Despite his busy schedule, Max of SiteHoppin.com was nice enough to obliged me with a mini interview. The founder and programmer of SiteHoppin.com released the much anticipated SiteHoppin(SH) Firefox Toolbar 2 days ago, much to the delight of many SiteHoppin members. With the introduction of the new SH Firefox Toolbar, the issue of unique viewers as explained in my article entitled "SiteHoppin.com - Beer Traffic Revealed" can now be put to rest. Phewww...

So without further a due, I present you the interview with Max:

1. What makes the SiteHoppin(SH) Firefox Toolbar different from the StumbleUpon Toolbar?

SH Toolbar is built more for “personal bookmarking” whereas SU Toolbar is really for “community bookmarking”. SH Toolbar is different because it allows users to save their own bookmarks while sharing them with the community of Site Hoppers. We should have “User Tag” hopping coming soon which will let you “hop” your favorite tags so you save 10 minutes on surfing everyday. Actually, you can do this right now with our Custom Tag Search Function, we need to make it easier though.

2. The current toolbar is in private beta testing phase, when is the official release of the SH Firefox Toolbar scheduled?

Official release should be in about 3 to 6 months. We are not sure exactly when but people who get in early will benefit as they will eventually become power users of SiteHoppin, sorta like those Top 100 Digg users. The only suggestion we can give you is to make sure to get the SH Toolbar downloaded before the private beta list closes.

3. Will there be a SH Internet Explorer Toolbar?

We might make one for Internet Explorer way later down the road. But for right now, we are trying to promote Firefox only.

4. Will there be more additional functions for the SH Firefox toolbar?

Oh for sheezy, that’s why it’s still in “private beta”. We actually released it a little too early so you might see some bugs and also missing components we forgot to add. But that’s the whole point of private beta testing. So we can get some feedback and change around the SH Toolbar before the official release.

5. Any other plans you have in the making for SiteHoppin.com?

We are gonna AJAX up some of the comments sections, let you edit your bookmarks, and some more enhancements for the site. It’s all in “live” update so you might suddenly see some improvements while using SiteHoppin.com. We are probably one of the only folks who do “live” site updates, but don’t blame us if the site gets funky for a minute or two, that’s just part of the fun.

That's about it from us at Bloggerfocus Dot Com. Special thanks to Max for sharing his views on the SH Firefox Toolbar and the upcoming developments on SiteHoppin.com. Dont' forget to check out the SiteHoppin Blog as well for more updates.

Recommended Read:
1. SiteHoppin Firefox Toolbar - RELEASED!
2. John Chow Dot Com Reviews SiteHoppin.com
3. SiteHoppin.com, Entrecard Wannabe?

Digg This Article

The SiteHoppin(SH) Firefox Toolbar has just been released by Max from SiteHoppin.com. This is a beta testing version of the SH Firefox toolbar and will be issued only to 1000 SiteHoppin members for trial and testing.

SiteHoppin Firefox Toolbar Review
General Layout

I've got to say that the SH Firefox Toolbar is easier to navigate and use as compared to the StumbleUpon (SU) Toolbar. I'm not saying this because I know Max or that I'm helping him to promote this toolbar. Just take a look at the SH Firefox tool screenshot below and compare it with the SU Toolbar, need I say more?

SiteHoppin Firefox Toolbar

StumbleUpon Toolbar

Functions available on the SiteHoppin Firefox Toolbar

1) Hop Button

A click on the SiteHoppin button let's you hop to the next site.

2) Rate It




Rate sites that you hop upon by clicking on the Beer Bottles. If you find a site that you like, rate it from a scale of 1 to 5 Beer Bottles with 5 Beer Bottles rating being the highest you can give to a site.

3) Puke It




Hop upon a site that makes you feel like puking? Click the "Puke It" button and rest assured that the site would never again appear on your future hops.

4) Talk




Clicking on the Talk button brings you to the Discussion Page of the site you hop upon. You can also leave a comment while you're there. Check out the screenshot of 3trimesterspregnancy.com Discussion Page: 5) Tag

The "Tag" button let's you bookmark a sites that you hop upon. Click on the "Tag" button and a bookmark window would appear as shown in the screenshot below:
Enter a comment about the site you intend to tag followed by the tags or labels for that site and finally click the Submit button. The site would then be submitted to SiteHoppin's database and bookmarked as your favorite.

