My Internet Marketing Adventures

As time goes on I suspect that my blog will start to look more and more like the outside of my refrigerator, cluttered with all sorts of stuff that might not get noticed after they become part of the landscape. It occurred to me that someone should (if they haven't already) create a button or widget (which, of course, would further slow down the page) that allows the visitor to indicate that they felt the page took too long to load. Just like those "How is my driving?" bumper stickers.

I got to thinking about it this morning while I was riding my exercycle and clicking through Entrecard sites, merrily dropping and sweating, killing two birds with one stone. While we have cable broadband, the computer that sits next to the exercycle is running Windows 98 and isn't the speediest one in the house. And while page loading speed seems to have always been an issue for me (I hated that AOL spinning ball back in '93 at 2400 baud), I really notice it on a slow computer that stalls easily if I ask it to do too much...like load more than one page at a time.

I recognize that bloggers have different goals in mind and different audiences they are targeting. Most of the traffic to this blog comes via Entrecard and that is where I am focusing my energies at the moment. I don't really expect that most card droppers will read more than my headline and I'm OK with that. I don't trim my posts down or purposely make them RSS-friendly and I know that my posts are not usually a quick read. I'm happy when chaindroppers cruise on through and I want to be included on their lists. Which (finally) brings me back to my topic. When I am pedaling away, I have found that I'm willing to wait about 5 seconds for a page to display their Entrecard before I'm pushing "Stop" and then "Delete" from my bookmark list if the Entrecard didn't load. Sounds cold I suppose, but with so many Entrecard sites to choose from, why do I want to wait for a slowpoke? Sometimes pushing Stop works really good--too good on some sites--when the Entrecard loads and nothing else.

All of which got me thinking about how quickly my blog loads. No, I don't really expect people to take the time to comment...but IF I had a button they could click that would give me some idea of their dissatisfaction, I might be able to trim the fat from my page and speed things up. I suspect that most widgets don't individually kill page loading speed all that much. But in combination with large graphics, YouTube imbeds, and oodles of other widgets, things can get downright pedestrian for readers with slower connections or computers. How much does anyone want to see the "Waiting for..." message?

As long as I'm at it, I made a few other notes while riding:
1) When I'm in full chaindropping mode I look first to the upper right hand column under the header for the Entrecard. That's usually because I opened a bunch of bookmarks at the same time and I'm trying to be efficient. However, I noticed when I am opening them one by one from the list I have opened on the left side of the browser window, a left hand column Entrecard placement is preferable.
2) Some of my bookmarks require a pass-through an Entrecard url. Oops. I guess I should have just bookmarked the site and not dragged the url from their Entrecard profile page.
3) There's some conversation going on in the Entrecard forums about chaindropping and the ranking system that Entrecard uses. Honestly, I'm feeling sheepish about the company I find myself in on the Entrecard board. I'm still new at this and have maybe 1 regular reader (thanks Mom!) I see the cost of "advertising" on this blog as an indication of the time I am devoting to Entrecard and not the intrinsic value of my blog or its content. The slight competitive urges that I feel to climb the rankings help me stay focused on this blog (and my other blogs that have Entrecard accounts). And so when I look at the folks I am meeting through Entrecard (like Emma at ItsWriteNow.com, or TurnipofPower.com) I feel somewhat like an interloper and recognize I have plenty of dues to pay.