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.

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.

While I prefer to take my Saturdays completely away from my computer, Sundays usually include a little bit of work and a little surfing for fun time.

This Sunday, my leisurely surfing time was done by clicking Entrecards, dropping as I went. (Ick, that sounds a little vulgar, doesn’t it!?)

Here are my favorite finds from my crawl:

1. Marketing Tools Review has this mother of all Adwords tips lists. If you can’t find even one tip in there to make your day, you’re a greater Adwords expert than I. (Well, that’s not saying much, really. But check it out anyway.)
2. Telecommuting Diva offers her list of 4 warning signs of a Work at Home scam. I’ve met more than a few people taken in by these sorts of scams over the years. Reading a warning list like this might have helped a few of them. The rest have never listened to any good advice before in their lives. It’s not likely they’ll start now.
3. Think Blogger experiments with Entrecard Chain Dropping with some interesting methodology and encouraging results. The carpal tunnel effect will slow him down before long, I’m sure, so the rest of us can catch up.
4. Justin Khoury interviews Digg user msaleem. While it’s not the most probing interview I’ve ever seen, there are a few tips to pick up by reading this interview with Digg’s second most successful user.
5. JTPratt discusses ways to track search engine rankings on your blog. I should take his advice. I am very bad at tracking my blogs, but heck, I’m still not even sure WHY I blog. I think you can tell from the Adsense placements here that it sure ain’t the revenue.
6. Canucklehead reminds Entrecard users to step away from the computer now and then. Not sure what he’d say to those folks who blog in order to get away from their families. That’s not me. I think.
7. And although I’m a godless heathen now, I was raised Christian enough to appreciate Church Jokes. “…the sermon topic will be “What is Hell?” Come early and listen to our choir practice.” See, I’m still laughing

If you’ve got multiple blogs you’re advertising on Entrecard, or multiple social network accounts AND you’re a Firefox user, this might be helpful.

Firefox includes a user profile feature that’s sort of hidden under the surface that can help you surf with more than one identity.

If you want to try this, you’ll need to start up the profile menu in Firefox. The only way I’ve found to do this is to change the link from my homepage to add the text –profilemanager after the executable in the shortcut.

Right-click on the Firefox icon and choose Properties from the menu that appears.

In the Shortcut tab, add –profilemanager (that’s two hyphens in front of the word profilemanager) to the target after  any quotation marks in the field.

Click OK to save your changes. Make sure all your browser windows are closed, and double click the edited icon.

There’s probably only one profile in there now, called Default. You can rename that one, and add others.

Create a brand new profile, highlight it, then start Firefox. You’ll have a fresh, clean, cookie-free, login-free Firefox to begin using for your second profile.

If you uncheck the “Don’t Ask At Startup” box before you go, you’ll always get to choose which profile you want to surf with when you start Firefox.

Changing personalities is now as simple as closing down and restarting your browser.