Update: It appears new facts have come forward. I was recently contacted by Scribol, whom I had listed as a clone of 2leep.
2leep’s sheepish nature on the subject may have had some light shed on it today, thanks to Chris from scribol.com. Chris told me that he knows Igor from back before 2leep, and that they acquired Pixdaus through Environmental Graffiti. Chris seems to be correct on several points, that both systems seem to have derived from Pixdaus in some fashion. But after their origination, things tend to get a little fuzzy from there. I’m going to call Chris and see what I can discover about their orgins behind this story.
Chris also wished for me to illustrate that quality is a focus on scribol.com and as part of their quality program popunders are not allowed in the network, and that they are working with the world’s leading statistician on the Scribol algorithms to increase the accuracy of the landing page’s widget, to further visitor returns.
I cannot verify this, as I don’t use the system myself, but from looking passively at domain age and Alexa rank, they have an older domain name than 2leep, but their rank didn’t start bumping up in Alexa until October, well after the establishment of 2leep. But giving that their rank is so high, they are a serious contender in the ring, have do appear to wield some mighty traffic as well.
Ok, so if you know what 2leep is, you can skip this introduction. For those that don’t, here’s the gist of it. 2leep was founded by Igor and Artem mid 2010 and has become one of the top 800 websites in the world. How did a practically unheard of website come out of nowhere and rise above so many other long standing websites, and yet hardly anyone knows what it is? Well theirrub premise is simple. They connect blogs. Period. There’s been “Top Blog” sites that have done this forever. Well it’s a top blog site, with a twist. Instead of forcing a badge on the page footer, they require a “Widget” which is nothing more that a single line of Javascript to be installed on your website. Then you submit your articles to their directory. But instead of users browsing their directory, users see links to other blogs via the widgets on other websites. You may have noticed the widget in the corner of this website, and you mave have even came here from one of these “leep” blogs. It’s just a simple, and very effective way to exchange traffic. Popular sites auto rise to the top as well, because for every visitor you send out on the widget, you’re promised two back. Well something like that.
The formula is flexible, and you can also “Buy Credits”. It’s very much like advertising, but your traffic is not targeted, so they are pretty much random visitors. Also each article contains just a title and single line of text along with a 220px thumbnail, used for display in the widget and landing pages. This all sounds new and exciting, but it’s actually not new. The porn industry had this figured out 10 years ago. It was only a matter of time before it made the transition over to blogs. Warez sites also had link exchange programs, and circle loops. While annoying, they were effective at getting traffic. 2leep has started this trend of annoyance as well by offering “Popunders” which show entire walls of the widgets, in a last ditch effort of the website to get a few extra clicks. Again, annoying but effective. VERY Effective!
Send in the Clone Army
Due to this popularity, “Clones” or duplicate websites have begun to surface which mimic the functionality of 2leep. There are two basic types of “clones”, original creations, (Idea Clones) and Direct Copies. The former type, Original Clones stand a much better survival rate than direct clones because they usually offer something different, or use slightly different algorithmic methods to determine popularity. Direct clones, on the other hand, offer little incentive to a webmaster, unless they can muster some significant traffic to bolster their popularity. An example of this can be seen in sites like http://www.2spots.com/ where they run widgets from other sites trying to build their own network. This, will unfortunately for them, never work. But the smartest one, was probably the first clone developer, http://2kurl.com They originated the original ”Clone” of 2leep, and run their own system. It is my belief that they realized that their own website was not growing like 2leep’s was, so the script creator sat out to sell his script on the Digital Point forums. He’s prolly came out the best out of all this because as I stated before, if you don’t have the traffic to begin with, it’s not going to help. 2leep had a couple of large website ad the widget right away. (Mainly because they are affiliated to the creators; example: englishrussia.com).
With 2kurl up for sale with a $200 price tag, the clones began attacking.
List of 2leep Clones (Direct Clones)
Wahoha.com was one of the first, and most heavily modified clones to appear. They offered some webmasters money during the inital phase of development and grew fairly quickly and have had success as the most popular direct clone of 2leep. In many ways, they’ve actually taken things a step further in the development of the platform, reportedly running on python for increased performance, and deviating away from 2leeps appearance and looking more polished on the back-end.
contog.com – New, and somehow affiliated with eatliver.com
2spots.com – New, and is quite desperate for traffic. Basically a dead site.
newsabler.com – New and affiliated with theblogismine.com (It’s the only site listed on there atm) This one may have some potential if they stick to being more news worthy and avoid reporting only odd and weird stories.
avalanchers.com – Heavily modified and looking strong. Uncertian of much more than that at this point.
