My Two Cents on Declining Requests of EntreCard Adverts

Have you been denied of your attempt of advert purchase from our fellow EntreCarders?

What was the feeling when your purchase attempt was declined?

Why the need to buy slots for adverts?

There is a need for us to understand the importance of purchasing adverts. EntreCard is a site that drives free traffic to our blogs and one of its features is to promote our blogs via the 125 X 125 widgets by buying ad slots from our fellow EntreCarders. Since it's purpose is blog promotion, we expect a number of clicks from the purchase . More clicks indicate a more successful advertising campaign, and more visitors to our site, that is, when the purchase is accepted.

In many occasions, I got myself declined. I know whose blogs are those because their widgets will be forever imprinted in my memory and I had them all bookmarked. Honestly, the first thing that came to mind with the decline was:

"What's wrong with my blog?" 

Everyone makes some sort of decision before a purchase. When it is rejected, I feel obstructed somehow. I am well aware that my blogs aren't the best blogs one could ever visit but each of us have our own standards of the BEST and QUALITY blogs.

THINGS TO CONSIDER WHEN PURCHASING ADVERTS

I actually consider a number of things when making my own selection for the purchase:

• The price- how many EC credits I am willing to spend
  
• EntreCard Popularity
• Widget Location
• Blog Content/ Niche

PURCHASING ADVERTS IS ASKING A FAVOR

Purchasing an advert and for it to be accepted by a fellow EntreCard member is like asking a favor and for the favor being accepted. It is a factor, it is some sort of reciprocity. Declining a purchase is like not willing to do a favor; why would someone not willing to do a favor? I really can't think of any reason and it sure beats my imagination!

These blogs have their own reasons for declining our purchase attempts and they usually come in the following polite manner:

• Sorry but I don't accept adverts as of this time...
  
• Taking a holiday, not taking adverts as of this time... (but seen quite a handful of ads up and running till forever, ehem!)
• Some problems, apply again if needed (Sorry but I am not applying for a job!)
• Sorry but can't accept your ad, your blog does not belong to my category (Hmmm, resonable enough...)
• Planning to make some changes on my blog, won't be accepting ads for quite some time.. (Ok! Fine! )

ARE THE GIVEN REASONS VALID ENOUGH?

I am trying to figure out if the reasons given were valid and reasonable enough for one to decline an attempt of ad purchase. But with the way EC works, there is very little excuse rejecting an ad. Except when one blog's avatar is pornograpchic or it is an identified SPLOG, that is.

I will relate to you my experience with one EntreCarder. I attempted to purchase a slot in her blog worth 512. I got denied. She reasoned out she will be out for a holiday. That is fine by me. But I actually saw that ads have been running endlessly on her EC widget.

It's OK. No Problem.

A few months after, I forgot I was denied once and unknowingly placed my purchase again in that particular blog. I got declined for the second time. She sent me an explanation telling me there's nothing wrong with my blog. The reason this time she's declining my attempt of purchase is that my blog doesn't relate to hers. But I checked the ad that's up and running at the time, it doesn't belong to her own category either! Well, I don't really know what's wrong with my blog but I can't help but think it's something personal or something more than that! She never drops her card for this blog but I can see her dropping in my other blogs specifically in my new fashion blog The Certified Fashionable Chic. She must be unaware the owner of this blog and that fashion blog is one and the same!

REJECTION OF PURCHASE ATTEMPT IS AN ACT OF APATHY

Rejecting a purchase for no good reason at all is like refusing to promote a fellow EntreCarder's blog, which makes me think of some degree of apathy and mediocrity. While it's true that everyone can opt to reject an ad but let us always put ourselves in other people's shoe. I am sure you wouldn't be too happy if you were the one declined yourself! The reasons behind the decline can be authentic or not but whatever such reasons, when one declines an advert I can only conclude that the EntreCarder is not willing to establish a good relationship.

Now with EntreCard adding more features in the system such as giving RECOMMENDATIONS to one particular blog, I will now write recommendations to each and every blog that will approve my advert purchases. There were so many blogs that have given me huge number of hits in the past but I failed to even send them a Thank You note for accepting my purchase.

I think it's never too late to give recognition to where it is due.

TINATEEE!

First commenter for this post..

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Top 25 EntreCard Droppers for January 2009

In honor of The Top Droppers Day which was persistently encouraged by Graham Langdon for all EntreCard members in this Post: First Monthly Top Droppers Day Coming Up, I would like to personally thank my Top 25 Droppers for the first month of 2009. Even before a huge push for the Top Droppers Day was made by the EC admin, I have always been grateful to my fellow EntreCarders who have taken their time and effort dropping their cards in this humble blog of mine.

