Blogs I Visit Regularly

As an entrecardohlic, I visit a lot of blogs in a day. Here are a few that I visit whether I’m dropping or not.

And, of course, the required caveat:

If your blog isn’t listed here, it doesn’t mean I don’t read your stuff. I read a lot of blogs. These are the five that I visit the most.

Bloggernoob.com - I respect this guy because there’s no BS on his site, and he won’t suck up to the big bloggers. Bloggernoob is all about making money and the author is incredibly transparent with how he does it.

Turnip of Power - A blog that is truly inventive and creative. I never quite know what I’ll find here, and it keeps me going back for more.

Atniz - This lady seems to understand the technical workings of the internet far better than I do. There’s especially good info regarding follow, no follow and PR on her blog. I usually leave feeling that I’ve learned something useful that I can apply in my own blogging journey.

OnMoneyMaking - This blog was recently bought by a good friend of mine, and is currently being relaunched. The content on here is ridiculously good.

RockFuse - I found this blog only recently, and am super jealous of the design. The content is high-quality and updated regularly. Lots of good info to be found at RockFuse.

If you aren’t currently a reader of these blogs, I recommend giving them a try-out!

Great Contest At CrunchNow

Crunchnow is holding a great contest, where he’ll give away $1000.00 in cash.

To gain entry, subscribe to his blog, and then write about it on your own blog. You can subscribe below and for each email address you enter, you’ll receive one chance at winning. Another way to gain a entry is to write about it on your website, myspace, facebook, ect. Good luck!

Enter your email address:

Entrecarders with pop-ups

I don’t know if it’s just me or not, but I’ve noticed quite a few Entrecarders using pop-ups on their sites lately. At first I’d just drop anyway, but as there are more and more of them, it’s getting to be quite a hindrance, and also, an annoyance. So, from this point forward I won’t be dropping on any blogs that contain pop-ups, or the “skip this page” type ad, even if you drop on my blog.

Furthermore, if your blog plays music, please be aware of how bothersome that can be, and cease immediately. Oh, and not to complain incessantly, but video that plays automatically is also not cool.

Now I’m off to write something a little more positive…

Some Environmentally-geared Thoughts

One thing I am very passionate about is the environment. The interest and desire to take care of our natural resources grows a little bit each day for me, which is why I am looking more and more into how I can help, including with solar energy.

Solar energy is clean, efficient, and something I hope we’ll all be seeing more of in the future. I really need to do my homework, because I don’t live in the sunniest place on earth, but if I did, I’d probably already have solar panels installed on my roof. Actually, I saw that some schools in Australia are already using them, and today I found out that country is offering solar power rebates from the Australian government. Australian’s should be proud to live in such an environmentally forward country, and I hope Canada, where I live, can follow their lead. We should all take a break from making money online, and think about what we can do for the environment today.

Pepperjam - one of the top 100 fastest growing US companies

Reading through the PJ blog, I wasn’t surprised to learn that Pepperjam is on the Inc. 500 list of the top 100 fastest growing privately-held US companies.

I have only been using their affiliate program for a month and a half, but I’ve had a top notch experience, and look forward to working with PepperJam further.

One thing I particularly appreciate about this company, is that they offer online chat customer support. The one time I used it, the entire process took only a minute, and my question was answered. No calling and calling to only get voicemail, or long email-turn around times.

Also, if you’re thinking of signing up, it’s a quick process and, of course, free. In fact, PepperJam will give you a ten dollar sign up bonus, and offers ten dollars for every blog post you write about them. So you can guarantee a pay-out in no time.

Anyhow, I will continue to keep this blog updated with my Pepperjam experiences, as well as any other marketing programs I choose to use.

Run out of things to say? This post’s for you

Sometimes I sit down with the intent to write a blog post, and draw a big fat blank. It happens to all of us, so here are some simple ways to rejuvenate the creative senses:

1. Read other blogs - Reading other blogs is not only inspirational but a great way to find out what’s going on in the blogosphere, and can be a definite helper in spawning an idea.
2. Talk to other bloggers - If you’ve got friends in the blogosphere, chat them up on IM - maybe they’ll have a topic suggestion or two. At the very least, they should be able to relate and commiserate.
3. Check out News.com - See what’s new and hot. You’re bound to have an opinion on something.
4. Drop Entrecards - Similar to read other blogs, but if interesting content isn’t immediately found, you can do the old drop and run (gasp).
5. Go for a walk - If all of the above fails, maybe it’s just not meant to be at the moment. At this point, I recommend a brisk walk, after which you can refocus.

But I don’t want to use Yahoo Buzz

Do we really need another social bookmarking site? Are Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Propeller, and the fifty others not enough? Maybe if Yahoo Buzz was offering something unique and innovative, I’d be tempted to get on-board. But from what I can tell, it’s little more than a Digg rip-off with a few minor tweaks. Granted, I haven’t done much exploring of their now-open-for-all social bookmarking site, and I really don’t plan to. I guess Yahoo Buzz just didn’t create enough buzz to get this blogger interested.

To those of you using Widgetbucks,

Their widgets make your blog slow to load, and I don’t like that. I bet a lot of people actually leave your site more quickly because of Widgetbucks’ unwelcome effects.

Also, there are many less annoying ways to monetize your blog. Google can help you find them.

Cheers,
WAB

Selling Entrecards - What are they worth?

I decided instead of investing in more Entrecard-widget advertising, to save up my credits and let their value be determined on eBay. This isn’t a plug trying to pimp my auction, so I won’t post the link here.

For you guys who are looking to make money online, I would estimate that you can get approx. 60 dollars for 20,000 Entrecard credits, meaning that if you are dropping the max number of cards anyway, you could make any easy 60 bucks monthly just by selling your credits instead of using them in the originally intended fashion.

Just a small suggestion for those of you who have had poor results with using your EC’s to advertise on the widgets.

Experimenting with Blog Directories

One thing that I haven’t done much of, and I’m going to be working at slowly over the next few days, is submitting to blog directories. It’s a time consuming and boring practice, that’s really not enjoyable. And, really, I have few indicators of whether or not the results will be worth the effort. But I have to know first-hand if it’s helpful, so I’m giving it a go.

To be honest, I don’t expect to get much traffic from these directories, and am mostly in it for the potentially good-quality backlinks. What I wonder is, can a directory give much juice, with having so many blog links listed? I need to learn more, which is all part of making money online.