s last blog post..Wordpress 2.6 – Good or Bad?
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July 19th, 2008 at 11:22 pm
I think someone out there should write a plugin that will create a “favsites” page on your blog and actually link to each of the thousand sites that you will be visiting so that you won’t have to give any explanation to them. what about auto categorization of the sites based on keyword density. Hard core coding…
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July 21st, 2008 at 2:05 pm
This is interesting but for now, I will pass it.
Aleks’s last blog post..Joke of the day – Mother in law
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July 25th, 2008 at 6:45 am
Hey kid your a genius !!! I love this post coz i love to blog hop!
gLENN’s last blog post..Win a $15 Godaddy e-Gift Card from Runts Life
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August 16th, 2008 at 8:23 am
Very brilliant..and perhaps a little evil.
Ganesh’s last blog post..Do you want a Free Domain Name?
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