The month of January is a lot different because lots of surprises awaits those Top Droppers. All our efforts can now be recognized and eventually rewarded. By getting the most number of links from EntreCard members, one can have a chance to win FREE one month ad at EntreCard (first prize)- this is equivalent to $250! The second prize will be 25, 000 EC credits- $125 value! WOW! This is amazing!

Drop those cards now and have the chance of winning these awesome prizes!

Now for my Top Droppers:

Dropper # of drops The Sewing Mom 31 ThinkingOutLoudBlog.com 31 A Simple Life 31 Mommy's Little Corner 31 Everything Under the Sun 31 Computer Aid 31 The Ad Master 31 First Door on the Left 31 Prove Me Wrong 31 EzGreatLife 31

Not too far behind are the followings blogs:

VerITableLIFE
Lofty Matters
Life's sweets and spices
Holy Cuteness
Dallas Marketing Services
BRYAN KARL Everything Online
14-Year-Old Kid Tech Guru
Pinoy Web Surfer
cheapdanny
BeadedTail
Wishing On A Falling Star
Mr Soleh’s Outburst
The Way I See It
Marriage and Beyond
60 Were Enough

I wasn't actually able to complete 31 drops for this month. That's why I am all grateful to my regular and notorious EC droppers for never failing to drop your cards here day in and day out!

 LAINY would like to thank the first commenter for this post...

Uncle Che of AZ BLOGGING

Some of the Reasons Why More and More People Are Leaving EntreCard

I was deeply saddened by the news that a number of my Top Droppers have now made a decision to leave EntreCard for good. One of them is WorldWide Travel Blog who has been a consistent Top Dropper across my blogs for a number of months and I will absolutely miss seeing his widget in my inbox. But guaranteed, that this isn't goodbye because I will continue to visit his blog with or without the EntreCard widget in his blog.

With the increasing number of bloggers making the decision to depart from the realms of EntreCard, I have made a summary of some of the major reasons why they have come to a decisive point leaving the EntreCard community. Some of these list are picked from some popular bloggers and I will be linking up to them at the bottom of this post.

A CLEAR WASTE OF TIME

No one is ever compelled to drop 300 cards each day! But to get the best out of EntreCard, one must drop to the maximum 300 cards per blog. Many EntreCarders refused to be a slave by spending their time dropping cards and use up hours and hours of going through blogs. Once you don't have a speedy connection, it will take you forever to finish the task more so if you'll be dropping for multiple blogs. Knowing the tricks on how to drop quick in just a matter of 30 minutes would help. I have actually shared some of my Dropping Techniques in the past:

1. My EntreCard Dropping Techniques Unleashed (Part 1)
2. My EntreCard Dropping Techniques Unleashed (Part 2)

I do not know how I was able to manage dropping 1, 200 cards everyday with my 4 blogs since I also have a full time work apart from blogging but much of the credit goes to my cousin Allena of In the Eyes of the Beholder who does the dropping chores in my behalf numerous times. I personally wouldn't think this is a poorly invested time because I love getting a glimpse of other people's viewpoints and thoughts. I daresay I have quite learned a lot from other people's various ideas.

POOR QUALITY BLOGS

Yes, EntreCard may have failed in strictly implementing the Updated Quality Standards but since quality is subjective I can't say much on the matter. I personally love going through blogs on a wide variety of topics and categories and I can put up with anything.

Some thinks of sub par and poor quality blogs containing the following:

1. Blogs that are nothing but paid posts- I have recently made a post out of this.


2. Slow blogs- Yeah! A number of them takes forever to load. Please put that video off and please turn off that autoplay music! I've had enough of these blogs. Good thing I am using the No Script Add On feature so I'm not quite affected.


3. Out of date blogs- It's quite disappointing to see numerous blogs who were able to take time dropping their cards without updating their blogs. I can see lots of them. To get a wide readership, I understand that updating ones own blog is a must.


4. Poorly written content (grammar and spelling mistakes)- Many of the bloggers are using English as a second language. I am no exception. I am still a work in progress but English as a second language is no excuse for me not to brush up. There is always room for improvement. Some faux pas though are understandable. We just need to double our effort in learning the art of writing in a much respectable level. That is, being able to deliver a clear and comprehensible message to our visitors.

