Surf the Mind

March 23rd, 2008

Sunday Surfin’

Yes, here I am on a Sunday morning with nothing better to do than mindlessly surf the web for interesting sites.

Actually, I have a huge stack of work in front of me too, but I’m avoiding it for the time being.

Here goes:

Chris Guthrie is sick of all the blogs using the “Make Money Online” tagline. In an effort to break the monotony, he offers 21 MMO tagline alternatives… I personally am fond of “Paying the rent without leaving my chair.”

Information Doorway offers some helpful SEO tips to make sure Google (and those other search engines no one uses) love your site. I’m fond of SEO posts, which is odd since I’m absolutely horrid when it comes to SEO.

Mr Javo wants you to be successful as an affiliate marketer. He wants to be a successful affiliate marketer himself too. I think he’s on to something with branding yourself as a way to success. As a successful brand you can simply point to a resource and your followers will go. But for those of us who aren’t a brand, it takes more than just a banner or a stray link to drive thousands of dollars. You need to give people a reason - through persuasion or education - to click those links, sign up to those programs, and bring in your residual income.

John Cow is back on the Entrecard bandwagon … at least for a month. After previously abandoning the system, he’s giving it another go to see if it improves his subscriber numbers and Alexa rank. If you can squeeze in an Entrecard ad before the month is up, it’s sure to be a good deal.

5000 Entrecard Credit For Sale
US $10.00 (0 Bid)
End Date: Saturday Jul-05-2008 20:28:31 PDT
Bid now | Add to watch list

3300 Entrecard credits (start from 1cent!)
US $5.99 (1 Bid)
End Date: Sunday Jul-06-2008 19:58:46 PDT
Bid now | Add to watch list

3,300 Entrecard Credit for Sale
US $6.66 (1 Bid)
End Date: Sunday Jul-06-2008 22:17:07 PDT
Bid now | Add to watch list

2200 Entrecard credits(cheapest ever!! start at 1cent!)
US $3.99 (1 Bid)
End Date: Monday Jul-07-2008 2:03:21 PDT
Bid now | Add to watch list

[PATRIC] ENTRECARD - 4000 CREDITS For Sale
US $0.99 (1 Bid)
End Date: Tuesday Jul-08-2008 10:03:06 PDT
Bid now | Add to watch list

Add Ebay to YOUR blog

By wendy in Blogging .::. Read Comment (1)

March 22nd, 2008

When things get tough…

When things get tough, keep this little ditty in mind:

For every problem under the sun,
there is a solution or there is none.
If there is a solution, go and find it.
If there isn’t, never mind it.

Brian Tracy used this poem in his fantastic book, Crunch Point: The 21 Secrets to Succeeding When It Matters Most.

If you, your family, or your business is experiencing a ‘crunch time’, I highly recommend this book. There’s nothing fundamentally new in it, but it will help you clarify your thoughts and actions to get your where you need to go as quickly as you possibly can.

Brian Tracy - Education Tapes, Seminar, Seminars
US $146.02 (0 Bid)
End Date: Saturday Jul-05-2008 15:01:26 PDT
Bid now | Buy it now | Add to watch list

Brian Tracy and Zig Ziglar Love $1,000,000 Leverage!
US $24.99
End Date: Saturday Jul-05-2008 16:01:48 PDT
Buy it now | Add to watch list

BRIAN TRACY Million Dollar Habits 6 CD Audio Set ~MINT~
US $15.76 (3 Bids)
End Date: Saturday Jul-05-2008 18:08:14 PDT
Bid now | Add to watch list

Add Ebay to YOUR blog

By wendy in General .::. (Add your comment)

March 15th, 2008

Entrecard Tips

Entrecard is a social blog advertising system with a whole lot of potential and a number of pitfalls which, with a bit of experimenting, can be overcome.

For those who have never understood the widget, here’s the deal: you place a widget with a 125X125 advertising space on your blog. Below it is a little Entrecard line that says “Drop”. When other logged in Entrecard users surf by, they can “Drop” their card on you. Their blog then appears in your Entrecard dashboard and you can (if you wish) reciprocate the drop by visiting their blog and dropping your card. For each time you drop, and for each time someone drops on you, you get one point.

With those points, you can buy advertising on other people’s site widgets. And here’s where it gets tricky. The more people ‘drop’ on your widget, the more credits it will cost to advertise on your site. However, many of the sites that have the highest advertising rates do not have the highest quality traffic. If, for example, the blog you’re advertising on primarily gets its traffic from people reciprocating drops, they’re unlikely to click through the advertising widget to your site. And often, if power droppers do click through, it’s only to drop their card and move along.

