Postcards from the Funny Farm

I wrote just days ago about how to choose Entrecard advertisers. It’s still valid except for one thing, cheap doesn’t mean what cheap used to mean. Here’s an excerpt from the article on their blog below:

Written on April 7th, 2008 by Graham
Today we release our long-awaited modification to the pricing system.

It’s going to go live within the next 24 hours. Just to be clear, we are talking about a complete change to the way everyone’s advertising prices are calculated.

Starting today, your ad price is determined solely by demand for your ad spot. Every time someone purchases, or applies to purchase an ad on your site, your price doubles. Every time an ad finishes running, your price halves.

Cheap ads now will mean that not enough people apply to advertise on them.  With my own blog costing in the 600’s per day now, it is going to cost a poor blogger 600 clicks for one day on my blog.  I wouldn’t wish that torture on anyone.  Still, we’ll have to see how it plays out.  It could be a positive and kick those really high pointer blogs that have very little value in their content off the top of the mountain.  If that happens, that will be very good.  I wrote about the actual system of Entrecard if you want to know more from a beginner standpoint.  You’ll find that article here.

This is an example of yet another company who has an idea and thinks every idea they will have after that will be just as good.  One thing I like about Blog Catalog is that they respect their users enough to ask their input repetitively.  That’s what Web 2.0 is all about.  I’d have liked to done a poll at least about this before it went live.  I’ll have to try it and see if it’s something I like or something I’m going to make new space for my own advertising on my sidebar with.

What do you think of Entrecard’s new pricing system?

Here’s the best I ran across last week. As always, the posts all received a well deserved Stumble. If you enjoy them, I request you do the same. It’s also Safari etiquette to leave them a comment. These are animals for which the guide encourages feeding. Enjoy!

myrnaslist.com/2008/03/25/eckhart-tolle-on-the-me...
I’m becoming more and more of a fan of this writer (and this blog). For some people it goes way beyond that. This blogger calls him a spiritual leader. I simply find his creative ways to look at the universe fascinating and healing.

blog.getmywealthnow.com/2008/02/email-guts-innard...
Kimberly Clay offers us the crucial innards of a marketing email. I am very careful when I do these, I don’t want to turn anyone off. This post from a professional affiliate marketer tells what to put in and most importantly, what to leave out.

itmightbelove.com/2008/04/03/kill-the-spidersbe-a...
Chelle gives us an excellent reminder that the guys can still be chivalrous to an extent in today’s world.

diigo.com/dashboard
This is just amazing. You can sticky note websites and others see your notes.

lifeisrantastic.blogspot.com/2008/04/paperback-wr...
Jessica the Rock Chick is writing a book! Where can I pre order?

This article is Part I of my series “Finest Hour of Social Networks” where I examine social networks and their effectiveness in raising real traffic (low bounce rate/readers who stay more than the duration of two ckicks!) This goal is important for monetization and for building a following to your blog. If these ideas are something you’re interested in, this series will help you achieve those goals.

It’s time for another series because I have a lot to say and I don’t want to burn out trying to say it all in one article. I hope you get something out of it. As always, your discussion is invaluable to the series’ evolution throughout. I really appreciate your comments. Ok, well here goes: One common thread that seems to run through every site I run across these days is the topic of building blog traffic. “How can I do it!” Whether you are growing your internet business or just trying to get more readers for your online publishing, it is the burning question in everyone’s mind. There are many ways published out there that you can take and use and make your own. Most of these ways really do work. Depending on how much a blogger puts into it, (including sometimes unholy amounts of time at the comp away from your family) they can work astoundingly well. At the same time, I myself have tried others of them only to come up exhausted and without a shard of new traffic. In the year and a half that I have been blogging, I’ve tried almost everything. I have tricks up my sleeve that I could share until the cows come home. I don’t get to them that often these days because there is other content I need to get to, content about psychology and inspiration and education. The stuff I am passionate about is my favorite stuff to share on here. At the same time, my primary audience here (as measured by visits and referrals) has always been innovative bloggers and noobs. Social networking can literally explode the traffic of my friends ad cohorts out there. It behooves me to share what I know about blogging. With content on this site it is a lot like my family and my work, I try to find a happy balance.
Because I have so much to share about social networking and traffic for bloggers, I am penning this series which will ultimately consist of IV parts as outlined below:

Series: Finest Hour of Social Networks
Part I
BlogCatalog
Entrecard

Part II
Facebook
Fuel My Blog

Part III
Twitter
Social Spark and other monetized social networks.

