Apology to ALL ENTRECARD MEMBERS!

Real life and the hospitalization of our baby boy left me behind with my apology for the falsely accused EntreCard members!

I want to apologizes to everyone who has been accused, who read and commented on the last two posts of this blog!

ALL PICTURES HAVE BEEN NOW DELETED, no matter if real Ghost dropper or not!

Yes, indeed i published it in a hurry!

Yes, i checked afterward some members and compared with Google Analytics. It seems that on one day members didn't get counted but could click and on the other day they got counted. This must be one of the effects of cache browsing as on 9th February a new blog post was visible for everyone and mentioned in EntreCard's Blog and in their E-mail to me!

Like i mentioned in the first post about the Ghost droppers:

Everybody shall judge by themselves if this is true or not.

In my case it seemed to be true as i didn't receive any comments for the duration of the existence of the blog (5 1/2 months) from these accused member. I know for sure that other members get comments from some of these accused members, so they are NOT ALL FAKE droppers or cheater or scamming other members!

Some of the members used just in the period when i made the experiment the quick drop pages, in the past they dropped regularly on my blogs from their blog roll, EntreCard Toolbar or from the Inbox.

I didn't know that EntreCard would pat me on my back for this investigation or that they even would mention my post.
I didn't send them the link, i just wrote them -as i wanted to get the Travel-Blog reinstated- that over 60 members could drop on that blog without a widget.
As they wrote themselves in the blog that NOT ALL mentioned members are Ghost droppers, it seems non-sense for me to link to my post.
I asked EntreCard to remove the link to my post as it's absolutely not necessary - (EntreCard removed now the link from their blog!).

The real Ghost droppers who used the previous quick drop system seemed to be wiped out (or perhaps it's just me who get less of their drops).


Accusations against me who are written in the comment section of Ad Master's post that i have tried to hack in a user's account or that i'm the person who distribute the click trojan are definitely NOT TRUE!

Another accusation which i received in the previous post is related to the disabling of the quick drop pages (the commenter built one of these quick drop pages):

I think there is no one to blame as EntreCard didn't and doesn't allow to do this kind of dropping and now they took action so that EntreCard members get again REAL VISITORS to their blogs.

UPDATE:
You can read in EntreCard's help files about illegal activities which are NOT ALLOWED by EntreCard and can lead to account closing, loss of ECs, ban of user!

It's clearly stated that these actions are not allowed (since September 2008!)

• Use of any automated program/script that drops for you
• Any drop done through any means other than visiting the blog, and dropping through the widget found on that blog

Update End

His argumentation that we have to suffer now more often from 100% Bounce rate without this kind of cheating may be correct but i doubt that these members will put much effort in dropping cards when they can't finish it anymore within 15 minutes.
As long as you can attract your visitors to read your content and comment, you may even gain now a new reader instead of letting them just drop on the yellow box!

UPDATE:
Cheating with yellow boxes is also cheating the advertisers who wants to buy an ad as they think you get such a big amount of visitors when they compare the popularity points with other members.
Without cheating the Alexa ranking can improve as the members HAVE to visit you now!
As of now (22nd February) the effect of less ghost droppers shows that the 5 most popular blogs in EntreCard "lost" between 300 and 400 popularity points. This shows that there have been indeed a lot of members who took the shortcut to use quick drop pages.
A small loss of popularity points (up to 75 points) is from active members who left EntreCard in the last week.
Update End

EntreCard: Responses of Ghost Droppers

Some words to the previous mentioned experiment of Ghost Droppers in EntreCard & the E-Mail of EntreCard:

I believe EVERYONE would wonder if someone shows up in the Inbox of EntreCard when their website would be down due to a server problem or virus.
How would you react if you would see the same amount of "Droppers" in your Inbox like i saw in the previous days (just with a purposely deleted widget)?

On the 9th February (short after EntreCard resets the drops) i wrote about the results from the 63 dropping members of 8th February in red color. So the members should have been already warned that it's an experiment to see who dropped cards even when the EntreCard-Widget is NOT AVAILABLE. But they still kept dropping cards.

11 of the accused members responded and their comments have been released now (they are mixed chronically within the other comments).

Here are some of their reasons:

One of these droppers said, using a cached Google search was his method to drop during these days as he couldn't find the EntreCard-Widget. It was well meant from him and he is doing it usually when a website is not reachable or the EntreCard not visible on the actual blog version for not loosing his Top dropper status (the user had been removed from the previous list as i saw it in my logs that he indeed came from Google).

Greetje greets you commented with an explanation on the Best travel pictures in the world blog. She uses each month the blog version from the first of the month (Browser cache) as another Dutch blogger told her previously to keep her browsing more secure.

I wonder now why do i and everyone else update our blogs/ the travel pictures blog (in the past) almost daily when now several of these accused members use old versions of my blog to drop their cards.

Anonymous (would have been nice to know who you are):

Erm... I use a cached browser? It caches sites and only updates when there is an update? You can use Google's cache to do the same thing. Hence anyone with any sense knows how to do you a favour when your site is sluggish and still manage to drop. Still this sort of slander is the last straw - to be honest many of us have invested years in dropping and I for one see this as a good time to leave for good.

My response to this - like mentioned above the blog was updated on 8th & 9th, so your browser should have loaded the newest version of my blog WITHOUT my EntreCard.


It's for sure if several members use only cached sites

• we won't receive any comments and
• the bounce rate from this members should be 100% as they look always at the same OLD POSTS or
• is it even worse and it doesn't count as page visit as these cached blogs are not accessed directly because they are saved on their local hard disks? GRRRRRRRRR!

Is there a reason to drop on them when they treat your blog and your updates in this way?

Something like this can make you as angry as when they would be real Ghost droppers.


Other member's comments:

Laane:

Well, I think you're not seeing things the way they are. In fact,I visit your blog every day at least once, but sometimes 5 or more times.
Why? Because I adgitize too.
So I think you're making mistakes.

Maybe I should start spending whole days commenting, so you can see I'm at the blogs.

Well, I;ve been face at entrecard with so many things the past years, this can be adeed, I guess.

I just would like to know how you could drop the card when it wasn't available on the two days! This has nothing to do with Adgitize as the Adgitize ads have been available and we don't have an Adgitize Inbox.
I know you had issues with viruses in the past and you said you made yourself an own drop list after this incident (around End of September/beginning of October 2009).

