Magical Ruby Red Shoes or Internet Links

My link party post from a couple days ago caused quite a flurry of comments. It was about how a lot of people who entered projects in Modern Craftswoman Monday were not linking back, or even following. I asked in the post for help from all of you. Wow!, did I ever get help! It was pretty amazing. Thank all of you who participated in the discussion.

The discussion shed some light on a couple things, and I thought I would share one of them with you in this post. Here it is.....

I think as party hosts we sometimes forget how fast the bloggersphere is growing. Last I heard, it was approaching 100, 000 brand new blogs per day. That is a tremendous amount of newcomers into bloggerland, who maybe are not the seasoned veterans that some of us are out here. And, you really can't expect newcomers to know about links, and parties, and etiquette, and, and, and... There is a learning curve that we all go through, and what seems simple to bloggers who have been around awhile, is a whole new world to the 1,000,000 bloggers that hit the streets in the last 10 days.

For those of you who are new out there and are maybe not certain about links, link parties, and what links do, here is a very layman explanation I came up with.....

Think of a link as being a pair of magical ruby red shoes that can bring a friend to your home. All they do is click, and they're there. They don't even have to click three times.

They just click once on a highlighted word or phrase and they are magically transported to your doorstep.

Bloggers who host link parties are usually doing so because they want to generate more of those magical links, that bring traffic to their site. Hosting a party correctly is a ton of work and it is considered poor etiquette to join a link party without at least linking back to the party somehow.

So, what is a link?

Here's one........ Link Party Directory. By clicking on the underlined phrase you are magically transported to my link party directory. When you get there you will find over 100 links listed. By clicking on any of those 100+ links you will be transported from my site, to another party somewhere else. It's actually pretty cool the way it works.

Here is another type of link. It's called a button......





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If you post my Tools Are For Women Too button on your site, people will be able to click on it and visit me instantly.

I never care how people link back to me. However they want to do it is fine. some hosts are a lot more particular, so a person needs to read the rules. Most hosts will love you for at least making an honest effort, and nearly all hosts will go out of their way to help you, if you have a question.

Here is the bottom line. I think a lot of bloggers out there are not linking back, simply because thet are not sure how to do it. There is a lot of confusion in bloggerland right now because of it's enormous growth. I can't fault someone for being new.

To all of you out there who need help, please let me know. I am always flattered when asked for my advice.

Love you all,

Rory