6) TagHoppin




This is a drop down button that let's you select a particular category or tag to hop upon. If you like drop to Entrecards, select the Entrecard tag and start drop-hopping (drop Entrecards as you site hop)

7) Shuffle/Iterate Mode




Toggle between Shuffle Mode or Iterate Mode.

8) Menu




A drop down menu button containing all links related to SiteHoppin.com as shown in the screenshot below.
9) User Menu




A drop down menu with user related links as shown in the screenshot below:
Why should you get a SiteHoppin Firefox toolbar?
1. User friendly toolbar. You don't need to be a genius in order to navigate and use the SH Firefox toolbar.

2. You earn 1 Beer Credits for each page you hop to. Remember that you can exchange 10 Beer credits for 1 unique visitor to your page. (Psst...let you in on a secret. Use the SH Firefox Toolbar to drop your daily 300 Entrecards. Once you have completed your daily Entrecard drops, you earn 300 Beer Credits automatically which you can exchange for 30 Unique visitors to your blog. What more can you ask?)

3. Rating a site you hop upon gives an additional 10 Beer Credits to your SiteHoppin account (an equivalent of 1 Unique visitor to your blog for each rating you give). The more you rate, the more visitors you get for your blog. Simple as that.

Be the first 1000 SiteHoppin Members to try out the SiteHoppin Firefox Toolbar
There are currently 20 selected Bloggers who can issue invites to use the SiteHoppin Firefox Toolbar (one of them is myself). To get your own SH Firefox Toolbar, here's what you should do:

1. Get registered as a SiteHoppin member for FREE
2. Drop a comment here at Bloggerfocus Dot Com stating your SiteHoppin user name and e-mail in order for me to send you the SH Firefox toolbar invite.

Additional giveaway:
1. In addition to receiving your SH Firefox tool bar invite, you will also be credited with 100 Beer Credits courtesy of Bloggerfocus Dot Com.
2. If you subscribe to Bloggerfocus Dot Com feed via e-mail, an additional 500 Beer Credits would be given to you for FREE. Just leave a comment here stating that you have subscribed to my RSS via email.
3. Buy Beer Stocks now using Bloggerfocus affiliate link and you'll received a 25% discount for your Beer Stocks purchase.

So what are you waiting for? Come get your own SH Firefox Toolbar now before all 1000 invites run out! Trust me, there is nothing to lose and all to gain at SiteHoppin.com.

Till the next time, cheers and happy blogging!

Recommended Read:
1. SiteHoppin.com, Entrecard Wannabe?
2. SiteHoppin.com - Beer Traffic Revealed

Digg This Article

Great news for SiteHoppin.com members! John Chow from JohnChow.com has finally reviewed SiteHoppin.com.

Read What John Chow has to say about SiteHoppin.com HERE

The self declared Dot Com Mogul with the Midas touch, is well known for propelling unknown sites to stardom just by giving them a simple review. I've read somewhere that SiteHoppin would prove too ireisistable for John Chow to give it a miss. Looks like that premonition has come true! Although John's review about SiteHoppin came in a little late, the weight from that review would most certainly create a tsunami of unique visitors to SiteHoppin.com.

The one thing that I expect to see change would be the value of Beer Stocks at SiteHoppin.com.

At the time of writing this article, the price for vowels and consonants for Beer Stocks remain at $10 and $1 respectively. There is no guarantee that the price would remain this low once all 25,000 of John's feed readers get their eyes on the review.

Personally, I view Beer Stocks as a long term investment that pays me daily dividend in the form of unique visitors. John Chow's review on SiteHoppin has given the value of the Beer Stocks some boost. I'm confident that once Max launches the SiteHoppin Firefox Toolbar, Beer Stock prices would go up the roof. If you've yet to own Beer Stocks, I strongly recommend that you GET SOME RIGHT NOW. Remember, buying from affiliates links entitles you to a 25% Off the Beer Stocks you purchase.

Cheers and Happy Blogging To All!

In my article "SiteHoppin Firefox Toolbar - Soon To Be Released", I've offered 200 Beer Credits for your comment on what features you'll like the upcomming SiteHoppin Firefox Toolbar to have.

Well this mini "comment" competition has received a backing by non other then Max of SiteHoppin.com. He has decided to top-up an additional 1800 Beer Credits to the 200 Beer Credits I am offering for each accepted comment. That's 2000 Beer Credits or 200 unique viewers from SiteHoppin.com viewing your blog/site!

Just read and post your constructive comments IN THIS ARTICLE

You do not need to write a post or review about anything. All I want is your precious comment. Can anything be more simple then that?