Julie @ Momspective:

I was out of town the dates listed and when I travel I outsource my drops. I only drop on those who drop on me and will speak with those individuals who I outsource my dropping to while I'm gone. I visit each site regularily, comment if I can (lately I can't much due to travel and medical issues so I do suck there) and buy ads on those sites as well. It takes me 9 hours to drop on my these sites throughout the day either using the snaplinks multiple web browser opener or the EC toolbar if I didn't get enough drops using my favorites list, who are people who drop or have dropped on me while I write, email and social network so I am taking this accusation very seriously. I appreciate the information and will be sure to look into it.

You outsourced the drops of your cards? Did you know that John from Make nothing online catched Momspective Reviews last week in his experiment, too, for three days?

Paul from Hacking the Hacked

1.Comment:

Wow what a funny post, I see one of my cards on your list, and here I am commenting. I also see at least four cards of other members who comment on one of my blogs. And, I see quite a few cards from members who also use Blog Catalog, I know they use Blog Catalog because their avatars show on my BC widget after they have visited one of my blogs.

I have been thinking of leaving EC because the bounce rate from members who actually do visit one of my blogs only to drop a card and then leave, is far more harmful to my blogs ranking than someone who uses a "ghost dropper list." This post might be the straw that broke the camels back, so congratulations to you on suceedding at something might be in order.

2.Comment:

Me again, sorry but I am upset that my card appears on your fake droppers list. I follow a few members who have been quick to jump on your bandwagon through the Google friend connect widget, wich I will remove myself from now. Those that I regularly visit like The English Wildernes, I wont anymore. I am very sorry that I spent so much time on this blog the other day reading your posts about increasing blog traffic.

I am using my url/name in my comments so people can see that members on the cards above do visit EC sites, see who is making comments on my blogs for yourself.

Paul, thanks for reading some articles in the past! Sorry to say Paul, i'm sure i never visited your blog in the past. My visit and commenting today was the first time. You see a lot of the accused members at the moment in my Blogcatalog list, some appear there again for the first time after a long time. Most of them came from an alarming e-mail from their friends when i can trust some Analytic programs from Google and Live Feedjit.

UPDATE:
I REMOVED THE MEMBERS WHO COMMENTED AND SOME REGULAR DROPPERS OF MY BLOGS WHICH COULD FALL UNDER THE in EntreCard's Blog and in their E-Mail mentioned cache issue!!!

Everyone should make for yourself a picture if these members interacted with you in the past or not.

If they did interact with you, continue to support them with dropping on them.
If they didn't interact with you, it might be the same "problem" like in this case, they just use a cached version of your blog or have been really ghost dropping with the use of

• a script
• a bookmarked Drop-Widget link
• quick ghost drop pages (which have been now disabled)
  

EntreCard members get scammed by these members!

Like written on the Best travel pictures in the world blog, i made a "secret" test on 8th and 9th February 2009 to see who is gaming EntreCard's Dropping System.

For this test i had to remove the EntreCard widget to see if some members still are able to appear in my Inbox. I'm sorry if i caused a lot of members problems as many of you tried to search for the EntreCard-widget several times a day (it was for the best means of us).

To my shocking surprise it wasn't just a handful of members who fake drops in our inbox, it has been more than 65 members who never visit your blog.
They just use a Ghost dropper list or a program that is dropping only on the yellow drop box. With this method you can finish dropping 300 blogs in less than 15 minutes.

I decided now to show off these FAKE members who didn't physically visit your web site, so that you can decide by yourself if you still want to support them or if you dump them (no more dropping on them) to show them that WE DON'T ACCEPT CHEATERS IN ENTRECARD.

Several hours ago EntreCard deleted the Best travel pictures in the world blog from their system. But after 3 1/2 hours i got the blog reinstated and you can drop again on the Best travel pictures in the world blog!

EntreCard even wants to look now into the matter of Ghost drop lists and how to change the code, so that we members get REAL VISITORS and not FAKE DROPS IN OUR INBOX!

One list which i suspect has played the malicious part for so many fake drops, has been deleted after i told EntreCard about it and they suspended the account of this person (or warned her that it will get suspended if she doesn't remove this list).


Here have been the members who scam us regularly in EntreCard, like you can see there are a lot of TOP Droppers who actually never come to your blog but a lot of you give them even a FREE LINK each month.

UPDATE:

The Responses of the accused members have been published in the comment section a choice can be seen on Responses of the Ghost Droppers.

For the members who didn't believe me!
This is my single Dropbox of this blog which could be used everywhere to cheat on me!
EntreCard made this kind of cheating after this experiment NOW UNAVAILABLE!
So there is no more reason to display the picture of these members who used this system!

Read my apology for the falsely accused EntreCard Ghost droppers

Removed Dropaholics widget

Due to my current issues with the Internet Service Provider P1 WiMax (slow connections, several reloads until widgets are loaded, commenting in forums is a pain because of the time outs) which let me do only occasionally dropping in EntreCard with one or two of my blogs, i removed my Dropaholics widget rather late :)

Will have a look that i can honor my Top Droppers in the Sidebar with a RSS-FEED as soon as the internet connection is stable again in the coming days.

Guess you came from Behindthebitblog.com and wanted to read this story but they directed you now to another post or do you like to read the Apology for the falsely accused Ghost droppers?

EntreCard: Another Ad Scam! In your queue, too?

As i logged in my EntreCard Dashboard to see which ads have been auto-approved in the last days i came across this ad on the left side. It was paid with ECs (it's not one of the sponsored Ads!).
This is NOT an ad for a blog. This is an ad for Sponsored Tweets from Izea. It means it's an affiliate ad. If i would run this ad on my blog, you would be redirected to Sponsored Tweets Sign-up page.

It's similar to the ads which showed up in the previous month. Someone just edited the landing page and EntreCard does not check this change of your landing page!

If you see this ad in your advertiser queue, PLEASE REPORT IT to EntreCard.
So that they can delete this blog and of course you should REJECT the ad!

Tomorrow i will blog about the new feature in CMF Ads - their Network Ads for 10$ (what's good or bad about it for publishers and advertisers)

In two days i will post "Facts about Sponsored Tweets and other money-making programs for Twitter - how to be successful with these programs".

