Blogging Sueblimely

It seems appropriate after my last post to take part in this Entrecard meme. It is likely an indication of Entrecard’s current popularity that I get tagged twice for this. I find the concept fascinating and will be following the trends closely. I will be also be looking out for its Entry into Wikipedia.

Andrew Boyd and Guera have tagged me for an Entrecard meme – "Chain Drop 8 above the fold". Andrew explains what "above the fold" means and why it matters- Entrecard (and other ads) above the fold…

Rules-

• Create a post on your blog that links back to this post.
• Tag 8 bloggers not mentioned in this post who display their Entrecard widget above the fold and have great content.
• Leave a comment on this post and share the link to the post you made.

I would like to tag the following who have their Entrecard Widget ‘above the fold’:

• Photos from Northern Norway: A photo blog
• Tim Christie Photography, Life And The Blogosphere
• Mother’s Got A Dot Com
• Social Networking Rocks – she has an interesting article on the Zion5 Network
  Website Promotion on Zion5 which I have joined for learning purposes.
• Schwoit – You can read about his strategies on dropping and thanking on My Entrecard Strategy
  
• Interesting Observations
  
• Fun, Crafts and Recipes
  
• HiTech Dads
  – say hello to Jack while you are there, the beautiful new son of a hitech dad.

Please do not feel obliged to take part in this if you would rather not – just accept the link-love as a gift .

An afterthought – the comments in my last post are probably more interesting than my post itself. It would be good to keep that conversation going so feel free to add your own opinions of Entrecard to the comments there. Are you finding it useful, do you think it a flash in a pan, will the novelty wear off? Are too many people taking advantage of it and will this put others off using it? Will the Entrecard ‘Wombats’ get hungry and look for juicier leaves?

The blogosphere is a’buzz with talk of Entrecard, probably because it suits a wide range of bloggers and is proving successful in bringing visitors. Credits are being sold on blogs and Ebay. Designers are springing up offering their skills to create razzle dazzle, "pick me, pick me" cards. Contests galore are being held – credits being given away as prizes for subscribing to blogs, for linking and writing blog posts…. Blogs are being set up dedicated totally to Entrecard. Example: The Entrecarder

I have not seen so much action since MyBlogLog started. Blogrush promised to be the same but I notice more and more of their widgets disappearing.

Entrecard has proved to be a good source of visitors for me although, apart from those who know me already, I have had very few resulting comments. Admittedly I do not comment on all blogs that I drop on. As sites are costing more to advertise on, the more site hopping I have to do to earn enough Entrecard points to pay for them. Not all blogs are of interest of course although I have found some excellent sites which I will be revisiting.

I am enjoying Entrecard, there is something about the concept that appeals to me. Perhaps it is because it is less impersonal than other "link swapping" type applications; being able to see, via your dashboard, who has visited me, receiving requests for ads on my blog, having mine approved and receiving the occasional much appreciated thank you message.. The appeal has not yet worn off but I suspect it will soon – it is yet one more thing to take time away from actual blogging.

Forums and groups are being set up purely for Entrecard discussion and promotion.

• Fawnzy.Com forum

Blog Catalog Groups:

• Entrecard Group
• Entrecard
• Entrecards
• Entrecard-2

Entrecard News

• You may have noticed the "U Drop and I Follow Badge" courtesy of Lee Doyle – Contains Nuts . Lee is compiling a list of those who are displaying his badge which may result in extra visitors and drops. By displaying the badge return visitors are more likely as they know you will reciprocate.

