Bla.st Free Advertising Network & Web Directory
bla.st the free international web directory
bla.st is a free directory where anyone can find or promote companies, products, services, promotions, sales, specials and events. The site could be described as a cross between a business directory, pixel advertising and a notice board.
Each advertisement on the site is called a 'card', and is usually an image. All cards are 270px x 165px in size. Each card on bla.st can have:
- up to 30 keywords (aka tags or categories)
- a link where a user will be directed to when they click the card
- an address which links to the location on Google Maps
As of July 2007 there are over 1400 cards on the site, and has served over 20 million cards to web users.
There are several different ways a user can view the cards, including Big, Small, Tiny and a Details view. Hovering over a small bla.st card brings up the large version.
Bla.st also features a website widget that allows website owners to place bla.st cards on their own website. The website owner can choose which bla.st category to display, along with the size and number of cards to display. The widget randomly displays either the highest paying cards of the chosen category, or a random selection of cards. Any revenue generated by referrals from the bla.st widget are shared with the website owner.
Keywords
Users can choose what ever keywords they like when they place cards on the site. Some popular keywords used so far:
- http://bla.st/design/
- http://bla.st/mac/
- http://bla.st/mac-software/
- http://bla.st/blog/
- http://bla.st/t-shirt/
A tag cloud is available showing the most popular categories: http://bla.st/site/categories/
History
Bla.st was launched in September 2006 by Pear Software, a small company based in Hamilton, New Zealand. The goal was to provide a free advertising platform for clients of the website developer.
Business Model
While bla.st is free to join and use, advertisers can choose to pay money to list their card above others on the site. Cards are ordered from the most expensive to the cheapest, so the free cards are listed last. Cards paying the same amount are listed from oldest to newest.
Languages
English
Discussion
Featured Page Nomination
Bla.st has been nominated to be a featured wiki page. Please discuss this nomination below:
Bla.st featured discussion
- Edit/Add to this Discussion
- First nominated on 15:46, 20 May 2007 (PDT)
- Pretty cool idea and website. The WikiPage itself is fairly nice and has a lot of potential as featured candidate. I think maybe a better description about how their process works might be nice, but it's still a strong WikiPage as is. --
TakKendrick | Talk - Cool idea; a great looking site! Wasim Sajid | :::talk:::
- Thanks for the feedback, I've added a bit more info about the site -- Bla.st
- If contact information exists, it should be up there. Otherwise, the page looks ready to go. User:Bla.st has been messaged regarding discussion inactivity. Umair Tamim 23:05, 19 September 2007 (PDT)
- I like the site and the idea of bla.st. What I'm missing on this page in addition to the above comments is also some categories. --Sa'ad : msg me : email : 04:42, 13 February 2008 (PST)
- Moving to LastChance today after no work on the page in quite some time. Please edit this discussion and/or the page to make the nomination active again. Asad | *~talk~* 02:10, 29 February 2008 (PST)
External Links
- Alexa: Bla.st
- bla.st Alexa traffic compared to other online advertising sites http://alexaholic.com/bla.st+43ads.com+isquare.it+linkexperiment.com+thechosenlink.com
- Official bla.st blog http://bla.st/site/blog/
- Blog Reviews of bla.st from Technorati http://technorati.com/search/bla.st