2kurl.com – Orginal Clone Script creator’s website. *Note, you can’t buy ther script from here
www.tubesearch.net/blogwithblog/ *-A practially unknown clone floating out there, maybe a test site for the creator?
shufflur.com – *Yawn* Another Clone
scribol.com – Again, Another Clone * See update at the top*
random.us – Another clone, looks like it may go down soon and change to something else…
apesal.com – a Malaysian Clone – Good if you only speak Maylay (May have some success just for that reason)
kizaz.com – Ok, getting a bit silly now…
peemee.com – Good Lord!
2yuva.com – YA2C ( Yet Another 2leep Clone )
websha.com – YAA2C ( Yes, Another Another 2Leep CLone)
www.2incredible.com – amazing how fast these keep rolling out… *1/31/2010*
Ok, I’ll stop there, hopefully you get the idea, there are TOO MANY DIRECT CLONES!!
If you’re going to use any one of these, you might as well use 2leep or wahoha, as the rest are basically the same, but with less visitors.
Note, Wahoha is alot different than 2leep on policy. While 2leep in very rigid in number of submission of articles a day you can do (Usually just one article a day, and if they reject it, you have to wait another day to post somethings else, you lose your credit) Wahoha will let you submit over and over and over, post after post. Each still reviewed to ensure only quality content is on the site. Some of the others may appeal to you if your website is very small, or brand new, as they may offer more opportunity to grow, without flooding your site. 2leep also has a habit of changing your submitted photo to something more appealing, even if it’s unrelated. (I posted about a dog and they put an image of a cat for example.) Wahoha is really trying to usurp 2leep, but I don’t see it happening for quite a while. 2leep won simply because they were first. No other reason than that. HOWEVER….
The alternatives
These sites are NOT clones. They are wholly new platforms in their own right, and do some things very differently.
Awsmer.com – Is a new platform written from scratch, and not available anywhere else. It’s still evolving but has some really interesting features that set it apart from the other “Clones” out there. For example, you can exclude categories from your widget. Now, 2leep and all the clone you can choose not to include a category, but only, and I mean only, awsmer let’s you exclude a category. What that means is, if you have a widget, and you only have “Technology” category checked, then articles that may have both, Technology AND Funny, may be included. but you can opt to exclude Funny, and only the straight Technology articles would be shown in the widget. So far as my research, they are the only network offering this feature. You can also buy credits for traffic like on 2leep and Wahoha, but the purchasing system is limited to not interfere with the natural traffic of the websites. It’s also open for anyone, where as wahoha and 2leep many webmasters are unaware of this, and some links go to websites with no widgets on them. *Warning* There is a lot of NSFW posts on this website.
Raaze.com – Written is asp this one is very simplistic, and most links seem to go to some drunkenmoney.com I can say their widget will add traffic to your website, but the interface is a little buggy. You can also buy credits on this system as well.
Mgid.com – Market Grid. Wow, this network is so crazy, they make the widgets for you, the interface is barely there, and they add the posts for you, you have no choice in the matter. But somehow they wield massive amounts of traffic. If anyone can clear me up on this mystery please do. There are countless people on facebook who help you from mgid, who say they represent them, and then facebook deletes their accounts for spam, or something. WEIRD WEIRD WEIRD. Everything is difficult with them, which is odd considering they give you the most “Facetime” with humans. I don’t recommend because they are just a disorganized mess.
If you want to get started with 2leep, please consider using my referral link -> http://app.2leep.com/apply/1124/
This will help me out, and is a nice way of saying thanks!
I know there’s more out there, if you know of them, please comment below!
hello jason,
I read your article on clones of 2leep. http://green.cx/web-resources/online-tools/2leep-clones/
I could not reply there to pass you few new websites look a like / clones of 2leep website, so here is the list.
http://www.wzzzp.com/
http://www.2chill.org/
http://www.blogobo.com/
http://www.fffurnish.com/
http://www.2mixx.com/
http://www.xploru.com/
http://www.bloggerex.com/
http://www.ttsn.net/
http://www.domoar.com/
http://www.bindzone.com/
http://www.2lava.com/
http://www.2funnypics.com/
http://www.poogr.com/
http://www.kizaz.com/ ??? dont know if you already had this one in your list, but still
14 new links.
i was actually thinking my self to start one, but now after seeing that there are already so many hehe.
anyways thanks for the great article Jason, good luck.
kind regards,
Atal ?Naserie (from holland)
Is there any free script like wahoha, or mgid ?
If yes , please provide the download link
Nice article and good to finally find something pulling together all these sites. I've tried quite a few of the ones mentioned on here with mixed results. Started with 2leep and in all fairness I can't complain too much as the traffic boost really helped my blog get off the ground – from a few hundred hits a day if I was lucky to a few thousand! Problem now is that the novelty has worn off and I'm on the hunt for more high quality, sustained traffic that keeps coming back. And that's the problem with these networks ( or whatever you call them).
