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I feel bad about not being around lately, not posting lately, and not dropping lately.  Unfortunately I have been VERY busy lately working on migrating 700+ users(local and remote) to an exchange server and outlook and it is a very large task to complete that has taken a lot of my free time.

Because of my neglect to the blog on the blogging community I have been trying to interact with lately, I will start my first of many Weekly Wednesday Contest!  Each week the contest will have different ways of entry and different prizes.  For this week I decided to make it easy and there will only be one way of entry, subscribing to my blog via email.  Next Wednesday I will randomize the list and pick the winner.

You guys are probably all wondering what it could be???  Well, lets start this week off with a $20 SpoofCard (Actually two $10 cards) and 1000 Entrecard points.

The SpoofCard is a really cool service.  It allows you to call someone and show the caller ID of whatever you choose.  It also allows you to change your voice, and record the conversation.  This can be a very fun novelty toy, and can actually be quite useful sometimes also.  Its a great thing to play with for any tech type guy.  To sweeten the deal, I am going to give 1000 Entrecard credits also!

Please use the form below to subscribe via email and enter yourself in the contest.  Remember, you must stay subscribed until atleast next Wednesday when I pick the winner at random!

Enter your email address:

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I wanted to start a weekly post to give credit to well written/funny/interesting blog posts I see during the course of the week. Some of you might be thinking, why the hell would he do that? Well it has some very good purposes for getting additional traffic to my site, plus it gives credit to some great posts. At the end of this post I will explain why this will drive more traffic to my site, and some of you might want to give it a try also!

Here is a list of the sites and posts I found interesting this week:

• StakLoaded.net - First up on the list is a very cool site I found, StakLoaded.net. This whole blog is cool, the writing style and attitude is like my weekend life, and there are some very practice and informative posts. All this AND the guy is giving a link to a FREE Download for a wordpress plugin version of the Peel Away Ads that cost $37! All of this, and he’s also offering to help people with the entire process and design. Check out StakLoaded.net!
• Rhyan.net - This guy has some of the funniest images in his posts. Even if the image has nothing to do with the post he still sucks readers like me in with the images. The post I linked to has a great picture, and the post itself is great too!
• TripTheLady.com - I love Aquariums, and I also love to go fishing (I guess that doesn’t make a lot of sense, but hey, I do) and I came across this post on tying fishing knots on TripTheLady. Although this is a post linking to a site, the actual site is not a blog, so I’ll give the credit to TripTheLady for the find and me seeing it there ;)
• RockFuse.com - Nicely designed site and a great post on a new service call RevResponse. I’ll be signing up for it! It allows you to make $1.50 for each person who signs up for something free on your site!
• DiariesofaBlogger.com - Great review of a free blog review service called Web-Reviewers.com. Anthony even shows the review he received for his own blog!

There are tons more out there, but these just happen to be the posts that stuck in my mind this week for whatever reason.

Now to answer your questions on how this can drive traffic to my site, well there are several reasons, one it encourages people to interact with my blog, all of these sites happen to be people who have visited my blog, but the biggest part of increasing traffic is that the majority of blogs have TrackBacks, which will cause the blogs to link to my blog in turn. So instead of stealing peoples ideas, if we give credit where credit is due for a great post, we get rewarded in turn with backlinks and traffic!

I look forward to finding more great posts to bring you next Friday!

Well, I am sure EVERYONE knows about Entrecards new features, and this is exactly why I will not be mentioning said features.

It seems like every single blog I visit has a post regarding it, and its all because Entrecard is running a contest that will give each and every person who mentions the new features 2,000 EC’s. For now it looks like the bribe marketing is going great as they are getting a ton of backlinks and a ton of exposure, they’re even getting backlinks and exposure from me I guess.

This contest does however raise a question in my mind, with all these instant EC’s being given away, is this going to have bad effects on the value of an EC? Right now advertising on my Entrecard is 256 EC’s, JohnCow.com is currently going for 512 EC’s and there are some blogs that going for over 4096 EC’s. After all these people instantly get 2000 EC’s are the prices of ads going to go through the roof? Entrecard also has a shop where people can sell items and services for EC’s, is this fair for them? Entrecard has created a mini economy based on there EC’s and now they are flooding the market with EC’s to promote there site, what affect will this have on the worth of EC’s?

It is great marketing, but when your giveaway is your own product and you give it away to anyone, it devalues your product a little. Hopefully the influx of new members from this campaign will generate a lot more traffic and quality for the Entrecard community.

I decided to throw this out and see if you guys could use this.  This is borderline greyhat but I think it’s an excellent service to the community.  I recently teased of this in a previous post but figured I should throw it out there for you guys.