Part IV
Final Thoughts

Taking these on in ABC order, today’s part focuses on two powerful social networks: Blog Catalog and Entrecard. Join me as I analyze how these 2 services can increase your blog’s traffic no matter whether you are a noob or someone who’d been doing it so long you are starting to burn out … or maybe you are somewhere in the middle. I believe these services can revolutionize the traffic of your blog.

Blog Catalog has been around at least as long as 2005 when I first started checking them out. They have been through normal gradual changes for a company run by young guys and they have emerged in 2008 to be a daunting force for the Technoratis and MyBlogLogs of the world. Blog Catalog has stayed solid at listening to the customers and at innovating the marketplace as best they can. They have come up with some really fun widgets that I use along with so really helpful services in their site for bloggers. The end result is a giant set of tools to increase your blog’s traffic. Here is how I use Blog Catalog to reach out and increase my blog’s traffic:

1. Friend’s list - This is such a great feature. When someone decides they like my blog they add me as a friend on BlogCatalog. I get an email alter and I check their blog out. If I like their blog I can add them if not, they remain my one-way friend anyway. This is a great way to access networks of bloggers with your like-minded favorites etc.

2. Discussions - I hang around BC Discussions daily. It is an excellent way to promote your blog and get help or givehelp with blog issues. more important than anything, it’s a way to sample people and their blogs so you can develop relationships that last. I have commented on blogs through this service years ago and to this day they are still visiting my blog and I theirs.

3. Widgets - BC offers incredibly designed blog widgets. You have to try them all to see which work for you. For me, I like the discussion widget because it shows where I have been talking out in the sphere for those would be interested. I suppose it’s a status message kind of like Twitter or Facebook that way. The difference is that there is no limitation of characters and the thread can interact indefinitely (as many do!)

Through using these three facets of Blog Catalog I have met hundreds of people but just between 15-20 people who remain friends and/or fans of mine and who frequent my site. I get backlinks (this refers to when another site links to you) that bring in traffic perpetually and that increase your ranks with the search engines. I highly recommend you join Blog Catalog, pimp out your profile there and then take part in the three amazing service I listed above. You will see an increase in your traffic.

Now for the second and newer of the two in our discussion today: The sophisticated looking Entrecard.

Entrecard works like this: You create a 125×125 “Entrepeneur Card” or Entrecard for your site. Then you upload it to your profile and pimp out the other parts of the profile. At that point you need to do two things for the service to get you traffic: 1) You need to “drop” your Entrecard on other blogs, and

2) You need to advertise on other blogs. These two actions are theoretically harmonious because every time you visit another Entrecard site and drop your card on it, you get 1 “ec” point. The site you dropped on also gets 1 ec in the process. It is good etiquette to return the drop, but not everyone does it. In your profile, there is a section called “Drop Inbox.” This shows the last 80 or so drops on your site. Many people use that page as the way to “drop back.” The idea of dropping back on everyone is really a foolish idea. It can take hours sometimes to go through them all. I have developed a way to drop every day that takes me less than half-an-hour and I drop over 80 a day. If you are interested in hearing how, just look at the button below my Entrecard that contains the words about “Above the Fold.” It’s something I am trying to promote and hope it catches on.

You get ads on other sites by paying for them in “ec’s” In other words, the more dropping you do and selling of your own space, the more ec’s you have to buy ads.

My traffic has grown nearly 50% through Entrecard which has felt really good. On the other had, the bounce rate for those hits is remarkably low so. People click through like wildfire just to get ec’s. I must admit however that I have received some ad business through Entrecard and many comments by new readers. So I can’t say it’s just empty traffic. I guess the higher the numbers, the better the chance you have of gaining new fans. In the same way, how can anyone know if they like you if they never see you? Entrecard can be a little complicated and clicking through all those sites can be cumbersome. It works for me to raise traffic and to get my 125×125 “Messy Marvin” PostCards avatar out there. I’m not sure if one day’s link actually registers with the search engines, but that isn’t really why I do it.