Small Adgitize update: You can already login and do your clicks, the stats haven't been updated yet but you still CAN'T renew your ad! -> follow me on Twitter for realtime updates from Adgitize's forum!

CMF Ads: My results of the SPIKES

Image by hongiiv via Flickr

I tried the new feature in CMF Ads called Spikes at the Christmas weekend. It took 3 days during this time from 24th - 27th December until i received 50 "unique" visitors from CMF Ads.

Let's look at the numbers from Google Analytics:

• 32 from 50 visits have been recorded - which leaves 18 visits as Drop & Run visits (36%)

• From the 32 visits only 43,75 % (14) have been NEW VISITS (unique)
  
  
• The average time on the site from these 32 visitors has been 1:32 minutes (40 seconds more than my usual average time)
  
  
• Bounce rate & Page views (can't be calculated as my code was duplicated and i just changed it to the new Analytic codes on 26th December) - therefore i bought a new spike to test it again :)
  
  
• The recorded visits (32) accounted for 3.3% of my overall visitors (946) in these three days.
  

My Conclusion

As we usually shouldn't count Drop & Run visits because there is no real value in them, i paid 20 cents for 32 visitors (0,625 cents/visitors) who stayed longer than the average visitor on my blog.

The longer on-site time could be connected with my article about CMF Ads and the comments from CMF admins as only CMF members visited me through CMF Spikes.
We will see what happen when i don't update or have another topic as myr first article in the future.

As CMF Ads doesn't know which member visited me already from EntreCard or Adgitize the uniqueness lacks in my opinion. New visits have been just 43,75% which means there are more than 50% who visit me regularly from EntreCard/Adgitize/CMF Ads.

At the moment i believe the drop & run visits will increase as there is nothing that stops the member (like EntreCard where you have to "look for" the Drop box or in Adgitize for the next ad to click on), especially if they have already visited me from EntreCard/Adgitize on the same day!

The Bounce rate might increase as well as more and more members have already visited your blog from the previous Spikes purchase, following this the average time on the site will decrease.

Using Spikes as a permanent way to drive traffic to your blog is not the best way if you DON'T UPDATE YOUR BLOG before you buy a new SPIKES.

The Spikes will be used up during the weekdays (and after they are now established) faster than during the last few days as more and more members see this as a way to earn easily money for their advertising campaigns (DROP & RUN TRAFFIC).

Actually there are have been more than 109 Spikes member which would give you already 21,8 Cents if you have visited them (enough to self-fund a SPIKES) and new blogs are added each hour.

UPDATE:
After 4 hours i received -for my SECOND SPIKES- 10 CLICKS from CMF Ad members, only 3 got recorded by Google Analytics with an average time on the site of 0 seconds and 1 new visitor (who also didn't like to read)!
That's being said, i seem to be right that it's more for the incentive of 0,2 cents than for staying and reading the actual blog (after the blog might have been visited in the previous days)!

What should YOU DO?

• Give it a ONE-TIME try, 20 cents is not much for getting up to 50 visitors who stay a while on your page.

• Don't expect many comments (got 5 comments from CMF only members, the other comments were mainly given because i commented on their blog!)
  
  
• Write about your experience with CMF SPIKES or a topic related to CMF members/blogger to attract them a little longer on your blog, express your views in the CMF forum :)
  
  
• Members with mainly paid post may get visitors but i doubt that Google Analytics will count this visits (after a second Spikes is purchased) as the first impression of a blog counts - similar to Adgitize where many members avoid ads which haven't Adgitize ads on it themselves, members remember "bad blogs".
  
  
• Buy a second SPIKES after some days not immediately after your FIRST ONE has expired!
  

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• Where New Blogs Get Their Traffic From (man-over-board.com)
• What Is The Best Traffic Source For My Blog? (wealthyways4you.com)
• How To Get More Traffic To Your Blog (howtospoter.com)
• Read this post NOW if your blog isn't getting enough traffic (ranklab.com)
• Short And Steady Wins The Blog Race (slyvisions.com)
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Adgitize: Secret of getting an ad paid by Adgitize + make a profit with it!

Do you want to know the SECRET how to get paid by Adgitize for your own 14$ ad? If you are a member, i guess you want to know, if you're not a member, this article will help you in finding an ad network that pays you (back most of your ad price) to advertise in its network!

UPDATE: There is a promotion running until 31st July 2010 which would pay you 14,57 $ for your invested 14$ if you are an active advertiser like described below!

Additionally you will get as my referral a FREE ONE WEEK AD (value 7$) which will give you between 250 - 500 visitors/week and up to 3.50 $ earnings in Adgitize - simply sign up by clicking on one of my Adgitize ads - the easiest way to monetize your blog and to get traffic to your blog!

My payment proofs from Adgitize from July since today 5th December 2009, always more than 14$/month (including referral earnings)!





Yesterday John Lottery from "Ask the Blogster" asked me -after reading the previous Adgitize blog post with my points and earnings statistic- how i could achieve these numbers as he only achieved a maximum of 480 points with TWO running ads (three blogs registered).
Eli came up with a similar conclusion as he only owns ONE BLOG, "Business Sphere"and his highest points have been just 425 (with one ad + paid preferred publisher).

In the last six month i could achieve daily in Adgitize 440 - 470 points (FOUR BLOGS registered) which has been nearly the maximum of the points (500 points until August, 600+ points since end of August).

The Basics in generating points in Adgitize

1. Click the necessary amount of ads until you see 100 in the blue field under the Adgitize ads (for publishers this are 100 different ads, for advertiser just 50 ads) -> 100 click points
   
   
2. Publish ONE article per day (more are allowed but don't give additional points!) -> 100 article points
   
   
3. advertise in Adgitize for 31 days (14$ = 45 cents/day, best value!) -> 100 advertiser points
   Advertising gives you the necessary bonus -as you could see in #1-, less clicking and it will double your page/ad view points in #4
   
   
4. drive traffic like crazy to your blog, use EntreCard and drop 300 cards, find persons who reciprocate your drop, get into the TOP 15 spot of your category and make your way in the overall TOP 15 for total exposure and FREE advertising for your blog!

