My Internet Marketing Adventures

I've made some changes to this blog and my approach to Entrecard and will take a moment to explain what I'm doing and why. I wish I could say that I had this strategy in mind from the beginning, but the truth is that things have just evolved to this point and likely will continue to do so in the future. As this blog is intended to be a record of My Internet Marketing Adventures, I've noticed that it was turning into mostly a record of my Entrecard activiites. Valuable, but that's not all that I am doing or want to do with my online marketing. The first offshoot was a blog about Affiliate Ads & Referral Programs, which is where I can write about ad companies and place ads and referral links that I don't want on this blog. The next related blog was about Blogger Communities, and then one about Reviewing For Money, Entering Blogger Contests, and the most recent one I've called The Entrecarder. Each of these blogs has a specific purpose and I hope that each will be of value to the reader. I'm just getting started with these blogs and will be scrambling to add quality content as quickly as possible.

At first I was going to give each of my blogs a different look so as to create a separate identity for them. As the number of related blogs grew I decided to use the same template for each and to cross link them via tabs. I'm hoping that the end result is a coordinated presentation of my Biz Beacon brand, with easy transitions to each site. Each blog has its own Entrecard, so feel free to jump via the tabs or links and get 6 drops for 1 basic visit. However, because they are separate sites the Archive and Search functions only cover the specific site you are on at the time.

Over time I might migrate (or copy) the Entrecard content on this site to The Entrecarder, as it really is my intent to push beyond the Entrecard world and start actually making some money on the Internet!

I guess I was an Entrecard member for almost two weeks before I caught on that the ad values and stats were updated at midnight Eastern Time. Armed with that knowledge, and the recognition that there are Entrecard members from many parts of the globe, I got to thinking about how the relative time of day impacts how and when one drops cards. I'm guessing that the majority of Entrecard members try and drop cards back on those people who dropped on them. And I have found that I get more cards dropped on me after a chaindropping spree, as many folks who aren't chaindroppers are returning the favor. Building up one's ad price might be good for the ego, but there is also no denying the value of being one of the top 3 in each category, as it means you are getting additional exposure on the Campaign page. (Ad value is calculated as twice the number of cards dropped on your site each day, using a rolling average over the most recent 5 days, including the current "day", which begins at 12am ET.)

Dropping a card on someone when they are most likely to be logged into their account might improve the return card drop rate. The same logic is used as the reason to not drop cards on blogs that haven't been updated in a while...the goal is to generate a return drop and hopefully a good visit to your blog in a timely manner, as in that day. When possible, I start card dropping right after I've posted a new entry here so that the regulars are presented with a new headline, or at least see today's date on the post. When I am chaindropping or using a hybrid method that I'll call multi-avenue-drop-surfing* (MADS), I take the time to read a post that interests me and make a comment here and there.

Choosing when one drops a card on someone living in Japan versus someone living in England might mean the difference of a day before they return drop a card. I live in Utah and the Entrecard magic moment occurs at 10pm, a good time for me to drop some cards as I am winding down for the day. That's part of what got me to thinking about time zones. If I drop cards on people who live on the East Coast there is a good possibility that they aren't at their computers and won't see that card for another 4-8 hours, at which time I might have moved too far down their list for them to even know I dropped a card on them. That's not good. On the other hand, dropping a card on someone in Australia who is in full blogging mode might get me a quick return drop.

This kind of analysis might seem a bit extreme to some of you and I suppose it is. I'm not sure it matters right now when you drop your cards as the Entrecard community is still in its infancy. However, when there are 10 times as many Entrecarders are there are now, the strategy of dropping cards by time zone might make more sense.

*MADS worked well for me today as I was able to combine chaindropping from bookmark folders with free form card surfing. I started by opening up a folder with 10 or so booksmarks in it and dropping cards tab by tab and clicking on each Entrecard to open up yet another tab. Not as efficient as pure chaindropping, but I ended up visiting sites that I don't usually see when chaindropping. And because each of these had purchased the right to be on that specific Entrecard, it was a good guess that they were on the more active end of the spectrum than might be found by just trolling through the Campaign pages.