Social networks like these are exploding traffic for many people I know. If you want more people coming to your site, to read the words you write or buy the things you sell, I doubly encourage you to start with these two. Get registered and begin to explore what works for you. If you have questions, contact me or leave a comment. I firmly believe these two social networks can and will revolutionize your traffic records. Let us know how it goes. I’ll leave you with this: We spend a lot of hours on the computer with internet businesses our and blogs: why not try and make each one our finest!

Next time in my series: Finest Hour of Social Networks

Part II
Facebook
Do people actually use this blue book? If so why? Can it help my traffic?

Fuel My Blog
Somethings Cooking! Will it help my traffic?
And much more to say on these two services I have used for some time now.

What do you think using Blog Catalog and Entrecard to build traffic?

Despite the title and picture, this post has nothing to do with off road vehicles. Instead it is meant to give 4 sections with 4 items each discussing writing and inspiration. I just couldn’t help finding a 4×4 grinding a wall for my post. The prompt comes from Confident Writing. Joanna has an excellent site there offering inspiration in writing and in life. Why not try the 4×4 challenge on your blog?

I’ve been writing seriously since my last year as an undergraduate, 1995. I recall that because I actually starting sending things out in the mail that year. Nothing came of it financially but I can say honestly that those rejections were helpful in every publishing I’ve had since then. I haven’t had a huge number but enough to pay for some fun family stuff and to take my wife out once in a while.

As someone who struggles daily to be a better writer with inspiration, I think I’m certainly qualified to take part in this challenge. This is not really the stage of inspiration but it precipitates that. If these things are done, your best writing will follow. Maybe you will use some of these, maybe you’ll find them all ridiculous but I’ve searched my heart and soul and listed them here. Hop in my 4×4 and check out how this dude fosters inspiration for his writing:

1. Physical Well Being and Rest

When you are stressed or sick or just unkempt, it inhibits inspiration.

1. Take a Multi-vitamin before you write with a natural juice (not the sugared kinds).
2. When you know you are headed into a writing situation, make sure you have nice clean comfortable clothes hanging up in the bathroom next to the shower ready for you that day.
3. Breathe deeply after you get all dressed and showered.
4. Make a practice of imagining possibilities before you turn on your computer, or pick up your yellow pad.

2. Harmony and Peace in Your Home

That hillbilly country song “If mamma aint happy, aint nobody happy” is truth like a flood light for writers, especially if you’re a mamma I am sure! ;) Make sure your wife, kids, dog, salesman at the door etc. are all happy and satisfied before you sit down to attempt to write.

1. Play with your kids.
2. Sit next to your spouse and turn off your computer.
3. Talk.
4. Laugh and sing as you do the dishes (some of my best ideas have come doing the dishes).

3. Read Biographies

I will simply mention names … these people’s lives have transformed my life and inspired me as they continue to. I’ve written an article on each of these greats which you’ll find linked in their names.

1. Walt Disney
2. Ray Kroc
3. Rod Serling
4. Dr. Seuss

4. Earn Money at the Craft

As you write and hone your craft, seek out ways to make money. You ought to be paid for the contributions you make. Not always, but at least put your stuff out there. Below are 4 linked articles that show you some ways, for example, how to do this. In all, there are myriads more out there, the only limitation is in your mind:

1. PayPerPost
2. Summary of Many
3. Another Slick List of Blog for Pay Companies
4. Yes, Bloggers Can Make Money Without PageRank

If any of these touched you, I’d love to hear about it.

It was an amazing Safari last week. I read some great blogs by old friends and added several new ones through the binoculars. Most my new blogs here were discovered through Entrecard.com. Just a little plug for them, they are cool. Check these out. As always, each post received a well deserved Stumble. If you have a post you’d like me to consider on a safari, please drop me an email.

Ask Mimzie Great Q&A in the spirit of “Dear Abby.” Mimzie has other styles of posts where she truly cracks me up with her wit and sassiness. This is a neat little section of her blog. You should check it out and if you like it: subscribe. Oh, and of course you can send in questions.