SiteHoppin.com is set to release a new feature called SH Firefox Toolbar. Max from SiteHoppin has yet to exposed any details about the toolbar or even give us a sneak peak on how the toolbar looks like. Let's just all wait for what SiteHoppin has come up with for its free members and Beer Stock holders.

If the soon to be released SiteHoppin's toolbar becomes a BIG HIT, Beer Stock holders would most likely benefit the most from the introduction of the toolbar. Max is currently preparing his servers to handle between a million to 20 million hits per day. That should give you a general idea on the expected shared traffic Beer Stock holders will get once the toolbar is released.

Why the need for this toolbar? Well, the current Browser-within-Browser at SiteHoppin is in fact an iframe displaying a blog/site within its browser. Therefore your blog/site is currently being seen by unique viewers instead of unique visitors as explained in my article entitled SiteHoppin - Beer Traffic Revealed. Once the SH Firefox Toolbar is launched, all talks about iframes or unique viewers will be quashed. There will be genuine traffic or should I say unique visitors, sitehopping to blogs and sites.

Now that I'm done with the technical explaination of it, here are the top 8 function I "hope" to see available on the SH Firefox Toolbar:

1. A hop counter to keep track of the number of hops I've made.
2. A drop down menu to select categories that I wish to site hop.
3. Tag and rate functions.
4. Beer Credit counter to keep track of the credits I've earned and spent.
5. A built in function that checks a web page for Entrecard Banner and drop a card automatically or me. (wonder if this is possible)
6. An "Empty Beer Bottle" function to mark down sites that I don't wish to hop to in the future.
7. A toolbar that you can site hop without the need to be registered. Of course registered member would be able to earn Beer Credits, while unknown guest can also enjoy using the toolbar except with limited functions on it.
8. A counter to keep track of unique visitors to my blog/site everytime someone hops upon it.
9. I would like to see the toolbar to be click oriented like SU than auto refresh inorder to save my bandwidth. (contributed by Luckymurari from Eurekatips.com)
10. Some technique to control the pictures of sites, so that you can get only the text of the sites. (contributed by Jims Varkey from Ads For Blog)
11. A "Favorite Tags" list that we can create that we'd have easy access to as well. (contributed by Mike from CollegeStudentsArePoor!)
    

If you have other suggestion on what other functions should be available for the SH Firefox Toolbar, drop a comment here along with your SiteHoppin user name and the link to your blog/site. Each comment that I deem acceptable will be added to the list. A link to your blog/site will be placed beside your suggestion plus an additional 2000 Beer Credits sent to your SiteHoppin account. That's worth 2000 free hops without you doing anything.

By the way, if you like to see the video announcement from Max himself or to find out how he looks like, head on to SiteHoppin's blog.

Not registered with SiteHoppin yet? Register HERE for FREE and don't forget to come back and post your suggestion here!

Feel free to subscribe to Bloggerfocus from more future updates on SiteHoppin.com.

When I wrote my first article about SiteHoppin.com, I was rather sceptical about the whole system. Last night, I carried out some simple testing on how well SiteHoppin works in terms of sending unique visitors to your blog/site. Along with some assumptions, I've managed to come to a conclusion based on the outcome of last night's test. Here are my findings dished out in Q&A format to ease your reading:

Do you really get unique visitors in exchange for your Beer Credits?

YES you do get unique visitors (that actually get registered on your site's stat counter) coming to your site/blog if you spend your Beer Credits in exchange.

Is the ratio of spending 10 Beer Credits : 1 Unique Visitor accurate?

NO. Based on the outcome of the test I've carried out, you do not get the exact number of unique visitor registered by your site stat counter in proportion of the amount of Beer credits you spend.

Does this mean SiteHoppin is cheating off my hard earned Beer credits?

NO. The reason being that your blog/site is displayed in SiteHoppin's Brower-within-Browser page. That means for every 10 Beer credits you spend, you site will still be displayed to a unique viewer who is site hopping in SiteHoppin's Broswer-within-Browser. Say for example you spend 100 Beer credits, your blog/site will be displayed 10 times, each time to a different unique viewer. By the way, is it really that hard to earn Beer credits? Honestly?

Is there a difference between a Unique Visitor and a Unique Viewer?

YES. A unique visitor is a visitor who steps foot on your blog, while a unique viewer is just viewing your blog/site from SiteHoppin's built in browser. Furthermore, a unique visitor is increases your stat count while a unique viewer doesn't.

