What the content block does
Why every site in the network hosts a content block, what happens when a page with it opens, and how it earns points for your site.
The content block is a place on your pages where content from other members of the network appears. Every participating site has one, and the whole exchange runs through it.
Your half of the exchange
Traffman has no ad budget and no paid placements. Other members show your content because your site shows theirs, and the block is where your site does its part. Offering your posts to the network is one half of taking part; hosting the block is the other.
What happens when a page opens
The block holds no content of its own. Each time a page with it is opened, it receives content from another member of the network and renders it in place. What may arrive there is up to you: the language, the topics, stop-words and domains you never want to see – on WordPress see choosing what your site receives.
A page can hold up to four blocks. See placing a content block.
A visitor who clicks the block goes to that member's site. Before sending the visitor on, the service checks that the page is still there – see revalidation. The same happens the other way round: your content appears in the blocks on other members' sites, and their visitors come to you.
Search engines
The block is rendered entirely by JavaScript in the visitor's browser. The HTML your server sends holds only an empty container – no borrowed text and no links to other sites; a click opens the destination through the script, not through a link. So the block does not affect how search engines index your site: your pages keep their own content, and no link weight leaves them.
What the block earns
Every time the block is displayed to a visitor, the client earns a small amount of points, and every time a visitor clicks it, considerably more. Those points are what your own content spends when it is displayed and clicked on other members' sites, and it is offered to the network only while the balance stays positive.
So the block is not decoration: a site that only takes and never shows drains its balance and drops out of the exchange. The exact figures, the monthly grant and the Fortune Wheel are described in how points work.
How to tell it is working
Every load, view and click of your blocks is counted in Statistics → Clients – see reading the statistics.
On WordPress the block comes with the plugin: placing a content block shows where to insert it and how to adjust its look.