Why it is important to get to the TOP 15 in your category and in the end in the overall TOP 15!

If you start dropping cards look yourself for an ad image that makes other curious about you or write the purpose of your blog into the image (be creative).
By using EntreCard's own templates you should write in a few words "what is your blog about" to attract some members (usually less members click on these cards).

Looking in my Category "Finance and Investing" there is not much competition and it would be easy to climb from 0 to 350 member visits (popularity points) with just 3-5 days dropping 300 cards.
This would give you already some exposure for the persons who are interested in this category and you would get some free visitors, just because you are in the TOP 15.

To get in the category "Mixed Bag" into the TOP 15 you have to find a good strategy with dropping and it will take time (more than 2 weeks) to come closer to the TOP 15 as there are over 2.000 blogs.

Getting into the overall TOP 15 needs time -around one month- but with the following strategies it's easier for you to achieve!

Some different dropping strategies:

1. Drop on the 300 most popular blogs daily as they are usually daily active and most of them are reciprocating drops.
   
   
2. Build friendships by commenting on some of the blogs where you drop cards.
   Commenting gives you exposure and a free text link (to your blog or blogger profile), especially if you comment on the TOP 30 blogs in EntreCard (as they get over 300 visitors from EntreCard!).
   
   
3. Be fast in commenting = make the comment as one of the first on each blog post, more likely that others will read it and visit you, if it's NOT A SPAMMING COMMENT or just a "Great post, nice article"-comment :)
   
   
4. Use Google Friend Connect or subscribe to the RSS-Feed so that you get their new blog posts automatically delivered!
   
   
5. Drop on popular blogs in your category (even if they are not one of the 300 most popular blogs) to make them aware of your blog and your interests, share your knowledge with them.
   
   
6. Drop on blogs who appear in your inbox, they might be interested in your blog and come back for a visit in the following days, too! Sort out blogs who didn't reciprocate your drops (if they are NOT OF INTEREST to you).
   
   
7. Advertise daily in EntreCard with the received ECs. Look out for "cheap" ad spots by checking the popularity points. Buy throughout the categories and buy at least each second day one ad which costs up to 512 EC, it's worth the ECs and with more traffic your own ad price will raise, too, giving you more ECs to invest in more ads!
   
   
8. Reward Top Droppers (look in your EntreCard Statistics) with link love, the easiest way is to join Dropaholics as they provide you with different widgets for your Top Droppers (you can see one in my sidebar, the largest one, small ones only show the ad pictures). Some members just visit you because of being an active member in Dropaholics (even if you don't drop back on them)! They just want to be on your TOP Dropper widget!

With these strategies you can get more visitors from EntreCard to your blog but your content should be attractive, too. So that they enjoy to visit you daily or frequently every other day.

If you write your content not only for your readers but partially for the Search engines (SEO), you will gain additional free traffic from Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Use Twitter, Digg, Stumbleupon, Delicious, Facebook and/or MySpace to increase your readership even more.

The page and ad view point system, the more points you want, the more you have to work!

The page view points are calculated in a very steep way. The maximum page view points (with FOUR BLOGS!) i could achieve was 60 points (originally it's 30 points as the points get doubled if you're an advertiser). Therefore i need 2.000 page views.
The highest page views i could achieve in the past have been 2.500 but nothing changed with the page view points, so this will be really hard for myself to achieve once the 70 page view points.

But you can influence the ad view points with the number of ads which you display and the number of ad groups!

Eli for example could improve his ad view points by adding one bigger ad blog with 9 ads or two different ad groups (one with two ads, a second one with eight ads). In this case he could achieve already the five fold of his page views. At the moment he gets just the 1,5 times his page views as he only displays ONE ad group with ONE ad and a SECOND ad group with TWO ads.
This change could be worth up to 30 ad view points, on average 20 more ad view points daily!

• Choose two ad groups and mix them so that you show only a maximum of ten ads

For the ad views the point system (for advertisers) looks like this:

• more than 10.000 ad views - 100 points (50 for publishers)
• between 9.000 - 10.000 ad views - 90 points (45 for publishers)
• less than 9.000 ad views - 80 points (40 for publishers)

As i didn't get 70 points in ad views, i can't tell you if 10 (5 for publishers) points are given for every 1.000 ad views. Therefore i would need your feedback :)

Another point which you should take into account - Preferred Publisher Program

Use the Preferred Publisher Program, it gives you free traffic (in case you click already daily the maximum of ads, 100 or 50) for one blog and additional 10 advertiser points. Otherwise read my guide for the Adgitize Preferred Publisher Program.
If you want to sign up for the paid Preferred Publisher Program, the prices start from 6$/month and you will get 25 advertiser points


Some other members achieve high points, too but only with more than ONE BLOG or several paid ads/preferred publisher!

In the Adgitize Leaderboard you can find in the TOP 10 usually only members with MORE than ONE BLOG (up to six blogs - Positive Men).
I would say everyone who has on average more than 470 points has two ads running or is PAID preferred publisher with a second/third/... blog as it's too difficult to jump over the 60 page view points.

I achieved the 500 points on 2nd of December just because i started my new ad at the same day as my old ad expired.
I wanted to see if there is a big difference in earnings but it seems it's just 1 or 2 cents for each 10 points in this area (different when you jump between from 270 to 300 or 370 to 400).

These have been a lot of tips how to achieve much more points in Adgitize, most of them are free, some might take additional time each day but in the end you will get most of the invested ad price returned by Adgitize!
In the past you simply had to achieve around 400 points on average to get paid by Adgitize for advertising (+ around 2000+ visitor/monthly) now it will be around 430+ points to achieve the same effect.

Join now, get traffic and make a profit with blogging!

Quickies for Adgitize, EntreCard, Contest, Comments

Hi, we are back from the visit of my wife's relatives in Penang and Alor Star (Malaysia) since the weekend.

Just wanted to make some quick announcements about new additions in Adgitize and EntreCard, the Holiday-Contest and my reply to comments.

ADGITIZE

There is now an option to BUY GIFTCARDS for Advertisement in Adgitize. This option is useful for contests, for "donations" or just as a gift for a blogger friend. They are available as 12$ gift for an ONE WEEK ad, as 18$ gift for a TWO WEEK ad and as 24$ gift for 31 DAY ad.