That sucks and SiteHoppin sucks too?

By now, I think most of you would have probably reach this conclusion after reading point number 3. To be honest, letting your site be viewed by SiteHoppin's daily 600'000 unique visitors is a bargain especially when you consider the fact that you are using SiteHoppin for FREE! Let me emphasize the point again, its FREEEEE!!!!! As I've mentioned earlier, if you find it that hard to earn Beer Credits then you have failed to fully utilized the services that SiteHoppin has to offer. Try reading my review on SiteHoppin if you wish to know more about earning Beer Credits.

Bloggerfocus's summarizes:

Max you suck!, nah I'm just kidding. I really appreciate what SiteHoppin is trying to do here. Although you might not get the exact number of unique visitor from using your Beer credits, you have indirectly and succesfully achieved the following:

1. Your listed blog/site has been viewed by unique viewers proportional to the Beer Credtis you spend. Each 10 Beer credits would guarantee you 1 unique viewer.

2. If you happen to get unique visitors directed from SiteHoppin, that means your blog/site has something special to offer the viewer. Something about your blog/site in terms of contents, competition, etc has provoked the curiosity of the viewer to start exploring more about your blog/site. This goes to show that your blog/site has succesfully converted a unique viewer to a unique visitor.

3. If you find yourself having a low unique viewer-to-visitor conversion, does this mean that SiteHoppin has failed to do its job? That's where the fault is, most people blame others for their failure and never actually find out what went wrong with themselves. This applies directly to your blog/site too. Take a look at your blog or site, do you find it appealing even to you? Does your template turn you off? How about your content, is it interesting enough to encourage viewers to stay and read other contents as well? By using SiteHoppin, you are basically engaging how attractive is your blog/site to a viewer. I came up with a simple formula called Unique Viewer-to-Visitor %Converter to calculate how well your blog/site is able to engage a viewer from SiteHoppin. It's pretty much simple maths actually.

Let's take an example from Bloggerfocus.com (joined SiteHoppin since 2nd April 2008)

Beer Credits spent = 1250 credits

Unique viewer = 125 viewers

Unique visitor = 21 visitors

% Conversion = (Unique visitor / Unique viewer ) x 100%

__________= ( 21/125 ) x 100%

__________= 16.8%

*Stats for Unique visitor obtained from Statcounter.com (Highly recommended if you are looking a complete statcounter for you site and its FREE)

Now that you have your % Conversion value, you are able to project a rough estimate of the number of unique visitor you are able to convert based on the number of Beer Credits your spend. Say for example I've earned 20,000 Beer Credits, how many unique visitor would I get if I spend it all?

Here's a sample calculation using the % Conversion for Bloggerfocus.com and 20,000 Beer Credits.

Beer Credits spent = 20,000

Unique viewer obtain = 2,000 viewers

% Converstion = 16.8% (from the previous calculation)

Projected Unique Visitors = (%Conversion x Unique viewer obtain ) x 100%

__________________= (16.8 x 2,000) x 100%

__________________= 336 unique visitors

My curiosity over how Sitehoppin works has indirectly led me to discover the true value of my own blog. I most certainly hope you will also enjoy discovering your own blog/site value via SiteHoppin. Currently, I’m contemplating on trying out some Beer Stocks from SiteHoppin. I shall come up with an article about Beer Stocks once I’ve tested it myself.

If you like to have a head start, you can find out more about Beer Stocks HERE and read about the effectiveness of Beer Stocks in bringing traffic to sites from an article written by Josh from Joshwhitford.com.

How about getting your hands on the testing and result that I've carried out? Just subscribe to Bloggerfocus via email and I shall send the PDF file over to you.

Subscribe to Bloggerfocus Dot Com by Email

Cheers and happy blogging to all.

I'm in the midst of testing out SiteHoppin's claim of "10 Beer Credits = 1 Hop (1 unique visitor) to your site randomly selected from out Beer Algorithm". Let's just hope my initial assumption would be proven wrong.

Shall post the outcome of the testing tomorrow along with the write-up.

Stay tune and Happy Blogging everyone!

RELATED ARTICLE ABOUT SITEHOPPIN:
SiteHoppin.com, Entrecard Wannabe?

That's right, there is a new kid in town and he's looking to grab the limelight from Entrecard. I'm talking about SiteHoppin.com here. The very first impression when I came across this site was "You must be kidding me, this has got to be an Entrecard wannabe!"