I recently started a Free Web Hosting site (Host.gd) just to expirement and find out what kind of traffic it would get, and what types of clients it would attract.  This helps me on a few levels as I currently have a legitiment hosting business (Think411.com) and I wanted to see the differences in traffic.  I have yet to monetize the free hosting site but I found an alternative way to make money on it, and solve a huge problem many free hosts have.

Basically, every free host out there must deal with the riff raff of scammers, leechers and pirates.  This can hurt many hosts, suck there bandwidth, and cause some legal issues.  Although I have done almost no promotion, I still have around 60 free clients in less then one month on my free hosting server.  I have gotten paypal scammers, ebay scammers, and pirates all trying to host on my site.  I don’t currently have ads running on the free hosting and this was starting to become a huge annoyance.

I started asking myself, how can I profit from this mess without putting ads on everyones sites?

Well here is the answer, let the spammers, scammers and pirates do your marketing for you.

Now this is much easier then you think, basically you just setup your default suspended page as a public service announcement letting people know that they have almost been scammed and/or directed to an illegal website.  On this page you fill it with relevant keywords, and then stick Adsense on it.  Adsense serves up relevant content based ads and suggests that people click there ads in order to read more information on how to prevent being scammed in the future.  This results in some very high CTR and also a good PPC for the relevant keywords.

Every time I find a scammer on my site, I shutdown there site and between the time they sign up and I find and shut them down they have done all the marketing I need.  I end up getting about 100 hits a day for about 4 days and then it dies back down until the next scammer gets canceled.

The basic motto of this article is that you have to think outside the box when monetizing your site.  If you notice a problem start thinking of ways you can profit from it.  You would be suprised with what creativity you can come up with!

Has anyone else thought outside the box and found a new way to monetize there site from a previous problem?

Bidvertiser is the next Ad Network we will review. At first glance, Bidvertiser looks very similar to Google Adsense. They also pay 30 days after you cash out, but this is where the similarities stop. Bidvertiser has a minimum payout of $10 via PayPal, a lot less then the $100 minimum of Adsense, but they do not tell what percentage of your earnings they keep.

Bidvertiser ads come in a variety of ads, and you have the ability to change the colors on these ads to fit in with your site design. The layout of there control panel is a little awkward, and there is not a lot of help on there site to assist you with building these ads, but once you start looking around it becomes fairly easy. It also seems relatively easy to be accepted into there publisher network.

One great feature of Bidvertiser is that they accept sites with little to no content, and also sites that are entirely flash based. They also base the price per click you get on the popularity of your website, so if you have a very popular site you can earn much more per click. They do this by allowing advertisers to bid on a PPC basis for your adspace. You can also filter the ads they are displayed on your site.

Pros:

• Sites with little to no content accepted.
• Flashed based sites accepted.
• Popular sites receive higher PPC.
• Can integrate with your sites design.
• $10 minimum payout.

Cons:

• Control Panel is awkward.
• 30 day payout time.

Here are some sample ads(top also):

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The next advertising network we are showcasing is ProjectWonderful. ProjectWonderful truly is wonderful. They have a very simple and easy setup process and they do not rely on clicks or impressions, although both of these are monitored and made available to potential advertisers.

The advertisers bid on having your ad spot for 24 hour periods and pay whatever the going rate is, and if someone out bids an advertiser, the advertiser still pays for the minutes their ad runs. You also have the option of starting the bidding at whatever price you would like per day, including a starting price of $0.00. Setting the starting price of free gives you the opportunity to have the "Place your ad here" turn into a real ad to become more appealing on your site. You can also change the default "Place your ad here" logo to your own ad or image.

There are various sizes of ads from 117x30 to 728x90 and 160x600. Ads can be shown in buttons, squares, vertically or horizontally. Ads can also be grouped in multiples of rows and columns.

While it might not make you a millionaire, I think the setup at Project Wonderful is a great source of revenue for both big and small sites. If there are any spots in my ads without bids, feel free to bid $0.00 and have your ad up for free!

Pros:

• Easy to use and setup.
• You get paid regardless of impressions or clicks.
• Ads can get bid up quite a bit.
• You have the option of approving or denying ads.
• Minimum payout is $10.

Cons:

• Project Wonderful takes 25%.

Here is a sample ad in a 2x2 block of 125x125 ads, in a small space this creates 4 different ads all bringing in daily revenue:

Project Wonderful - Your ad here, right now, for as low as $0.00

Google has shown a Strong love for blogs since the very beginning, and on some Blogs Adsense works very well.