FreshPeaches I have always loved fresh peaches. This great diet/nutrition blogger tells you all the buying secrets.

My Top 5 Songs From the1960s What are your favorite songs from the 1960’s? Malcolm gives his awesome 5 and invites your input in his comments.

4×4 Sources Of Writing Inspiration: Group W... This is a great creative idea for a writing challenge. If you are looking for a backlink and want to write something creative, do this one with me.

Name Brand and Generic OTC meds A story of how a cougher learned why name brand meds cost more.

My TiVo thinks I am deceased I love TiVo and I found out one of my new blogger friends does as well. Is this something we should feel guilty about? nahhhhhhhh.

How to Use and Optimize for Google Image Searc... Having an alt and title tag within your pictures is an SEO must. In fact, if you don’t have the alt’s it will fail a validation. Katy writes a great post as always with photos showing you how to include these. If you are not doing this, I highly recommend reading this post.

Deflated While the trip do donate platelets didn’t pan out as she had hoped exactly, this post is phenomenal because she manages to photograph step by step her trip to give blood. That is dedication to blogging. This is an interesting post.

Danny Boy Jessica the Rock Chick wrote this little gem of a post about being Irish and about St. Paddy’s Day. The words are poetry as always but the peak of the think is the picture of an actual green river. I don’t even think it’s photoshopped.

Organized, I am Organization is such a powerful tool. This post shows how Marcia is getting her computer stuff organized and in line. I believe when you are organized, you can do anything! Oh, and she’s using Flock as a browser now which is also a great move!

Four Days Off A great reminder to her readers that work is just work and not something to get a “bleeding ulcer” over. I think we all could use this reminder in the form of a diary entry.

Damian A post about being cursed (or blessed) with the name Damien. She gives lots of examples of Damien through history that often get ignored in favor of the OMEN fame.

Movie Review: Vantage Point Is An Original, Exciti... A movie review on the famous “BlogCritics” about this clever, original suspenseful film with an all star cast including Dennis Quaid and Forrest Whittaker.

Do you Know Where Your Widgets Are? Article that examines which widgets are worth your time and which aren’t by giving some basic principles.

I’d say there are three main types of bloggers:

1. Online Authors
2. Service/AD Promoters -and-
3. Purely Personal Bloggers

I am a mixture of 1 and 3 and I am working daily to become mostly a 1. I would say for types 2 and 3, online publishing is not really a necessary concern. But if you are trying to develop on online name as an author, then it should be a priority in your blogging week.

A commenter asked me today the following question that I am choosing to answer in this post. She wrote:

How do you go about getting published on the web? Do you approach people, or do they approach you?

Great question. The answer is: BOTH, but mostly you ask them. Lately I have been working on guest blogging on sites I respect and that I feel have a similar audience to my blog. In doing so I have the chance to attract new readers and give the host blog my traffic for the day I have the guest blog up. They get a link from my announcement of the post and I of course get a backlink from the post in the short bio credits. Guest blogging is the best way I have found to publish on the web. I recommend you frequently let your readers know you are interested in doing it and then that you approach specific bloggers through email with your proposal. If they say no, don’t be crushed. But mostly they say yes in my experience.

In addition to guest blogging, there are many web publishing blogs and ezines that will publish your writing. Two that I write for on a regular basis are:

BlogCritics -and-

Associated Content (AC)

You must apply to BlogCritics and AC approves on a post by post basis.

As I said, there are many many services and blogs you can publish online to. Have a look around the web and see what’s right for your style. In publishing your work other places than your primary blog you get your name around the web. These create backlinks to your blog thereby giving it better seo authority (ie; your posts come up higher in the searches) and advertisers see you as a better value when they consider paying you to show off their products.

The other benefit, which is to me most paramount, is it gets you more familiar with the worldwide audience that is the web. I like to get out of my blog comfort zone and challenge myself to write for new audiences. Ultimately, the “writer” type of blogger, as opposed to the commercial or strictly diarist type, should be challenging him/herself with new writing situations as this will improve her/his ability to attract and engage readers for the lifetime of their blog. (I hope mine is as long as my own lifetime ;) Actually one of my secret dreams is to make enough money through online publishing to be able to buy some Briggs and Riley fine luggage and take my wife to Ireland on a romantic vacation. Who knows, stranger things have happened right? If nothing else, whether the online publishing pays out or not, I know I’ll be a better writer and since I started, that has always been what it is all about for me.