I've started using Scribol and was really impressed by Chris when I spoke with him. He has a high quality website (Environmental Graffiti) and while Scribol doesn't send me as much traffic as 2leep (yet), it's better quality traffic and far more targeted, and I'd be happy enough to take a traffic cut in the short term if I'm building a better community of readers.
Tried some other networks too like Wahoha and Shufflur – run by cool people and very responsive to emails, but I've not really seen the benefits over and above 2leep. Maybe have to try them again. Also trying Neatorama at the moment which seems to be a great site and more professional than most.
Like I said, 2leep has been great on the whole and I appreciate how much traffic it has brought to my site, but I've started to have a few problems with them recently that have been getting on my nerves big time. First off – and this was mentioned above – they have a habit of changing thumbnail photos. In fact this has only happened once to me that I know of. It was an article about a legitimate aircraft crash mystery that the conspiracy theorists have hijacked as a UFO story. I was very clear in the article to avoid any UFO connections, instead putting forward more rational explanations, and sure enough 2leep change the thumbnail image to a UFO! And despite my pestering them, it hasn't been changed to my intended image. To add insult to injury, they claim that they have changed it, which they absolutely haven't!
Most irritating of all though, they submitted the article themselves, and have been doing so with quite a few of my articles. Some of these didn't have a 2leep widget embedded as I wasn't planning on submitting them or was using another widget like Scribol beneath the post. I was then told that there might be traffic restrictions placed on my account because I didn't have a widget in the appropriate place – but they were submitting these articles without my knowledge, and then apparently penalising me when the widget wasn't there! Needless to say as soon as I asked where exactly on 2leep these policies were detailed, they immediately lifted the restrictions, so I'm not sure what was going on there…
As of today two more of my articles have been submitted by 2leep's own moderators (despite being assured several days ago that a note not to do so with my new content would be passed to their editorial team). This is annoying because I planned to submit the aritcles over the weekend if I needed a traffic boost, but I guess that idea's out the window now!
Finally – and this is the big one as far as I'm concered – around Christmas time I was looking back over my submitted articles in my 2leep account to check what had been submitted without my knowing, and there was an article plagiarsed from me (literally copied and pasted) that had been submitted to 2leep and for some reason had appeared in my account. I clicked the thumbnail and it was my exact article with no attribution copied onto a spam site that I was aware had stolen several of my articles in the past, and had a 2leep widget beneath it. What surprised me is that I have had articles rejected because 2leep had "already had it" – meaning they'd had something similar in the past. Fair enough! But these were my exact articles, word for word, that I'd already submitted to 2leep months previously, and the spam site and the duplicated articles had somehow made it past their filters a second time.
Has anyone else had similar issues?
Yes, I feel your pain, but in a different way. They changed my pic on an article, and took the time to say "oops, pic unrelated, sorry!" but didn't bother changing it. Now, to their defense they have a really messed up caching system, and it can be difficult to clear the post out of the cache. But lately, I haven't seen ANY thumbnails. At all.
I got the "Already Submitted" also, on a post the I created. There was something similar I guess, but I've seen so many duplicates uploaded that it's mind boggling. They have hierarchical control issues if you ask me. There is some obvious disconnect between The top and bottom of the staff behind 2leep.
I hope they straighten out their issues. They are up against a monster at the moment, and I wish 2leep the best of luck. They're gonna need it.
In the mean time, until they obtain the type of funding required to run their operations properly, we're left to look for alternatives. You never know what will happen if they slip and someone else gets the magic combination. So keep your eyes open, and subscribe! (I'm putting my subscribe box back up in the upper right) You'll want to see what I'm about to post next in the 2leep Saga. I have exhaustive notes to go through before I get my next post together, so stay tuned.
Fuck 2leep and all its clones. This system is an annoying and downright evil traffic/productivity sucking vortex.
Great post.
Hey, first of all, nice post. I got a bunch of new sites added to my chrome extension SiteSkipper.
Basically I found using that kind of sites a bit annoying having to go through their sites to get to the content I wanted, so I wrote an extension that did the work after I'd clicked the interesting article for me. It's found at http://thaoh.net/#SiteSkipper I'm in the process of writing a website to go with the extension now
I would also like to ask the internets to ship me a message with any other sites they'd like supported ^,^
Hrhm, excuse me, but Wahoha is not written in Ruby, its written in Python.
The 2kurl.com clone didn't appear until a few months after wahoha.com went up. And there are about 100 of those clone sites up now. If you want a good laugh you should read the whole thread at digitalpoint where he sells it. At one point, he states that if you have bought the knock-off copy that someone is selling for $100 instead of $200, you will NOT receive upgrades when he makes them. A knock-off of a knock-off. That's humor.