• You can quickly visit random Entrecard user sites through the blog browsing site SiteHoppin. Just set the tag you want to browse to "Entrecard sites in general" or its sub-categories to find Entrecard sites that cover a particular topic.
• Aussie Bloggers on Entrecard – a list of Australian bloggers created by Andrew of On Blogging Australia
• PowerDropping.com displays a constantly updated list of the 300 fastest loading Entrecard accessorized sites where the cards are are positioned above the fold. I suspect I would need to clean my sidebar up and ditch videos to speed my page loading time before I qualified.
• Free Entrecard card designs by Mark Lloyd - Mandy - Marc Roger

What is Qassia

Qassia’s aim is to “become a vast repository of intelligence, with unrivaled original content” This intelligence will be the “gravel which will fill the potholes on the information superhighway” It is also a site, currently in beta , where you can promote your blog and earn adsense revenue. Membership is by invitation only at present.

What is “intel”:

Intel can be about a person, a company, a place, a thing, or just about anything. It must be in English, comprised of sentences as opposed to keywords, non-pornographic and not about Qassia. Each “intel” has to be screened and rated by a minimum of 10 users before being published (or rejected). Intel does not have to be academic or highbrow, you can submit snippets about anything under the sun and beyond. I have just read intel about digital cameras, how to avoid stress and some personal experiences.

Intel can take the form of previously unpublished information, information already published on a blog/website or third party content that you are legally allowed to redistribute.

Blog Promotion – comes via two methods.

1. Submitting your blog URL gains you a followable backlink with no requirements for reciprocal links or widgets to be displayed on your site.
2. Submitting a snippet of “intel” earns you a backlink to your site as well as “Qassia dollars” The more you published content you submit the more backlinks you will get. The more you earn, the higher your site willl rank in Qassia, increasing the chance of it being seen my more people. More credit is awarded for totally new content than for information already published on your blog.

Earning Money via Qassia

Google adsense is displayed alongside any “intel” that is displayed. Any adsense revenue earned by “intel”you have is submitted is 100% yours.

If you would like to join please accept an invitation by me by clicking on ‘sign up’ in the text on my qassia home page sueblimely.qassia.com or directly at signup.

I will receive credits for you signing up, but as membership is by invite only, you can only join via invite/referral by another member. (For a 12-hour period after joining Qassia, you are awarded $500 “Qassia dollars” per referral (the standard referral commission is $100).

New Ripple Widget

Thanks to a great new blogging forum (still in beta so not yet open for public registration) I found out about a new Google Search alternative, Ripple. Using the Google search engine, all searches done through Ripple generate funds for Australian Charities ( all are charities that operate internationally) as does clicking on sponsored ads on the Ripple site. 100% of the money earned goes to the charities. The widget currently displayed at the top of the right sidebar is only one of a few available “splashpond” buttons available.

Criteo Widget

So far the results of using the Criteo widget (top of far right sidebar) have been disappointing – it has not resulted in any visitors at all to this blog. Here are the stats:

Criteo AutoRoll generated 0 visit on this blog, by 0 unique visitor. This blog link was displayed 12753 times on other blogs using Criteo AutoRoll and was seen by 3002 unique visitors.

This blog is getting plenty of exposure, having been displayed nearly 12753 times but it seems that no-one has been clicking on my link. Although Criteo is meant to intuitively match you to blogs similar to your own, I have not seen this happen. There have been lots of mobile phone sites listed??. I am going to continue to monitor the results, having changed my category choices in Criteo options. I have now chosen more general categories rather than web and tech. Criteo allows you to delete sites from the widget if you do not think them suitable. The term it uses for this is “blacklisting” a term, which is a little off-putting as I do not like the idea of “blacklisting” perfectly valid and often good blogs just because the subject matter is not relevant to this site.

One feature I like is that Criteo widget loading does not hold up the loading of the rest of the this page. It appears after the rest of the sidebar has loaded. Much better than the slow loading widgets that do delay page loading. MyBlogLog and other social networking sites should take note!

I notice from the Top 500 English-written blogs using Criteo AutoRoll list that a couple of people I know are also using the widget – Colin of Adelaide Green Porridge Cafe and Lady Banana. Perhaps you could let me know if the widget has been of use to you? The same goes for anyone else who uses the widget reading this post. Your feedback would be appreciated. I will not give up on the widget yet but continue to monitor it to see if my preference changes make any difference.