Do you know of some other online publishing avenues out there I haven’t mentioned?

This blogger is very excited about his RealRank badge (see right sidebar top). As I have written in the past, RealRank is based on concrete data that makes it easier to make an improvement plan and to know truly how you rank as a blogger. You will not hear about PageRank here much anymore, even if Google decides to generously “bestow” it upon me again. You can get your RealRank badge by clicking on mine. Remember that in some ways Google rules the world but in many other ways, life goes on outside its motherly skirt. RealRank and Izea is one of those places. I also have an animated Mickey Mouse link to Disney.com on my site. You’ll have to wait until a future post to find out what that’s about ;) Most my die-hard readers know that Walt Disney is one of my heroes, so it really isn’t too hard to figure out. Don’t think about it too much now, you’ll get a headache.

Now go out and get your RealRank!

What do you think of a ranking system to rival PageRank?

It used to be around the year 2000 or so that blog platforms were scant and outside the mainstream. I remember Blogger.com. I used it to start a blog something like a personal website with photos and written vignettes of family experiences and such. It was free, and since I didn’t know much about blogging, I thought every color and feature I saw was a really cool bell or whistle. Still, I found the interface cumbersome in comparison to my Geocities account, so I let the blog lie dormant . . . as did millions of others I might add.

It became commonplace to find “dead” blogs in searches. It’s getting better with Google technologies, but when Technorati exclaims there are 71 million blogs, I would wager a bet that at least half of those are dead or should be killed because they make no contribution to the blog community.

In addition, most of those are just journals that aren’t trying to make money and aren’t trying to provide quality “authoritative” content.

So that long introduction brings us to the title of this part of the series: “Platform and Essentials.” There is nothing telling new bloggers what the essentials of blogging are. At the same time, every free blog host or paid tells the user that their service is the best. I won’t claim to say I know the best, but I’ll give you my opinion after 7 months of trying virtually all of them.

Free Blog Hosts limit the blogger. Not only do they lack the ability to hack the internal and external aspects of the blog, but they also turn off some readers who know what their free templates look like. Now I’ve written about this already and taken some flack about it by good bloggers who choose to remain on them. People should do what they want. If you spend a long time making an authoritative blog you will get your feathers ruffled if you’re told it has problems. One problem I’ll mention real quick is the fact that free blogger domains are easy to blackball at schools and libraries or even by isp’s for that matter. Your blog may not be accessible to you rreaders if you are on a free host. This doesn’t mean the content is bad.

This is an important point. I will keep a blog on my reader if it has good engaging writing whether it has a paid platform or a free one. Having said that, I think (and this is just my opinion) a writer who feels she/he has something to say would invest the 6-10 bucks a month to produce a higher quality blog product and avoid alienating readers turned off by free platforms. If you must go the free route, I’d recommend one:

1. Wordpress.com

Notice I put Wordpress.com, this is COMPLETELY different from Wordpress.ORG which is a pay for host, aka “self-hosted” free software. In other words, you buy the server space and install the free software from Wordpress.org on your computer.

That leads me to my true recommendation. There are hundreds of host servers out there vying for your business. Most are $6-10 a month for a ton of cool services. The Host I use is “TopClassHost.com” They are awesome, and at $6.95 a month, they can’t be beat. GoDaddy.com is also an amazing company I recommend for domain name purchase as well as storage.

Getting on board with your Wordpress.org software will be the most exciting part of your blogging journey. You can search thousands of free themes (aka templates) on the web and change them several times until you find the one that suits you. Wordpress.org has tons of tutorials to help you learn the interface. My advice is to install 2 blogs: one to practice on that won’t “ping” your practicing to the search engines.

Next, you can start perfecting the look of your blog and energizing it from within through plugins. (41 of which I recommend in this post) But, as with many things in life, you’ll never have success without the proper planning.

