I have had my blog registered at Picket Fence for quite a while. The way it works is pretty simple — you just sign up and fill out your blog details. Upload your blog button (if you have one) and put in a small description of what your blog is about. Then, you can paste the Picket Fence blog button onto your website somewhere. If anyone clicks the button, that counts as a virtual “vote” for your website on Picket Fence. The more votes you have, the higher your blog will rank in their enormous list of blogs. Supposedly the higher your blog ranks in the list, the more traffic you will likely receive. Your blog needs to fit into one of these categories to be included in their site: Family Life, Food, Home Design, Teaching/Homeschooling, Review/Giveaway, or Lifestyle. Mine is listed under “Lifestyle.”
The Reality
Unless you run a blog that hosts a ton of giveaways all the time, you are probably not going to have any luck getting to the number one spot. If you check the main site, you will see that the blogs ranking at the top have thousands and thousands of votes. These blogs also are in the “mommy blog” niche and get in on a lot of product review opportunities that they can hold giveaways for. Picket Fence does allow you to ask your readers to vote for you (click your Picket Fence link) as an entry method for various giveaways you might have. That’s what the people you see at the top are doing to get there and to stay there.
Is it still worth bothering with?
I don’t know. Quite possibly it is if you are in the mom blog/product review/giveaway niche. As you can see in my footer (and on all my other websites), I still do keep the Picket Fence button posted somewhere. I have nowhere near the votes that the people on the front page have, nor will I ever, but I do get the occasional visit coming through from Picket Fence. I’m sure that if I tried a little harder to get people to vote and made my button more visible on my page, it might benefit me more. But honestly I hate asking people for votes and most of my traffic already comes from other sources so it’s not a big deal if I don’t get them. Sometimes I do wonder if I should just take the buttons down and free up the space for something else, but then they are kind of cute and I think it’s cool that all it takes to get a vote is just one click of that button.
One neat thing about Picket Fence is that if someone votes for another site in your niche, a little bar pops up on the screen with blog buttons for other blogs they might enjoy. So for example if someone visited another site on making money at home and clicked through, they might still see my blog button because my blog is in that niche, so I might still see some traffic.
Tips for Making It Work
Even if you can never get to the number one spot, you could still see some traffic from Picket Fence. They get tons of visitors every day clicking through to vote for various sites. Since Picket Fence does allow it, you might consider hosting a giveaway on your site and using a vote for you on Picket Fence as one entry method. You may also want to put the Picket Fence button in a spot on your site where it’s highly visible, maybe with a heading over it asking people to click once to vote for you.
While Picket Fence is one possible small avenue for blog traffic, don’t depend on it solely. You should get out there and network as much as you can. Make Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, and Pinterest pages for your blog and follow others and invite them to follow you back. Post often, not just to your blog, but to your social networking accounts. And be patient — building up regular readers to your blog can for sure take a long time, but it will happen eventually if you are persistent and do not give up.
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Thanks for the info, Anna! I wondered what this was. I registered my site on Networked Blogs–not really knowing what that was, either, lol, because I saw another blog I follow was on it. Can’t tell that I am getting any traffic from here but I do know one person signed up from my website to follow me on networked blogs instead of signing up for my email list, which I would rather they do. I’m thinking about taking the Networked blogs button off. You have any thoughts on that?
I would say it’s definitely better to have your readers on your email list than to follow you on Networked Blogs. I honestly don’t know a lot about Networked Blogs … I have considered signing up a few times, but I don’t like how when someone clicks through to your site from there, it creates a bar at the top of your site page with their branding. I guess that’s why I never did it.
I’ve seen it for quite sometime since I’ve been following your blog. Picket Fence, in a nutshell, is a blog directory but with much friendly appeal compare to other directories. Building a link and getting traffic through blog directories is easy (referring to the former).
You can make and forget about it, that is, if you don’t have much time.
I still have to make a simple, eye-catching logo before I join the site. Thank you for the info.
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You are welcome!
I’ve tried several blog directories, but I’m not sure if any of them have helped. I wonder if anyone really uses them except other bloggers? I’ve even paid for several promotions through these various services. I had a really bad experience through Entrecard, and I won’t be trying them again. I paid for paid promotion with them and ended up never receiving the services. It was never even processed, although I paid for it. In the end I emailed several times but never got a response, so I ended up losing that money.
So sorry you had a bad experience with Entrecard
I have heard of that one, but never actually tried to use it. I also suspect that only other bloggers use blog directories, but then that’s not necessarily a bad thing because some of those bloggers can still turn into readers.
Thank you for this post Anna. It was very encouraging and I have heard of Picket Fence before but never really knew quite was it was all about. Thank you for explaining it well. I enjoy all of your articles and your blogs. Very nicely done.