I took some time to explore and found a couple of common characteristics between SiteHoppin and Entrecard.
1. Both require embedding a widget to your blog. Both widgets are similiar in design and you can actually place the SiteHopping widget besides your Entrecard widget as recommended by SiteHoppin. (Trying to grab some attention from Entrecard eh Max?)

Tell Me This Does Not Look Like An Entrecard Widget?

2. Both sites let you to earn credits from visiting other websites. SiteHoppin calls their credits, Beer Credits.
3. Both allow you to send credits to other members. You can send some Beer Credits to me if you are feeling generous. By the way, my Beer Credits user name is Sksee.

Now, I guess you must be rather frustrated with me for referring to Max twice so far in this post.

Who is Max anyway?
Max is in fact the founder of SiteHoppin.com and also a possible alcoholic due to the beer theme he is using for this site and also for placing the entire lyrics of "99 bottles of beer" into the About Us page.

What does SiteHoppin has to offer?
I guess by know, you are anxious to know more about this. This is how SiteHoppin works as to my understanding:
1. You earn so called Beer Credits from visiting(hopping to) sites submitted by other members.
2. You need not open a new browser for each site you visit, all you need to do is click the TAGHOP button located at the top of the page. A new member site will appear in SiteHoppin's so called Browser-within-Browers. This built in browser lets you do all the site hopping in SiteHoppin itself.
(I'm wondering are we losing out for using this browser within browers? Say for example if you visit Blog A from SiteHoppin, and another visitor visits Blog A also via SiteHoppin, what does the unique counter for Blog A see? Does it record 2 unique visitors or just one single unique visitor, in this case SiteHoppin, visiting Blog A twice? SiteHoppin claims that each visitors hopping to your site will be counted as unique. I'm still a little pesimistic about their claims and will write a seperate article once I get things sorted out with SiteHoppin.)
3. You earn 1 Beer Credit for each site you hop. Once you've accumulated 10 Beer Credits, you are eligible to receive one hop from a visitor to your site. 20 Beer Credits gives you 2 unique visitor and so on.

How do you earn Beer Credits?
This has got to be the question everyone is asking. Here's how you can earn more Beer Credits:
1 Hop = 1 Beer Credit
1 Rating = 5 Beer Credits
1 Tagging or Comments using SiteHoppin's "Tag" function = 20 Beer Credits
1 New Site Submission = 30 Beer Credits
1 Click from your site to SiteHoppin through the Beer Widgets = 50 Beer Credits

The various ways to earn extra credits offered by SiteHoppin gives members and credit hunters a new breath of fresh air after experiencing the mundane card dropping system from Entrecard.

Is there any other way to earn MORE Beer credits from SiteHoppin?
Honestly I can't believe my eyes when I read the last paragraph of the FAQ. SiteHoppin has a built in function called Slideshow Mode. When activated, the slideshow mode starts site hopping automatically for you. Just leave your PC or laptop on and let the Slideshow Mode do the work for you. This is all clear to me now on why SiteHoppin set such a high credit requirement (10 credits) to get a unique visitor to visit your site. Just by using the slideshow function, you can earn hundreds of Beer credits overnight. (Why does this remind me so much of those autosurfing programs?)

Bloggerfocus summarizes SiteHopping.com:
1. Although the site is pretty new, it has already garnered quite a number of registered members.
2. Visitors from SiteHoppin do not read your blog if the slideshow function is enabled.
3. You would most certainly experience a boost in traffic and also an increase in the number of Phantom readers from SiteHoppin. I'm sure you get what I mean.
4. Some bloggers or webmasters might say that SiteHoppin has ruined the actual purpose of having a blog or website. Why have a large number of visitors coming to your site for the wrong intentions? I shall not dwell further about this and leave the ethical and moral part of it for you to decide.
5. Max has done a good job on showcasing blogs and boosting traffic when he introduced SiteHoppin. I just hope that the slideshow function from SiteHoppin does not result in blogs or sites getting blacklisted by Ad Management Services. Afterall, phantom visitors are of no benefit to Advertisers.

Bloggerfocus Verdict:
It seems that this review does not really favor SiteHoppin on the whole. Although there are some plus points from SiteHoppin, I strongly urge readers to decide what is best for your blog or site before joining. If your intention is to garner more traffic for your blog or site, you are more then welcomed to join. For bloggers who desires content reading visitors, joining SiteHoppin might not be the best option for you.

Like my review? Feel free to subscribe Bloggerfoicus.com for more daily tips, guides, reviews and advice.