I cringed a few years back when the phrase "web surfing" got picked up by Madison Avenue advertisers, as it seemed so passe to me at the time. I "surfed" the Internet in the mid 90s, before Yahoo made a couple of young guys into millionaires and there really wasn't an easy way to find new sites. You just followed links to wherever they would take you, sometimes good, sometimes not so good.

In real life, I like to surf--having learned in Hawaii while living in Honolulu and going to school at UH--and like to bodysurf even more. The fact that I'm 667 miles from my favorite beach does cut down on my opportunities to splash in the waves and occasionally get pounded into the sand. And until this morning I hadn't thought about "web surfing" for a while, either.

Admittedly, I have been chain dropping Entrecards and looking to be efficient in building up my advertising cost for this blog. Yippee!! As of the moment it cost 140 credits to put your Entrecard on this blog and no one is lining up to do so. I've just about cracked the top 10 in the Internet Marketing category at Entrecard and I'm feeling satisfied with my progress...but not so much to keep chain dropping much longer. Life has to move on and as soon as that memory card arrives in the mail today I'm shifting the chain dropping to my 10 year old...cuz I'm going surfing!

I guess I actually did what the Entrecard creators intended I do by using the Entrecard as a link to the next site. In 30 minutes I dropped 50 cards, signed up for a couple of feeds, entered a contest, and READ about 15 posts. Sometimes the "wave" died out and I had to "paddle" back to the dashboard, or more often I would go through BlogCatalog or MyBlogLog to get to the next Entrecard, signing up as a friend or contact with new folks I passed along the way. No, not as efficient from a pure card dropping point of view, but much more satisfying and useful for long-term blog success.

I do. I really do. I DO have a strategy about my blogging efforts and Entrecard in specific. Yesterday I started up my I've Entered The Contest! blog and established my 6th(?) Entrecard account. I started the contest blog because I didn't want to clutter up this blog, which is sort of an account of my internet marketing activities. Shilling for contests, especially those which want you to write a blog post to participate, doesn't fit with what I want to do with this blog.

I started by entering the Tylercruz.com vs winningtheweb.com contest and then I entered one of Emma Nelson's contests at ItsWriteNow.com. I could have just stopped right there, but I realized my contest entries could also serve as a compilation of contests that other bloggers / Entrecarders might want to join. So, it's turning into a bit more work than I anticipated, but it should have some value to the community, in addition to possibly winning me some prizes.

Using similar logic, I had already started Tips for Newer $ Bloggers, a blog that lists some of the more common affiliate ads & referral programs. And I'm just getting started on Top Blog Communities, a blog that covers MyBlogLog, BlogCatalog, OthersOnline, Bumpzee, and, of course, Entrecard, among others. Again, this blog is geared toward those bloggers who are just starting up with the monetizing process. The next in the series will be Reviews for Money & Other Remuneration, a blog where I can explore the pay-per-review process. I have a couple more ideas for blogs about blogging niches that I might foray into under the BizBeacon umbrella, and another blog where I write about product ideas I have come up with over the years, like Bankshots, Ancestors Mobile, Beach in a Box, and more.

And that's not all!!! If you order now... Actually, I have another bunch of blogs that I am working on that fall into the Intunique or Provorem categories, but most of those won't be making an appearance for another couple of weeks.

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.

It's only normal that some people will get their Entrecard set up and lose interest after a day, a week, or a month. It goes to what their expectations were and how closely reality came to meeting them. So, as I was dropping cards last night from Turnip's list, I swept about 30 stale Entrecards into the trash. I'm sure that they were fresh and hopeful when they first made it to Turnip's bookmark list, but I figure that if they don't have a January 2008 post yet, they ain't taking their blog too seriously. And that means that they aren't likely dropping any cards. And so why do I want to drop a card on them? I don't.

I also discarded (great word, under the circumstances) another 5-10 sites whose content was static or dateless. Again, they aren't likely doing much card dropping. And of course, anyone whose Entrecard is below the fold is headed to the trash, too. Fortunately, there are so many Entrecard members now that it's not too hard to find plenty of folks to visit who just might drop a card back on your blog. New members are great because they are still fired up about Entrecard and are happy to get cards dropped on their sites.