While I’m hardly an Entrecard guru, I have picked up a few things from playing with the system for a few weeks.

So, my first tip is this: Don’t be in a rush to advertise with the highest priced sites in your niche. First, check out their profile. If it’s going to cost you 500+ points to advertise on a blog, and the profile says the blogger is:

Deeply committed - Deadly serious. A drop master

That’s your first clue that maybe the traffic isn’t going to be quite what you’re hoping for. It’s a clue, mind you, not a bang on certainty.

To find out more, head over to the blog and see how many of the recent posts are about Entrecard. If most of them are, you’re again looking at a pretty good clue that nearly all the traffic coming to that blog is from one source. (And you’ll never guess what that source is!)

Give the blog a pass if the ad rate is high and the blog hasn’t had a post in a week or two. Definitely.

Finally, check the post comments. Make sure there’s a fairly good variety of people posting, rather than the same few on every post.

If the signals are mixed, flip a coin when deciding to advertise. After all, credits come cheap, and at some point it gets hard to dispose of them all.

Now that I’ve pointed out a few of the signs of a bad purchase, here’s a must-buy in any niche… find the bloggers with ad prices over 40 credits who are given the drop rank of:

Just here for the view
or
Casual and relaxed

You then have a good idea that they get traffic from places OTHER THAN Entrecard. Its no guarantee, but it’s a good place to start.

Some of the best traffic I’ve gotten through EC is from a few quality blogs that hover between 20 EC and 80 EC to advertise on. Apparently I’m not the only one finding out these guys drive great traffic, since it’s getting harder to snag advertising spots in their queue.

I, apparently, am “A dedicated dropper with a hint of addiction.” To achieve this lofty title, I basically reciprocate my drops inbox every day, and surf my way through some of the more interesting ads on weekends.

To reciprocate without pain, I use the Firefox addon “Linky” to quickly load up all the sites in my drop inbox in different tabs. (To do this, install the plugin, go to your drops inbox, highlight all the ad boxes, then right click and choose “Linky-> Open Selected Links in Tabs”. Then go grab a coffee while all the sites load, then whip through the tabs dropping your card on each of those blogs and closing the tab when you’re done.) Using this method I get through about 50 by the time I’m done my first cup of coffee for the day.

Finally, when you’re through with all the productive things you should have done in any given day, or while you’re in the middle of a really boring conference call, you can use Sitehopping to autosurf your way through Entrecard sites effortlessly.

5000 Entrecard Credit For Sale
US $10.00 (0 Bid)
End Date: Saturday Jul-05-2008 20:28:31 PDT
Bid now | Add to watch list

3300 Entrecard credits (start from 1cent!)
US $5.99 (1 Bid)
End Date: Sunday Jul-06-2008 19:58:46 PDT
Bid now | Add to watch list

3,300 Entrecard Credit for Sale
US $6.66 (1 Bid)
End Date: Sunday Jul-06-2008 22:17:07 PDT
Bid now | Add to watch list

Add Ebay to YOUR blog

By wendy in Blogging .::. Read Comments (12)

March 15th, 2008

Bloatware sucks.

In preparation for my road trip next week, I picked up a new, what should be screaming fast, laptop yesterday. It was preloaded with Vista, which I’ll just have to suffer with for now since not all the fancy doodads on this thing have XP drivers, so I knew it wasn’t going to be quite as screaming as it would be with just XP, but I wasn’t prepared for the sluggish brick that all the bloatware turned it into.

The first thing I did was burn recovery CDs… after all, when you start wholesale deleting and uninstalling things, you never know what can go wrong.

The last laptop I bought required me to burn recovery CDs too, so I was prepared. I picked up a spindle of blank CDs but just about choked on my coffee when the program requested SEVENTEEN (17) CDs!!! I grabbed the spindle of blank DVDs instead, and burned the bloatware to three of those.

What the heck can they be adding to this poor laptop to fill 17 CDs! Even the most loaded up Linux distro, with Open Office, Gimp and seventeen million other applications I’ll never use, include only six CDs.

Ah well, after two and a half hours of burning, I finally started removing apps.

Norton’s gone, all of HP’s little helper apps are trashed, the lame game stuff is removed, and all of Microsoft’s little helpful ‘extras’ are eliminated.

And another two hours are gone.

Finally, I get around to installing my own apps: Firefox, Thunderbird, Homesite, Filezilla, Zonealarm Suite, Stylus Studio, Open Office.

Another hour and a half gone.

Another hour customizing everything and adding firefox plugins, custom home tabs in custom profiles in firefox, configuring email, bookmarking the important stuff…. and it’s finally done.

And this was the laptop that was going to help me be productive.

Sheesh.