I wouldn't bother listing any of those 2kurl sites. None of them are gonna go anywhere. People think if they buy that script and put a site up, the webmasters will just come. It doesn't really work like that.
From Jack at wahoha "It’s a custom script built by ourselves. A combination of python, nginx and tornado. Its around 16.5* faster than 2leeps/mgids systems. But have plans to make it even faster with out sourcing the images to servers around the world."
Yes, I said Ruby, I was mistaken, from memory for some reason I recalled Ruby instead of Tornado. Prolly because I'm not familiar with Tornado, but I do really enjoy nginx.
I'm familiar with the DP Forums convo you speak of and . . . Hmm… I'll keep my mouth shut at this point….
Too tired to know what to keep my mouth shut, so I'll opt for keeping quiet for the moment…
But that script that's for sale, there can't be much to it. The systems are pretty straight forward.
HMMM me smells a rat there Mr Bob, wonder where he is from *cough*
These facts are ALL wrong. Really poorly researched and bias article. 2leep is also a clone. I wonder if 2leep paid for it to be written in fact!
Well Mr. Bob, What website is 2leep a clone of? I would say not revealing yourself and dismissing the research in this article gives very little weight to your statement.
I wish 2leep paid me to write this, but in fact I get much more traffic from Google, and I have no other affiliation with any of these networks other than being just another user.
Ive used 2leep, MGID , wahoha and now trying newsabler for my site http://www.curiousread.com
2leep and MGID are still the best. Wahoha doesn't like racy pictures, but yet there thumbnails are nothing but racy pictures.
Lol They are very good, but I think my points about MGid being rigid a difficult still stand.
Igor and Artem are friends with me on facebook, and Jack from Wahoha has ALWAYS answered a every e-mail I've ever sent him.
Greg @ awsmer.com is also a great guy, and I use http://www.awsmer.com on another website of mine and it performs the best by FAR out-pacing wahoha and 2leep by "pardon the pun" leeps!
You should Give Greg's system a shot, I think it's going to be the big #3 contender before long.
Oh yeah MGID is weird to use, but they bring the traffic, which in the end counts right?
2leep has good customer service, and I had a long talk with Jack about how they dont let you have posts with semi- racy thumbnails, yet most of the the post that appear on my site were worst and I felt like that was bs. As I said it was a long talk, I understand they dont wanna flood their site with racy pics, then follow your own words Wahoha….needless to say I dont use them anymore.
2Leep brings in tons of traffic for me. Plus I hate the ad pop up that Wahoha does after a user click on their site. (I still feel like the user from my site thinks its a pop up from me and not Wahoha)
As far as awsmer goes, why isnt this one in the article above?
Hmm, Well I listed Awsmer as the 1st alternative but maybe I put it too far down the list. TL;DR ?
Anywho Awsmer lets many things through, but has superior filtering IMO. That way if you want racy stuff you got it, if you don't you don't. Kinda like reddit.
There's a few other I didn't get in there, like Zaparena and that other Zaparena close Benimererererer I don't remember what it was called. and LinkInn
Those are very spammy though.
Jon, your point about the popunder on wahoha, is superb. That's prolly my biggest hangup with them, that's a dirty way too sell hits to another site, because really, it's just wasting their bandwidth as the visitor didn't ask to go there nor did they want to be there (It's unrelated)
Also, I submitted this post to wahoha just to see if they would disapprove it. They went a step further and deleted it, it was pending, not it does not exist. I hope they don't delete my account, but if they do, you will defiantly know about it right here!
I used that Zaparena for like one day.. back end was terrible…
As far as racy, my posts were SFW and getting denied, while the ones Wahoha were serving were def NSFW.. bullshit
I sually get between 2 -4 sometimes 5 links of day on 2leep.. I get a nice spike in traffic for the time being.. but lately 2leep has been taken forever to approve my post or they have them approved and holding for a while.. something fishy is going over there…
*Update*
In regards to Wahoha deleting my article, it seems it was somehow posted to the wrong site, I manage multiple sites, and it was sent to the wrong one. Apparently, so I retract my implication that Wahoha deleted my post. They only denied it, as I had used their logo, and they did not want it to appear like they were self promoting themselves in their widget. Which that much, I can completely understand.
It is unfortunate that this was the first time I've ever posted an article, into the wrong website.
I believe I will come up with a better logo/image and repost.
Hey your contact form isnt working in Chrome… email me @ curiousread [at] gmail.com to continue this discusion!!
Nice, you gather most 2leep's clones in this post
Great post Jason, this will help a lot of noobs to help increase traffic.
Thanks Gl.. err MOB
Your site is []D [] []V[] []D btw
nice post bro
Thanks!! If you find any more, post them and I'll add them to the list