The blogger over at Writing Aspirations makes some hefty points about blogging in 2007. Some I agree with, and some I am on the fence about. At any rate, it inspired me to share my history with the internet and writing, it’s been a long road that some bloggers might find helpful, if not interesting. Here we go:

I started writing on a personal website in 1995. I started it free at Geocities, and I didn’t even have my own computer. I accessed the page through California State University Fullerton’s computer lab. As I recall they had MAC’s. I’ve since become a PC guy. Geocities separated sites into categories based on broader interests. Because mine was literature and writing (I was an English major in my last semester at the time), they gave me an “Athens” addy. I remember advancing through the other websites and finding sites ranging from highly busy with too many graphics moving to standard written sites where the personal webmaster seemed more conservative. I remember my first webpage was a diatribe on what my named meant (Damien) and a history of how the “Omen” portrayed it in a false bad light. Seems like 100 years ago! Geocities had an extensive help system that taught me basic html, ie: item in bold and how to make a link, colors, pictures, etc. It was web design for the average joe, and I used it to post the little things going on in my life (and occasional big ones). It was so exciting to learn new tricks, like how to post an animated GIF next to something, how to use a background image, etc. I sent my updated pages with “ecolumns,” as I used to call them, to family and friends on my address list. It was a great way to connect with the people I knew and loved. While with Geocities, I also learned a lot of code secrets from Dynamic Drive.

In the late 90’s and early 2000’s, I discovered phpBB forums.? These replaced owner’s manuals and personal websites. I was, at one time, a posting member of 20 forums. My handle was “jeeptravel,” and you could find me in a search posting on anything from High Desert issues to plumbing to Jeep repair. They were great, but my interest waned when posts seemed to be lost after a few replies. There was no permanence to forums, it got boring. I guess it depends on the forum you frequent, but the ones I went to seemed to dribble down to a core of members that weren’t always as interesting as the technology of the forum made you think. This is an important point when considering the blog question of 2007. I started a few forums of my own through PhP. When you purchase a personal website from a server host like Top Class Host (one of the best and cheapest I’ve found), they automatically include “fantastico” which allows the user to instantly install a forum, blog, or any number of awesome sql database driven items. I use them now to host my blog. Specifically I use WordPress software included in the hosting package. I pay $6.95/month and it is well worth it for the freedom of tweaking I have with my blog and storage on my website. That brings us to the state of blogging in 2007.

Before starting my own “not free” hosted site, I blogged off and on for several years at blogger.com

blogger.com is an awesome free service, but there are MANY great free blogging services out there to check out. Here is a list if you are interested (not in order of anything special):

Live Journal
Yahoo! 360
Windows Live Spaces
Bravenet
Geocities
wordpress.com (The free version/ web-based)

The list could go on and on . . .

Now for my point (sorry for the long history, thanks for reading this long).

Speaking to the question of the blog phenom being a passing fad: I must answer with a cop-out, yes and no.

Yes, the trend of signing up for a free blogging service and writing posts like “Yikes I broke a nail,” will inevitably fade out.

It will grow boring for folks just as MySpace has begun to fade in its popularity. The veneer of technological “wow” will wear off (hmmm three w’s in a row) and these folks will either A) continue to keep their blog as a way to communicate with contacts, or B) Shut it down or abandon it in favor of some new technological toy (I don’t know what that will be just yet).

On the other hand, I must reply “no,” it is not a passing trend because great writers are using it to create “ecolumns” for family and friends more than ever before. It is, in essence, a literary renaissance revival. Everywhere across the globe people are writing. It is a phenomenon of communication . . . like the free website was with geocities and other providers but on a WAYYYYY wider scale. Those who remain blogging through 2007 will be those people who are both good, thoughtful writers AND who are also internet savvy. You have to be with blogging. Keeping up with terms like “trackback” and “ping” is a tough endeavor, if you don’t like computers. But a little interest goes a long way.

So what will the blogosphere become? Here’s my image: A highly and daily more refined set of regular posters who enjoy writing about the world, either in a narrowly defined category, or in a “personal blog” format AND who are internet savvy.

It has been said that topic specific blogs are the only ones that will flourish in the future. I disagree. I think the personal blog and the topic specific ones have their place and there is plenty enough audience out there for the good ones.

~~~~Blog Carnival Submissions below~~~~

Corey presents Web 2.0 posted at myopiniononeverything.com.