I guess it's going to be a constant cycle of out with the old and in with the new. One real positive I experienced was that as I was scanning posts for a date (as in calendar), I managed to read more content than I have been in my recent dropping sprees. And that was a good thing!

Adbrite is getting hammered today in the Entrecard forums. Apparently they have been bad boys and are now on the Entrecard blacklist. It only makes sense that Entrecard should derive revenue from all of the activity that goes on and as I got to thinking about it I realized that I hope they (honestly, I really don't know who "they" are and should probably spend a few moments to find out) make a boatload of money from Entrecard. As they get more and more successful they will be spending more and more effort getting the word out as they decide to build their reputation outside of the blogging world. And as that happens, more and more folks will be arriving at Entrecard and the community will continue to thrive.

I'm enjoying the sense of community that exists here on Entrecard, and the spillover that I'm experiencing in MyBlogLog, BlogCatalog, and other communities. I don't comment all that often and have only had a few conversations with other Entrecard members, but I'm starting to recognize familiar cards and feeling more comfortable with the regulars. I write with my own voice and I'm not yet attempting to optimize my posts for anything other than my own satisfaction. I don't have designs on being the best blogger by any measuring stick and my income goals for this blog are very modest. My larger desire is to be informative and entertaining, and to get efficient at this process, seeing as it is just a small part of what I do.

Perspective aside, and my 51 years not withstanding, it's still very cool to see something work. Like someone putting money in my tip jar (otherwise known as My TopSpots) or saying thanks for pointing them towards a useful site. I suppose there will come a time when such small successes will become routine, which realization is why I'm savoring them today. Like fellow travelers met along the trail, there is a camaraderie that exists solely due to sharing the same place and time, no matter how fleeting the moment. Hello, G'day, Cheers, and Godspeed to you all.

My recent adventures have taken me to NameDrive.com to sign up and earn some money from a few unused domain names that I have. NameDrive puts ads on the sites and splits revenue with you. NameDrive also has a referral program...so if you're interested you can follow the above link and give me credit or you can circumvent my involvement and risk karmic disaster by cutting me out of the loop. ;-)

I heard about a new deal called Qassia on becslife.biz (and signed up with her referral link), another benefit of participating in the Entrecard community. Here's what the folks at Qassia have to say about themselves:

"Qassia is fantastic because you get credit for sharing your intelligence. The more credit you earn, the better your websites will rank. And you get a backlink to your website for every intel you add - only Qassia gives you unlimited quality backlinks.

Last but not least, Qassia also has the best ad revenue sharing system on the Internet, so in effect you get paid for promoting your websites. Qassia rocks!

The more people join Qassia, the more everyone will benefit, so give Qassia a spin. Signing up takes less than a minute, so you've got nothing to lose. See ya around!"

I even dusted off an old post about "Is rock music evil?" and added to their "intel."

Whilst on becslife.biz I noticed she had a "tip jar" in the form of a Scratchback "Are You In My Top Spots?" widget and decided to toss a buck in and sign up for my own tip jar. Feel free to do the same! (No referral program yet.)

I had applied to join NeverBlue's ad program last week and spoke yesterday with my account rep, Craig, who asked me about my business, etc. Yippee! I got approved. Of course, I had to smile when he wanted to verify my mailing address for the Accounts Payable department. I did get my first email from NeverBlue today and there were a couple of pretty interesting affiliate ad programs that I could sign up for. Several people (sorry, I can't remember who) had mentioned in their blogs that they were very pleased with NeverBlue and so I'm hoping it will work out well.

As far as Entrecard goes, I'm just grinding away. I have found that card dropping goes well with my riding my exercycle in the morning and I'm just plugging along. Props to Turnip for being an Entrecard expert so I don't have to be. He's also very generous to provide his list of Entrecard booksmarks for free, which will save the new Entrecarder many hours of work. I could post the link, but you would be doing yourself a disservice to not read his posts about Entrecard, so head on over to his site to get the list and some great advice.