Well, if an EntreCarder is too particular of the abovementioned points, I am urging you to report blogs to the EC admin so that they can impose sanctions on those identified blogs. Notwithstanding the points earlier pointed out, I feel that blogging should be open to all levels of literacy and topics. EntreCard must be very careful in imposing sanctions though as QUALITY per se vary from one person to another.

A COMMUNITY INFESTED BY WAHMS/ SAHMS

I felt bad when I learned that one blogger particularly pointed out that one reason he is leaving the community is because of the SAHMS. I do not want to rebut him but with all due respect to the SAHMS, they are wonderful! You see, to each his own. I have high regard for them because they were able to make the most out of their time blogging aside from child-rearing and taking care of their own homes. Creating that balance is not easy. I owe them much of my traffic and majority of the good friends I have acquired from EntreCard are the SAHMS. To all of you blogging Mommies, Long Live!

POOR SYSTEM

Unannounced downtimes and outages is indeed very annoying! At least we deserve to know when service failure would take place ahead of time so that we can adjust. Though EntreCard have failed to send us notices for service failures umpteen of times, I have to commend them for upgraded and better service.

JUNK TRAFFIC
EntreCard is a free advertising site. We are suppose to get traffic via the 125 x 125 slots we have purchased from other blogs. But since the price of advertising for popular blogs is too much for an ordinary member to afford, the ordinary members are drowned in the sea of active EC power users who were able to take advantage of the system. Added to this is the "drop and run" phenomenon where blogs don't really get long term traffic. I can't say much about this but since EntreCard, this blog's traffic had gone up to 100K plus and I couldn't have done it if not for EntreCard.

POOR MANAGEMENT

One of the things that triggered some members to leave was Graham's decision in deleting some popular members from the system. Turnip of Power, one of my Top Droppers, have been deleted for using Twitter. Quite a number of members now think that is such a crappy and silly decision from the management. ENTRECRAP as they have called it should have known better. Does Graham believe in second chances? Is a second chance being asked?

To Be Continued...

PLEASE READ RELATED ARTICLES:

8 Reasons to Quit EntreCard
Goodbye EntreCard!
Banned From EntreCard for Using Twitter

Be One of the Dropaholics Like Me!

Have you heard of Dropaholics.com yet? If not, better have a check on the site. The site was brilliantly thought of and developed by Gregory Matthews of He Likes to Rant. Sounds familiar?

Look at his EntreCard widget below and click the image and you will be taken to his site:

I have just learned of the Dropaholics site when I read Greg's post on How to Become a Dropaholic yesterday. Curiously, I tried to follow all his instructions and submitted this blog to the system. But to my surprise, it's already in the system ranking at no. 17 yesterday and my other blog, Our Journey to Forever, is also in the system! I have added my third blog, Kuerdas, and amazingly, all my 3 blogs are now in the Top 100 Dropaholics! I was very happy! My dropping efforts were recognized!

Upon checking today, this blog climbed up to rank # 11!

The rankings change from time to time though depending on the number of drops made on your top droppers.

I can do many things from Dropaholics.com. I can generate a widget code wherein I can opt to display in my blog the following:

1. Top Dropaholics on my Blog
2. Blogs I am Dropaholic On
3. Top Dropaholics Over-all

One of the cool features I like from the site is that I can opt to choose what to display in my blog. It can be the blog's title, both blog's title and widgets or just the blog's badges.

If you are one of my notorious regular droppers and your blog isn't in the list of dropaholics yet, better submit your blog immediately for monitoring. As you will notice, my Top 10 droppers who are Dropaholics are already in place in the left sidebar of this blog. The system shall automatically crawl your top droppers and your rankings shall be made known. No need to upload your top droppers' badges to Photobucket anymore as they will be automatically crawled up by the system.

And here's more! You don't need to drop the maximum 300 cards to be included in the ranks of dropaholics. You can well establish your position by consistently dropping on blogs of your interest and consequently. they shall in turn reciprocate your drops and even read your posts and comment on them.

I have high hopes in Dropaholics. Why not be one of us now?

The Tale That Is All About Monkey

The hottest topic over the weekend is plagiarism at its finest. If you are keen enough to notice, Monkey Fables and Tales and his other blogs, Sensory Overload and Obscure History are nowhere to be found- not in the EntreCard drop inbox (yours and mine), not at the No. 1 spot of the most popular blogs and never on the world wide web. This is the strangest thing that has confused me since last week.