Throughout the 1st December the advertiser keep on dropping, it's a fact now that we lost over 60 advertiser since the end of October 2009. But this fact should not make anyone worry to stop advertising NOW.
I will keep advertising but change the ad in Adgitize to our All about babies and kids-Blog from 3rd December on.
In case you like to visit me after my Adgitize ad expires, simply follow me with Google Friend connect, bookmark me or subscribe to my blog :)

Why NOT stopping to advertise?
In every month there have been only 20% of the advertisers who earned back the money of their bought ad, this has been like this since i joined in April (there they changed the earnings system to the actual point system). And it will be again the same in December because of the specific calculation for each 100 point tier. In the coming days there will be less members in the 300/400 point tier and we saw already this effect throughout the last few days (Thanksgiving holidays).
Members who can score more than 300 or 400 points will have more stable earnings than the members who slipped in the 200 point tier. They have to share the same amount of money with more members.

More reasons to start/renew your ad now!

The last two days i see a sharp increase in clicks to my blog (around 30%-50% from the average 77 clicks --> 30th - 96, 1st December - 123):

• one reason is that more advertisers stopped their ads and have now to click 100 ads instead of 50
• the other reason less advertiser means higher chances to appear more often on the ad widgets and get surely a click!
  

In case you are not yet a member, you can join Adgitize today, start earning $$ and get traffic.
If you advertise as my referral for the first time you get 50% of my finder fee (9$) which would be 4,50$ via Paypal (Paypal may deduct fees of less than 50 cents).


ENTRECARD

After the invasion of sponsored ads in the last week the run for it has stopped as many members don't see it as an effective advertisement (too expensive as the 25$ just lasts for less than 5 days, less clicks if you advertise in one and the same category with the whole 25$).
When the spike of 12 sponsored ads had been reached, the 15% reserved air time was even exceeded by EntreCard, as many members experienced less clicks from their EC-based ads!

As an addition in the CAMPAIGN section, they added a new sign for EntreCard sponsors. The sign is a STAR in the ad image. It is also written in the user profile of these members.
It means the member has paid 5$/monthly or 48$/year to opt-out of displaying sponsored ads. On these blogs you will get now 100% airtime for your EC paid ads!
I saw in the last days four blogs with the star (Ad Master, SpicyBugz World, 2 of Maitri's Blog).


The Holiday-Contest

Thanks to the members who participated in this contest. The winners will be announced on this weekend on each of the five blogs!


Reply to your given comments during our holidays

I will reply to your comments in the coming days, so come back or subscribe by e-mail to the comments to stay in touch with the ongoing discussions!

EntreCard: Revealing the Secret behind the 3 identical ads in your inbox!

BigDaddyRichard from Trader's Hub wrote yesterday and Eli from Businessphere wrote today about an ad that appears in many of our EntreCard InBoxes not only once but three times.
In my case it appeared three times at the end of each day (since 27th November). I think the person behind this ad drops especially on the TOP 300 blogs to get as many clicks as possible for its purposes.

Big Daddy Richard and Eli think it is a trick of EntreCard as the same ad picture appears three times in your inbox.

But the solution is very simple, no trick by EntreCard but the member tricked EntreCard and its members.
And in this case it means, the member uses THREE DIFFERENT accounts for three blogs. As i read now the comments on some of the mentioned blogs (description below), it seems he setup these blogs in the past for other persons (or under other names) but they have the same appearance (blog templates). Some are not updated since August 2008!

If you hover with your mouse over the three pictures you can see that they are linked with three different member accounts
http://entrecard.com/t/oc/54360
http://entrecard.com/t/oc/53839
http://entrecard.com/t/oc/33411

To access now the user profile you have to take the number of each link and add it to
http://entrecard.com/user_details/

If you click on these three links, you will be taken to the three "different" accounts

http://entrecard.com/user_details/54360 --> http://entrecard.com/details/142085 Software Blog
http://entrecard.com/user_details/53839 --> http://entrecard.com/details/142089 Jennys Personal Blog
http://entrecard.com/user_details/33411 --> http://entrecard.com/details/141888 Reahsblog

The Software blog seems to have a redirect to the -for all three same- targeted web site http://blogproduction.blogspot.com/

If you click on the given URL in the Blog details it takes you to the above mention Blogproduction website (without any EntreCard widget).

Have a look at the MOST RECENT POST and click one of the posts, this will take you to the REAL Blog behind the picture (and all except the SOFTWARE BLOG and ReahsBlog which you can only access by the below mentioned Blogroll listing!) have an EntreCard widget.
If you look on this Blogproduction website you can see that in the Blogroll "Jennys Personal Blog" and "Reahsblog" is mentioned (there is the connection that it's the same user with different accounts, perhaps he wants to cash-in the referral ECs as linked blogs wouldn't be allowed to receive additional free ECs and so on?)

EntreCard System is too easy to abuse!

You just have to go to your Dashboard:

1. Take a look at the section "Your Blog" in the middle of the page
2. Click on "Edit"
3. Change the website URL to any other website which you would like to promote :)
4. Save it, EntreCard doesn't look any more if this is a page with EntreCard widget (otherwise these THREE blogs would have been already deleted!).
5. In case we report them, EntreCard might get active and sent a message to their Dashboard to place the EC-widget on this blog within a specific time frame (24 to 72 hours)
   

EntreCard: Facts about Sponsored ads!

Like mentioned in the previous post about the first sponsored ad, we got this week a real invasion of sponsored ads (up to 12) from members of EntreCard. Yet there are still no advertisers from outside the blogosphere who wants to promote their products in the EntreCard network.

And there are good reasons for those Outside-Advertisers and EntreCard-Members NOT to spent a part of their budget in the EntreCard network

1. 25 $ is good for only five days FULL EXPOSURE in the whole EntreCard community, for a targeted campaign it's depending on the amount of blogs and activity in the category (10 - 30 days).
   For one month you would pay 150-200$ but if EntreCard members recognize there is NO CARD TO DROP or you DON'T drop back, the clicks will get less and less but the ad is paid by "automatic" ad views NOT for each click! The result will be disappointing over a longer period (more than one week!).
   