Last note for today's entry is that I changed my profile photo to my Bearded pic. Why? I like the look of my beard in a photo more than I like the feel of it on my face. This way I get to enjoy seeing my bearded self showing up in the BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog widgets without having an itchy face.

Here's what I'm doing with Entrecard as of the moment:

1) Multiple Entrecard Accounts - I have more than one Entrecard account due to having several different online businesses that I am promoting. This account, "My Internet Marketing Adventures" is my main account and is a record of my activities on Entrecard and elsewhere that I combine under the BizBeacon brand. A second account, "Intunique...the art of smart," (the model is my youngest daughter) is designed to build readership of my blog that deals with Multiple Intelligence Theory, personality, and how each of us has specific intellectual abilities that are in the gifted range, even if we don't realize it. My third account is "Madame Goyin", a collection of MLM tips and experiences that I have ghostwritten on behalf of my mother, who has been the CEO of 3 separate MLM companies. (That's her in the 60s when she was a top fashion model, standing there next to the Goyin bottle.) My fourth account is "Tips for Newer $ Bloggers" and is designed to introduce folks to the more common Ad companies like AdToll, Bidvertiser, Widget Bucks, etc.

2) Review, Sort, & Bookmark Entrecard Sites - Thanks to Turnip I started bookmarking sites so I could quickly open them and blast through them in mass card-dropping sprees. I haven't hit his pace yet, but it does quicken things up significantly. My current method is to check the Most Recent sites and drop a card from my "Tips for Newer $ Bloggers" account. Then I either put their bookmark in a folder for Above The Fold (ATF) or Below The Fold (BTF), and occasionally--based on adult content or really slow page loading--I don't bookmark it at all. I have found that my computer works best when I keep the bookmarks in a single folder to 20 or less. I use the right click "Open All" feature in a new window, click the first card and then click the tab of the next card, continuing until all cards have been clicked, leaving the tabs open for the time being. Then I close the Firefox window (which quickly closes all the tabs) and move to the next folder. Am I reading most of these blogs? No...unless the title to the top post catches my eye. However, I have found that it takes my computer a minute or so to load all 20 sites and so I am in the process of placing a blog that I want to read every day as the top bookmark in the folder...if it loads quickly. That will allow me to read it and click through the rest. Initially I thought I would go through both the ATF and BTF groups of folders, but honestly I don't want to spend the extra time to scroll down. To me that says that the blog owner doesn't care enough about Entrecard to make it easy for me and I'm not particularly motivated to help grow their traffic as a result.

3) Purchase Ad Space From The Bottom Up -At first it seemed like a good idea to use my Entrecard credits to place my card on the category leaders' sites. However, that thrill passed quickly and I'm now purchasing ads starting from the bottom of the category and working my way up until I'm zeroed out. I've been shifting credits from my 2nd, 3rd, and 4th accounts to my main Entrecard account to improve my buying power. My goal is to get as many ads running as I can so that my fellow Entrecarders get used to seeing my card and consider me one of the regulars.

4) Recruit Assistants - As I build this system it will become easier for someone else to grind through the 200-300 cards each day. It was fun for a couple of days, but I'm quickly getting to a point where one of my 5 children who are still living at home could do it just as efficiently.

I think Entrecard is a great idea and while it might appear that I am trying to game it, the truth is that everything I do benefits someone else's site, in addition to mine. I still have plenty of work to do to optimize my blogs and I haven't yet gotten into the comments, backlinks, contests, or other good ideas that are proliferating around the Entrecard community. Feel free to point me at your site if you have some good ideas for leveraging my Entrecard experience.

This past week has been quite an education and much of it came from the collective expertise found in the Entrecard community. While I have blogged off and on over the past couple of years, I'm awed by the sheer volume of good blogs that I've run across. One truism that I've encountered in my real world adventures in the business world is that you only get to be a "newbie" for a short while and those impressions are extremely valuable because the largest part of the general populace are always going to be newbies.