Monkey has been reigning the most popular blogs for several months and it's hard to oust him from that sweet spot. I've never attempted to be in his seat though, haha! The closest I got was No. 2. A few weeks back, I didn't see him at the No. 1 spot of the Popular Blogs. His ads were disabled. This prompted me to send a message to my friend Polly of Random Ramblings and asked her if she has noticed but she told me that he might be on a holiday. When he was back on the popular blog (not at the top spot though), I thought Polly was right.

But after a couple of days of attempting to drop cards on his blogs, they were all deleted! I always get the following message: "Sorry, the blog at monfat48.blogspot.com has been removed." I was shocked to know the reasons behind all these hullabaloo when I've read the post of Turnip of Turnip of Power. Much to my dismay, Monkey has been allegedly stealing nearly 100% of his posts from author Charlie Hatton. Turnip did a very great job in digging and gathering all his facts.

Has Monkey been a fraud all these time? Have we been the biggest fool? According to Joel of Big Boys Have Toys Too, EntreCard was the biggest fool of all! They have been regulating the system deleting blogs that weren't able to pass their updated standards and here comes Monkey at the top, his allegedly fraudulent acts escaping from EntreCard's strict scrutiny. Tsk! Tsk! Tsk! What a big slap in the face!

I would love to hear Monkey's side of the story. I hope he would elaborate further. I think we all deserve an explanation.

The strangest point to ponder on is this: If Monkey is taking his blogs on the backseat and realized that EntreCard is not for him anymore, why is there a need to delete all his blogs from Google?

Well, we could all speculate on this on-going brouhaha. I won't be casting a stone to anyone. But one thing is for sure. Plagiarism is no place in the cyberworld and no one can ever escape from it.

The truth shall always prevail.

Top 25 EntreCard Droppers for the Month of September

Though four days have gone by since the last day of September, I still haven't forgot that I owe my Top droppers some recognition. September has been a glorious month for this blog and it's all because of my ever loyal and faithful EntreCard droppers. I owe them BIG time for never failing to drop their cards daily especially the Top 10 Droppers who made 31 drops!

Though I wasn't able to reciprocate when I took a break for 3 days, my absence didn't became the reason for them not to pass by here and drop those cards.

With all my heart, I am all grateful!

Mommieshome.net

FOOTBALL: Just Love The Game

Smart Bloggerz

Everything Under the Sun

Wonderful Pic Colection

Luxor

Where the Long Tail Ends

Online Games

Photography by KML

SFV Blog

Is 8 Enough?

Junkfoodaholic.com
Chica & Pumuckl - 2 Egyptian Cats in Germany

Thailand Land of Smiles
Leet Gallery
My note's
Dunia Edukasi
The Ad Master

Jill's Creative Cafe Page
verITableLIFE
Wisdom Hypnosis
My Tramping View
fwaggle.org
Greener Pastures

rainydazeee

New EntreCard Pricing System

If you aren't keen enough to notice, there have been major changes in the EntreCard's pricing system. It is important to understand that not all credits goes to the site owner once a purchase is made by an advertiser.

Below are the complete list of the pricing system:

Changes Affecting the EntreCard Economy

With the recent changes strictly implemented by the EntreCard admin, I can see they mean serious business. As I go through the blogs I regularly drop my cards on, there have been a number of them that were already deleted in the system. For some reasons, I felt a little worried but at the same time, cautious. I should see to it that I seriously follow EntreCard's Updated Rules posted by Graham on September 16.

On September 29, Graham Langdon posted yet another entry which could greatly affect the EntreCard Economy. I deemed it best to post the article in toto as originally posted in the EntreCard Blog:

In order to continue operating in the long-term, Entrecard needs to make some significant changes. The changes are summarized below:

1. Buy credits for less: Entrecard is now selling 1,000 credits for $6.00.
2. More pricing increments: Instead of prices doubling every time, there are now a few more steps. The new price points can be found on the Advertising page in the wiki.
3. Members are not allowed to sell credits: This goes for ebay sales, posts in the Marketing forum, and posts on other forums. If you have references on your site to the sale of credits, please remove them immediately, as it is now against our terms.
4. Credit transfer limits: Members are allowed to make a maximum of 14 credit transfers a week, up to a maximum of 1,000 credits, whichever comes first. This means you can still run contests where you give credits away for free, and under 1k per week.