   
2. Goal of the ad campaign is to get more visitors (clicks)
   EntreCard promotes the price of 25$ with 40.000 (over all categories) or 20.000 ad views (one targeted category).
   The information Eli from Businessphere and Chinaren about their Click-through-rate is in my opinion more than disappointing for this 25$ investment.
   You can get in these four - five days around 450 - 600 clicks, depending on the amount of sponsored ads and the approval of your sponsored ad by the EntreCard members.
   
   In comparison to Adgitize -where you get "on Auto-Pilot" monthly around 2.000+ clicks for a 31 day ad for the price of just 24$ - the EntreCard-Deal is TOO EXPENSIVE especially when you see the 1-week-ad in Adgitize for 12$ which give you on average 77 clicks/daily = 540 click/week!
   
   
3. EntreCard "promises" EC-based ad price raises up to 2.000%.
   This promise is just fulfilled if you have an ad price of 2 or 4 ECs!
   Like we see/have seen on the actual sponsored ads which are in the TOP 15 most popular blogs (EZGreatLife, Businessphere, Seek No More, SpicyBugz World, The Junk Drawer), there was just a slightly higher ad price to achieve (from 1.024 to 1.536 or 2.048 EC) which is the normal price hike after a weekend (when the ad prices are always lower!).
   Strangely the ad price went up for most of them as the sponsored ad has expired :)
   
   You should think twice when you buy an ad on one of these sponsored ad members.
   As i said, the ad usually runs just for five days (the sponsor has the possibility to pause the ad, too, and run it hours, days or weeks later again as long as there are remaining funds!).
   
   If you buy there an ad, the ad price should be lower than 32 EC, otherwise the traffic surge has stopped already when your ad runs and in case the member didn't drop back, your investment might be worthless.
   
   

What's positive on sponsored ads in EntreCard?

1. If you are for a few days not available for dropping your cards, you could buy your sponsored ad to maintain your position and your ad price in EntreCard or ad/page view points in Adgitize (but like i said, it's expensive).
   
   
2. You could reach immediately many blogs without spending tons of ECs to advertise (success is around 1,5% of the ad views give you clicks for all categories and 3-4% for targeted category ad campaign), some of them could become regular readers!
   
   
3. You can pause the sponsored ad (after you deposit the 25$) and start a new campaign hours, days or weeks later (they write about a 30 day period when the deposited money should be used), suitable for low-traffic weekends!
   
   

UPDATE 29-11-2009:

• EntreCard marks members who have opted-out of sponsored ads with a star in their ad picture (if you look in the campaigns), i saw two or three blogs today (SpicyBugz World, Maitri's Blogs)!

What's your opinion about Sponsored ads in Entrecard? Are the sponsored ads acceptable or not?

As advertiser have you been satisfied with the results?
Is it worth the investment or would you say, i learned my lesson? :)

How to get more referrals + EntreCard's new inflation!

I wanted to write some more tips how to get referrals and about EntreCards new fight against their EC inflation.

I guess, it's just time to write a short summary of both topics now before i will go on holidays (this post was pre-written on 19th November).

Getting more referrals for your programs:

There are a lot of programs in the internet and offline which allow you to earn additional income by referring other members to these programs.

The best way to get referrals is

• write honest reviews about the programs
• show the advantages and disadvantages of the programs
• in case you get incentives, you could give a partial kickback to your referral
• show off your payment proofs

More about this points will follow after the holidays (on the weekend).

EntreCard's fight against the inflation!

I hope everybody reads the blog in EntreCard and buzz's on the Dashboard :) Then you know that you can "earn" a lot of ECs by referring new ACTIVE members to EntreCard.

Now it's 800 ECs that you can get instead of the previous 300 and on TOP the new referral will get 200 EC as starting capital, so that they can see immediately the effect of advertising.

Will there be a great impact by advertising with just 200 EC?

In case you use it for the 2 EC-Blogs, the new referrals might get disappointed, if they use it for 32 - 128 EC-Blogs it will look much brighter but then the ECs are already used and they have to be really active, so that YOU get your 800 EC :)

Now, with 200 new ECs in the system (virtual money from hot air!), EntreCard is driving itself more and more into the inflation and ad price bubble. By giving away 800 EC to the old members it seems that they are really in need of new MEMBERS, MEMBERS and again MEMBERS. I mean not really members... as we are their AD INVENTORY.

The real purpose of this new EC inflation!

It's not about the benefits of the new members (as they have to work to earn new ECs each day). It's really just about getting more ad space for their own survival. The same is valid for their 50% discount on buying ECs. They make this offer just because they need money, yes!

But on the other side, they wanted to get rid of ECs in the system by giving less ECs to the users (remember the only 1 EC-policy for the dropper which started on 1st September). Sure, if you give less it's more likely that someone will BUY ECs.
I wonder if really someone did buy (i read from two or three persons that they did as they re-joined EntreCard in the past) for a price which is not really valuable for the return you get.

Quick calculation:

Buy 4.000 EC for 12 $

my average ad price 1.024 EC (max click one advertiser got once: 90, if it went bad: 20 clicks)

3$ for one day exposure x 30 days = 90 $, i guess for a one month ad on this blog i charge 20$

A NO-GO for serious advertisers!

There are cheaper methods to buy ad space on my blog.

Look on my sidebar, there is LinkShowOff for 2$ (Eli's Businessphere link is there since July, if someone else buy now, he would drop out of the list as he is the fifth one... so the 2 $-investment would be good for 5 - 6 months).

Or use CMF-Ads for at the moment 0.33 $ for 30 days (but you share it with around 20 other advertisers), in December the price will go back to 0.60 $ (which means more exposure for the advertisers, as there will be less who want to pay this price).

Tomorrow a new article will follow about the way the new sponsored ads in EntreCard are working and if they are worth their money!

New facts about EntreCard :)

Do you know everything about EntreCard?
I don't! :)

Or do you just drop your cards with the EntreCard Toolbar and don't look anymore on the EntreCard homepage or in your Dashboard for new "improvements"?
Then you miss something :)

I usually investigate some of my programs when i'm kind of bored or if i have too much time left :)

That's when i found out that you can stalk your favorite bloggers in EntreCard. It's very easy to do this and the information can be important for your own decision, especially if you want to advertise on one of their blogs :)

If you look in your EntreCard Dashboard there are a lot of tabs, one is called News feed. I thought it's about EntreCard's own news or blog posts but it's way better. It's about your favorite bloggers.