I have a couple of different areas of interest that don't really fit together into a single blog and I started off with the idea that I would have multiple blogs so that I could write to niche audiences. I've since segmented the potential audience into 6 different categories:

1) Intunique - A word that I borrowed from ancient programmers (people my age and older) and applied to the concept of "unique intelligence", hence Intunique.

2) BizBeacon - My branded word for my online business activities. This blog falls into the BizBeacon category, as do my other online marketing activities.

3) Provorem - A contrived word resulting from the two cities that represent the core of Utah County--Provo & Orem--where I reside and work. The content for these blogs--which number over 25 at the moment--eventually will meld together into a website that deals with our local business community.

4) Ready Health Products - This company is owned by a relative and I'll spend some time blogging on several sites to drive traffic to the main website.

5) Anonymous Blogging - I've got some ideas for blogs that I think will be entertaining (think PG-13) but that I'm not sure I want to have fully integrated with the rest of my blogs.

6) The Rest - Blogs on Driving, Volleyball, Genealogy, Positive Thinking and more. My creative outlet.

I'm still in the process of determining how I want to reach each audience and how best to monetize my sites. My first inclination was to include as many ads, communities, feeds, directories, etc., that I could on a site. OK, so it looked pretty busy and unattractive, and there was only so much that I could fit above the fold. Honestly, while it's a good thing that there are so many ways to earn money with your blog, it can be challenging to figure out which path to take. So, as I was already committed to multiple blogs based on audience, I decided to expand the concept a bit and design different blogs--with the same content--for different marketing approaches.

For example, I reworked my Intunique blog that is hosted by Blogger so that it was "optimized for Entrecard." Many thanks to Turnip for his Top 5 Entrecard Tips and Tricks, as I realized that my page had likely been too full of ads to be of interest. Basically I wiped most everything off the site except for the Entrecard and my own ads. And then I bumbled my way through setting up a BuzzBoost through Feedburner so that the content from my main Intunique blog gets posted on the Intunique blog that I have optimized for Entrecard.

I have since repeated the process for another Intunique feed site that is focused on Communities: MyBlogCatalog, BlogCatalog, OthersOnline & SpicyPage as of the moment. My thought was that I can continue to build that site so it's visitor friendly, a site that will encourage lingering and poking around, something that the streamlined Entrecard site isn't designed to do. My plan is to have at least two--and maybe more--Intunique feed sites that address different marketing approaches tailored to specific types of advertising like Adsense, Amazon, CJ, Adtoll, and the many others out there.

I'm pretty excited about the prospects of this market segmentation approach to monetizing my blogging and have to smile about the fact that all of the structuring work I am doing is getting in the way of writing!

I'm very impressed with the Entrecard ("Entre" as in Entrepreneur) concept as a method for quickly getting traffic to one's blog! First of all, it's easy to set up,with perhaps the first real hurdle to overcome being the choice of a image to put on one's Entrecard. Not to worry...you can easily change the look of your Entrecard if you misfire with your first attempt(s).

Why does Entrecard work?

1) Entrecard (hopefully) moves link exchanging a couple of steps closer to Google acceptability and empowers the "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" vibe.

2) When you "drop your card" on another Entrecard you get Credits that can be used to buy ad space on other Entrecard members' blogs, thereby getting your blog some valuable exposure.

3) Entrecard Credits are rapidly becoming a form of currency that can be used to purchase goods and services in addition to ads.

4) The market forces involved with the price of ads for specific Entrecard members' blogs helps maintain the vibrancy of the Entrecard community and helps introduce beginning bloggers to the laws of supply and demand that exist in the broader internet marketing community.

5) As there are many blogs in the Entrecard community that focus on how to make money with blogs, visiting other members' site and dropping your card can be very educational.

6) It's entertaining to see the different Entrecard designs and it's fun to see one's Credits soar without too much effort. Now, if only each Credit was worth a dollar!

Feel free to comment about other benefits to Entrecard that I might have left off my list! Also, let me know if you think there is a point where your blog traffic is high enough that spending time to drop off your Entrecard is not an effective use of your time.