Google Adsense offers a range of ads including Adsense for Content which generates relevant ads based on your site content, Adsense for Search which creates a search option on your site showing both results from your site and paid results, Referrals for a range of products including Google Adsense, Video Units from YouTube, and even Adsense for Mobile Content.

Adsense also offers both CPM(Cost Per Mille) and CPC(Cost Per Click) ads, meaning you can choose to get paid by how many clicks you get, or how many thousands of impressions you give. Adsense allows you to create custom "channels" for reporting purposes, to keep track of which ads are generating more revenue, and generate reports on Impressions, CTR(Click Through Rate) and estimated CPM. You can also setup a competitive ad filter to filter out any ads that may be in direct competition with your services. Through site Authentication you can also setup Adsense ads to display relevant ads in member only areas.

The ads created can be any a variety of sizes from 120x90 to 728x90 and 120x600 available in horizontal, vertical and square. All of these ads are also able to be integrated almost perfectly into your site by modifying the colors of all elements in the ad.

Adsense seems to be the standard in the ad industry. Everyone uses it and even if your not using Adsense on your site, a lot of sites are now offering revenue sharing so you can plug your adsense code in and share in the ad revenue.

Pros:

• Adsense is the standard.
• Easily approved.
• Reliable well established company.
• Integrates very well into your existing design.
• Good revenue on a CPC basis with some high paying keywords.
• Ads relevant to your content.
• Will allow you to have other ads on your site.

Cons:

• Must have a minimum $100 payment.
• Paid at the end of the next month.
• Strict policies which can seemingly ban you for no reason.

Here are some working ads from Google Adsense(including the Adsense referral at the top of this post):

Adsense for Content:

Adsense Search:

Tomorrow I will be reviewing another revenue source, ProjectWonderful

Recently I was denied acceptance to text-link-ads.com because my blog "does not have strong enough traffic". I believe they are probably going off of Alexa for this information as I am now getting a strong 100-200 daily unique hit count. I never really liked text-link-ads.com anyways, there site is poorly designed, there tools have been down for a year or more, and there staff is slow and inadequate.

I was not going to put up ads as of yet, I just wanted to play around with there plugins and research it a little. This poor experience with text-link-ads made me decide to showcase different ways of monetizing our blogs. Each day, starting tomorrow, I will showcase a different way of monetizing a blog, explain in details the ad types, and discuss the pro's and con's of each. I will also include a sample ad for each within the posts.

And now for some comment bait:

How do you prefer to monetize your site, and why?

There is a lot of buzz around Entrecard and its benefits and its downfalls. A lot of people sign up to become part of a community, for interaction with other like minded bloggers, and to find new friends. Even more people sign up just to drive traffic to their blogs, and a lot of people question the quality of traffic they receive. I have read many bloggers complaining about the traffic, the waste of valuable advertising space, and the bounce rate they receive from Entrecard.

I just signed up for Entrecard three days ago, and I have been interacting with the community, monitoring how much I put into the service and how much it gives back, and examining the traffic I do receive from them. Overall it has been a fun and informative experience, and I have found a few new blogs that I really do enjoy.

The last two days I have received 15 hits each day from Entrecard, and the bounce rate has been 88.46%. I am sure many of these people are just coming to drop there card and receive more EC credits, but some of them are staying and looking around. As far as people complaining about the bounce rate, my opinion is that any traffic is good traffic, and I look at the bright side, 11.54% of the people are staying and looking around! My blog is also coming back from a period of hibernation, so right now the majority of my traffic is bounced, although it doesn't have quite the bounce rate as Entrecard referrals have. As a comparison though, my bounce rate from Stumbleupon is near 90%.

In regards to the wasted ad space, for me I wanted to wait awhile before I monetized my blog, and the number of readers I have now are not sufficient to make monetization an issue. Instead of looking at it as ad space, I think people should look at it as a link to a community portal, a community the should actively belong to and try and participate in to make it better. Besides, if its that big of an issue, put the Entrecard at the bottom of your blog pages, we can always make the pager longer! ;)

Over all I am happy with the experience, and although I don't think I will get a lot of traffic or readers from being a part of the program, I still like being part of the community, and the few readers I do get from Entrecard are worth having the badge on the side and being a part of something bigger!

Smashing Magazine puts together yet another great list of well-designed blogs. Very inspirational and some really unique designs made the cut.

read more | digg story

Edit: This post was made from using Digg's 'Blog it' feature. Normally I will not add content like this, but the designs showcased in this blog are excellent and I felt that people would benefit from seeing the creativity and idea's that went behind designing some of these blogs. Click 'read more' and check it out!