I lost focus for a little while there, partly out of frustration that the whole spanking community should benefit from this new project, and only a few people have chosen to link in to it. Sometimes you need a friend though to put things in perspective.

SPANKING UNIVERSE

One of my fears was that other bloggers have also tried this venture, and some, namely Spanking Bloggers Network are still doing so. What was pointed out to me though is that there are many blogs that follow suit on the ideas of other blogs. As an example, the widgets I use. Since I started adding widgets a while ago a whole plethora of blogs followed suit, some mentioning that they first found it on my site, and others not mentioning it at all. I could only see through the homepages of the widget just how many bloggers had created their widget with my blog being the original source of entry. Same goes for affiliates, I am able to see just which blogs signed up for an affiliate from having clicked on a link from my blog, I know this because I earn 5% of whatever they earn as a ‘Webmaster’ referrer.

This also applies to blog ideas, some ideas of which are mine, and some that are the idea of others. I started a picture blog, others followed suit. Friends of mine created their own picture sites, picture of the day sites etc and other blogs did the same thing. Once more little credit was actually mentioned. My new galleries page, yep, you guessed it, others have followed suit. And don’t even get me started on the amount of pics from my archives that have been snaffled and posted elsewhere, especially when I see the message “I don’t remember where these came from”. Well I do, because I mark my posts with a tiny dot on the picture because having 1000’s of pictures, this helps to let me know whether or not I have posted a pic before. Yes, these are the phantom pics that appear on other blogs 🙂

So the bottom line is, even though there are other blogs out there that have tried the same thing as what I am trying now, there are also a lot of blogs out there that have copied the ideas of other bloggers. At least I can make the claim that I made a genuine mistake 😉 So I thank the friend who pointed out to me that a lot of blogs follow the ideas of other blogs and the spanking blog world has plenty of room for more.

Perhaps I should count the number of blogs that use the widgets that I use, Feedjit, whos.among.us and CBox and then see who clicked directly from my site to add that widget to their own blog. Just to give you an idea of copying techniques, I first noticed HOT MOVIES over on Dave’s blog, The Cherry Red Report and thought that it was a good idea so I added it myself, not that I felt terribly bad because like I said, I am able to see who adds affiliates after having seen them first on my site.

So the bottom line to this is what my original idea was, and that is to have a place for all bloggers to share. I guess it isn’t important that blogs link back into the SPANKING UNIVERSE really, perhaps in a month or two when they realize that a huge chunk of their hits are coming from that site then they will link in at that time. So I will share the love free of any requirements that people exchange links back in to the new site, and only hope that bloggers will see the benefit of it. Basically as it stands right now, 90 blogs will get the potential readership of 5 or 6 blogs linking back in. All I can do is ask whether people would be interested or not in linking back in to the new site. I will add more blogs to the list when I get home tonight.

I don’t often make predictions, but on this one I am going to. I have a feeling that most blogs are going to double in their current readership, once more bloggers add the site to their own, and I think some blogs will get more hits from the new site than they get right now 🙂

So back to my original point, if I have missed you and you want to link in, either leave me a message here, or drop me an email. If I have added you already, only link back in if you wish to, there is no requirement that you do so however.

SPANKING UNIVERSE