I can see

• who they added as new favorite blogger (and probably drop on them from now on)
• on which blog they bought an advertisement for the coming days

How can you use these information?

With the favorite news, you know if they drop on the same blogs like you, which in case you advertise on this blog can lead to clicks from your own favorite bloggers (this would be good in case you didn't drop on them because of holidays or if you exceed the 300 drops).

With the advertisement news, you know when the ad might run (+/- 1 or 2 days). So you could time your own ad on their blog in case they bought one of the expensive ads on the TOP 30 blogs or if they bought a lot of inexpensive ads. In this case you can be sure there will be a traffic surge on their blogs and your own ad could get much more clicks (usually most of the ad clickers drop their cards from ad to ad).


What's the friends feed all about?

It's the next tab in your EntreCard Dashboard. There you can find the previous posts of your favorite bloggers, it's like Google Friend Connect. Only difference is it's not necessary completely chronical as EntreCard seems to fetch the posts every second day. So you could see one or more posts of one blogger at once and afterward is another blogger with an earlier post. But i guess this doesn't matter :)

It's good if you have been on holidays and want to see a quick update of your favorite blogger's articles!

EntreCard: The first real sponsored ad!

Now it's there or is it there already longer - the first real sponsored ad in EntreCard. I didn't click on it as this would give the owner of the ad already free traffic :)
but like i said in a previous post or comment to my post:
It's very clever from EntreCard to hide the sponsored ads in the menu of the Dashboard and not like in the past show them publicly beside the regular EntreCard ads.

UPDATE (ONE DAY AFTER THE LAUNCH OF THIS AD and three more joined):
EntreCard promotes now additional in the blog sponsored ads as there are now a few advertisers who try this service. As of now i saw that this ad is an EntreCard-Blog in the category "Graphic Design". The ad price is now 128 EC (don't know the price from yesterday but i guess it was significantly lower). Seems like EntreCard uses this ad price as example for their prediction that your ad price could jump up to 2.000%.
I'm not sure if it would be worth for you to pay 128 EC when you got in the last five days just 142 visitors (less than 30 per day).
On my blog there would be around 10 - 15 ad views for this paid ad and another 10 - 15 ad views for the other 2 or 3 ads.
This means for the TOP 30 popular blogs, there might by up to 450 ad views/daily. Looking at the TOP 300 blogs with 120 - 450 visitors daily we would get around 2.000 ad views/daily for this sponsored ad.
At the moment i guess it's around 75 - 100 visitors that you can get per day as i looked just now after i discovered the ad one day ago. Will look tomorrow again, where the popularity is now and see if it raises now faster above the 200 mark.

There are now EIGHT SPONSORED ADS IN THE SYSTEM, you might have a look and judge yourself who can be disabled :)

How many EntreCard members look daily in the sponsored ads if there are new ads to uncheck?

EntreCard + Adgitize: Server Time Changes!

The Server Times have changed for EntreCard and Adgitize members.
If you live outside of the USA, you will recognize that the Drop-, Point- and Earning updates are performed ONE HOUR LATER since today.

That means for the 1st November there have been 25 hours counting instead of 24 hours because the time changed back to the normal hours (from the energy saving time).

This will remain until next year in the end of March/beginning of April 2010 when the USA changes again to the energy saving time :)

Facts about Paid-to-promote.net

After the first payment from Paid-to-promote.net i knew it's not a scam but i didn't know what would happen the following days with my visitors.

The Facts about Paid-to-promote.net:

• Yes, they pay regularly on 15th and on 30th each month.
  Since the first payment on 15th September i received two more payments (30th September and 15th October). The total amount is 1.78 $ after 35 days.
  
  
• Yes, it is easy money as long as you receive enough visitors from these countries:
  United States, Canada, Australia, United Kingdom, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain.
  They have to stay longer than 10 seconds on your website (seldom to reach if you use EntreCard and Adgitize as most of these persons drop and run).
  On average i had 10 to 15 visitors from my 900 visitors from whom i got credits (0.004 $) from paid-to-promote.net
  
  

The negative side effects of paid-to-promote.net

• If you are a Preferred Publisher in Adgitize, you will get suspended from this Preferred Publisher program as your website will redirect visitors or pop-ups occur. This will result in a loss of around 20 free visitors, more worse if you are a paid Preferred Publisher in Adgitize. After you delete your code, you can write them an e-mail to reinstate you again for this program!
  
  
• It would be against the Terms of Service of EntreCard, too, when pop-ups and redirects happen on your blog.
  
  
• You can't control which kind of advertisement your visitors will see. Some wrote me that they even got sent to PORN web sites (this was a redirect from our Baby-Blog).
  
  
• You won't get approved by CMF-Ads if you have the Money-making code from paid-to-promote.net on your website as it redirects the admin :(
  
  
• That's the money-making code:
  <"iframe width=486 height=60 frameborder=0 src='http://www.777seo.com/seo.php?username=cornyman' marginwidth=0 marginheight=0 vspace=0 hspace=0 allowtransparency=true scrolling=no><"/iframe">
  if you use this code, you will loose some of your visitors/future readers, it's up to you if you want to play this game for a few cents as the payout is just 10 cents.
  

This is the referral code which you can use to earn passive income with paid-to-promote.net instead of putting the above mentioned code on your website!

Try paid-to-promote.net, but i warned you :)

Tip: It's best to use paid-to-promote.net in combination with a traffic exchange.
Most of the time, the visitors have to stay longer than 20 seconds on your website, so you could get a nice amount in your Paypal-Account.
But remember to put the code only on your website after you got the approval and you wouldn't mind if they suspend your account after a while because of redirects and pop-ups!

EntreCard: Now the price is out - Time to start advertising

Ok, i guess the advertising price for the sponsored ads in EntreCards has been published already some days ago on the front page of EntreCard. But i seldom use this page... as i just click on the EntreCard Toolbar... on one of my Dashboards from my blogs :)

Now to the news:

The prices remain the same like from the paid ads in April 2009. You still have to pay

• 0.60 $ for 1.000 page impressions (CPM) if you advertise over all categories
• 1.20 $ for 1.000 page impressions (CPM) if you make a targeted ad campaign in one of the 50 categories (for example only blogs in "Make money online")

The only difference this time:

• Instead of 10$ minimum deposit, they want now immediately 25$

Looks like it gets "more expensive" and not so blogger-friendly prices as we can't simply pay 25$ just to see how effective these new sponsor ads would be? Or is there a connection with Adgitize's price hike in November?