Feedjit Widget

Although I could get similar stats from other programs I am enjoying this widget. Not only is it interesting finding out where my visitors are coming from geographically, it has been very useful to have a readily available source of information on where visitors are hailing from and which posts they are reading. It is a little large and therefore intrusive so if I do decide to keep it I will move it further down the sidebar.

Entrecard

The Entrecard widget has produced a reasonable amount of visitors to this blog. The nature of the Entrecard program does mean that members will have a look at other member sites, but this does not necessarily translate the visitors into readers. Members check out sites to see if they are worth spending their entrecard points on to advertise their own sites – they may have no interest in actually reading the blog they visit. This is no different to most traffic promotion sites/schemes; with most of them it is the number of visitors that matters. The more visitors that arrive, the more likely hood there is of at least some of them returning as regular readers.

I am going to keep this widget in place for a while longer. One advantage it has over other traffic exchange type programs is that you can choose what blog is going to appear on the widget – you do not have to compromise your blog’s integrity by advertising sites for the sake of it. My initial enthusiasm for checking out and accepting or rejecting requests for others to advertise on my widget soon waned however. This is why you are mainly seeing my face instead of another blog’s logo.

I am going to the Entrecard site now to approve some blogs that I think are appropriate to advertise here; those that are either of use in contributing to my blog topics or those that are just good reads.

The things we do to entice visitors to our blogs! Now I am hugging RSS feeds in an attempt to get some link love. I only give my affection to those who deserve it though.. I have never been paid for it!! I have not yet to sold my blog body. (I did lend the sidebar of my old blog to Google Adsense for a while – does that count? I say ‘lend’ because of the pittance I earned). If there are any spammy kerb crawlers reading this please take note.

Ok enough puns, back to the topic (I think I have just broken the SEO rule of ensuring your post topic is included right at the start of the post too. Looking back over what I wrote, I do have some reasonably good keywords in the first two sentences – pure luck).

I have joined rssHugger in an attempt to entice more subscriptions as well as to find out more about the service; so that I can let you know if it may be of help in promoting your blogs. Their aim is to

” bring bloggers and readers together. rssHugger aims to provide blog owners with a unique easy-to-use way to promote their blogs by sending them traffic, building backlinks for search engine optimization, as well as attracting new rss subscribers if the content is interesting to the reader”

By writing this post I am now eligible for my feed to be considered for promotion by rssHugger. If and when accepted my RSS feed headlines will be displayed on my own page on RSSHugger.

I would normally try something out longer before introducing you to it but there is a good reason to join up right now. At the moment, at least, it is free to get a permanent RSS page on rssHugger if you write a review like this. Otherwise it costs $20 for a ten year listing.

It was not easy to research rssHugger as it is something new and of course many blog posts are being written to qualify to join. However, because the aim is to only include quality content and not to allow spam blogs, I do think it has potential. It could be of more use than the other RSS directories and probably more so if you join up before the membership becomes too large and your blog gets lost in the crowd. One good feature that does help get round this problem is that the top 100 list is reset each month in order to give everyone a fair chance. As you can see some of the ‘bigger’ blogs are members which can be seen as a good recommendation. Mashable has posted a review at rssHugger Avoiding Technorati’s Pitfalls?

Of course it does not matter how many visitors these linking schemes generate, your blog needs to have quality content, of interest to at least some of the visitors. This way they will want to link to you and and return again to become readers who are a part of your blogging community.

I will keep you up to date as I find out more. I will be checking to see if my trusted guru in such matters, Andy Beard, posts on the topic. Andy always strikes me as being honest and objective. I mention this here because of his recent post Do You Trust My Advice? and the animated comment discussion that ensued.

If you have joined any RSS directories that have proved useful please do let us know about them. I am off to hug something real now – it is nearly time to get my son up for school.