Would this be an attractive offer for you

• to advertise in EntreCard for that price over all categories or in targeted categories
  
• instead of clicking for hours to gain ECs for perhaps two or three more expensive ads (128 ECs and above)
  
• for getting over 40.000 page impressions advertisement for 25$ over all blog categories or more than 20.000 page impressions in targeted categories?
  

What do you think about these questions?

EntreCard: Tax cut on Ads - More "money" in your account from now on!

Great news from EntreCard ?! In their new blog post they announced now that we get 50% of the ad price instead of 25%!

Hi everyone,

We have received some concerns regarding the high 75% tax deducted from the price to advertise on your blog. So for the next 3 months we will be lowering the tax rate to 50%. This means that you will receive 50% of the price it costs to advertise on your blog! The other 50% will be deleted from our system. This is effective as of today. After 3 months, if there are no major problems with the EC inflation, we will keep the tax rate at 50%.

Please continue to email us at support@entrecard.com if you have any problems or concerns. We would love to hear from you. All emails will be answered within 24 hours.

Cindy
Entrecard.com

What else could make EntreCard a better place as we now get again more ECs to spend on advertising or contest or...?

EntreCard: Here are the first sponsored ads!

This is the sponsored ad for the EntreCard-Marketplace, i guess nobody has to complain about this or opt out to pay 50$?

And the other sponsored ad is the same like for getting referrals, nothing new if you read my previous post about the reply of the new owner from EntreCard, Andrew Te (at the end of the article).

If you like, you are allowed to disable ONE of these ads. Just look in your Dashboard in the middle on the right side it's written in bold letter "Sponsored ads". There you can uncheck one of the green circles!

MORE EXPENSIVE to OPT OUT:
EntreCard will charge more money if you pay the Opt out-fee monthly :) Instead of 4,17 $ they charge you 5$ per month which results in 60$ per year. The yearly charge still remains at 50$. But i doubt anyone wants to pay 50$ in advance at it is not sure, if the ad service will be stable and profitable until next year.

EntreCard: Do you want FREE advertising for your blog?

After ranting the previous days about the changes in EntreCard, i offer you now a way which gives you free advertisement for your own blog (or for your TOP Droppers) with the help of EntreCard.

Many members of EntreCard publish each month for their loyal TOP Droppers a blog post or put a TOP Dropper/Recent Dropper widget in their sidebar (like in my case). This is already one way to get FREE advertisement and more exposure for your own blog!

Therefore it's necessary to stick with dropping on these member's blogs without missing more than 1 or 2 days during a month. The reward will be a backlink (some widgets are NOFOLLOW!) but nevertheless a link is a link and everyone can click and visit you :)

The Website who offers you some additional rewards when you are a regular dropper on several blogs (usually your favorites) is Dropaholics.com

Reward # 1: Many of them drop back and reciprocate your drops
Reward # 2: Most of them are DAILY active members, especially when you look into the TOP 100
Reward # 3: You help them get a better score, they help you to be a TOP Dropaholic!
Reward # 4: You will find many new interesting blogs!
Reward # 5: It's completely FREE to join, just copy two links (your profile link and TOP Dropper feed) and you're in the GAME!

How to give your TOP Droppers free advertisement?

After you copied the two links in the boxes, you get the offer to put the Dropaholics widget on your blog. It can look like mine in the sidebar (i will change it to "only badges" as soon as my TOP DROPPERS have registered :) ) or you can choose to use

• different fonts,
• colors,
• number of displayed TOP Droppers
• and many more options
  

You can also stalk other member by clicking on Widget Code and typing in (a part of) their blog name in the given box :)

Please leave me a comment if you are yet a Dropaholic, so that i can visit the blog and if i like it, i will definitely visit you regularly!

EntreCard: I was deadly wrong with the sponsored ads!

Hiding in one of the last comments on the EntreCard blog, Cindy announced the 50$ are not for each account (including all your linked blogs). NO! EntreCard wants now 50$ for each blog.
Here is a quote of her comment:

Entrecard will remain free for all users because it will be funded by the sponsors, not the users. The $50 per blog fee is just another option for users that wants to opt out of the sponsor ads program completely. It’s an option, not mandatory.

Good luck, EntreCard without any benefits for your members no one with more than ONE BLOG will pay you so much just for an ad-free EC-widget!

This is the only sunshine from her comment:

We know users fear that that ads served might conflict with their blog. Because of this, we will give users an option to opt out of the ads that you do not find appropriate on your blog. This is also free.

By the way, Cindy, did you think that the members are happy when you announce that they have to pay 50$ for each of their registered blogs? NO WAY, you thought they will stay calm and accept when you make your announcement?

6 hours after she published her comment on the EntreCard blog, you are no more allowed to post comments on the EntreCard Blog.

Her statement:

Because of our recent change of service, we have a small group of users that are extremely angry and using the blog comments to get other members to rebel against Entrecard. Due to this reason alone, we have decided to disable comments and will be restored in the near future.
However, if anyone still have questions about our services, please email support@entrecard.com. All emails will be answered within 24 hours. Thank you so much!

You might wonder why i don't link anymore to the EntreCard blog directly. Therefore i want you to read from my Weekly Wednesday Worth readings for this week (sorry, no time for it yesterday):

Jamie from comatised wrote Yet another EntreCard post.
There she points the light to areas which have been not yet highlighted in other blogs (PageRank and about Graham Longdon) + her second post about it Digging Up Bones is also worth reading!

Another post about how EntreCard users are utilizing the EntreCard service on our blogs, especially focusing the time we have to spent for dropping cards, on the duration of the visits and the bounce rate was made by Antique and Vintage Button Jewelry, it's called EC Free Ads...Is it worth it?

The third post is from Eli's Business Sphere. He named his post Quo vadis, EntreCard? Can it still survive this time around?
He looks at it from the view as lawyer and points out interesting facts about your Online property - your blog/website. The comments are also worth a look!