   Note: This does not affect linked blogs, you can transfer unlimited credits between linked blogs.
5. Transfer tax: From now on, all transfers, including transfers made with our new payments API, will be taxed at a rate of 12.5%. The taxed credits will be sold to members (see #1).
6. Blogs cannot be unlinked: Once you link a blog, it’s there for good unless you ask us to delete the blog from your account. This prevents linking/unlinking to get around the credit transfer limits, and it also stops you losing access to a blog if you unlink it in error, which happens a lot.
7. No more coupons: You are no longer allowed to send coupons.
8. Shop closed: Except for Entrecard upgrades (Featured Status, Fast Pass) the Entrecard Shop is now offline until further notice. Please do not request a seller token until the shop returns. When it comes back, it will be bigger and better. We’ll communicate more details nearer the time.

With these recent updates, I find changes #s 1, 3, 4, and 6 rather daunting for a huge number of EntreCarders especially those who are making money out of selling EntreCard credits. This move is well-meaning as it aims to create a " balance between maximizing the overall benefits for our users and getting the revenue we need to pay the bills and expand the service."

The impact of these rapid changes in the system is already being felt by the EntreCard community. It seems to me that with EntreCard's growth, it looked like they are taking FULL control of everything. This is a move that will help regulate the system and eventually shut down the members polluting the system.

I hope these changes wouldn't come as a detriment for small bloggers like me who is only trying to take advantage of what EntreCard is sharing with it's members.

My EntreCard Dropping Techniques Unleashed (Part II)

This post shall answer the million dollar question how I was able to manage dropping 900 cards like a mad girl without fail and how fast I can get to finish the task. When I am in my notorious self dropping cards, the dropping task goes like thunder and finishes in a whiplash.

If my internet connection cooperates with me, I can drop 300 cards in an hour. That is, if I do the drop and run method to which I rarely do. Normally, it would take me 2 and a half to 3 hours at the most. Is it fast enough for you? I think not. It takes a lot of patience. And I can tell you I have lots of it.

DROPPING OF CARDS IS NO LONGER A PAIN IN THE NECK

You now have the tips on where to drop your cards. But the problem on the speed struck you. If it’s just a normal speed, I am telling you, it will take you forever! If you have only one blog, 300 cards to drop is very easy to handle.

THE FIREFOX NO SCRIPT ADD-ON FEATURE

I recommend you don’t do drops using Internet Explorer. Dropping of cards works better and faster with Mozilla Firefox. If it’s the first time you’ve heard of No Script or Whitescript, well it’s high time you know that it makes dropping of cards smoother and quicker more than ever. It is a Firefox Ad-On which enables you to disable the scripts. You can opt to enable only the EntreCard widget and all those other annoying scripts shall be blocked from showing up.

And here’s more.

You can disable the images. We all know it slows down the loading of page. Fret no more. When you do the dropping of cards and the images are disabled, you will go at a lightning speed.

NO-SCRIPT DISADVANTAGES

When No Script Ad On feature is enabled, it isn’t possible to make comments with word verifications/ captcha. It takes away the experience of appreciating the blog themes as well. What I do is open blogs of my fancy at Internet Explorer if I want to interact with the blog owner by commenting. In that way, I can make my presence felt and at the same time appreciate the blog’s over-all theme.

I am still on the hunt though for finding the quickest way to drop without sacrificing website quality.

THE ENTRECARD TOOLBAR

The effort of the EntreCard admin in always coming up with ways to improve the system is commendable. It’s very hard to come up with yet another system which could equal EntreCard’s accomplishments thus far.

When Entrebar was launched a couple of months ago, I was very adamant in downloading it. But since I am using an old version of Firefox, I had to update it to Firefox 3. I did all that but I encountered some difficulties. I did all the same process again with Uncle Che patiently guiding me this time around. I was able to download it successfully. EntreBar works very well and it sped up my dropping chores.

ENTREBAR DISADVANTAGES

I was able to utilize EntreBar Friday night and Saturday morning. But personally, I think it doesn’t work to my advantage. Please don’t get me wrong. When we speak of speed and features, everything seems perfect with EntreBar.

But I guess the problem is with me.

I am more familiar with the 125 X 125 avatars of each blogs to which I regularly drop my cards on. I always drop cards from my drop inbox and that’s all the avatars are located. I know each of them even when my eyes are closed.

With EntreBar, the 125 x 125 avatars won’t be of use. It’s very hard to drop on all of them using EntreBar because I need to choose which of the blogs I should drop my cards on.

As mentioned in my previous post, I get an average of more than 400 return drops; the highest is more than 500. I need to make a sound judgment and drop on blogs that I am 100% sure would return my drops because every drop counts. I don’t just drop my cards anywhere. I have to make sure that dropping 900 cards to 900 blogs is never a wasted effort.

If you want to download the No Script Ad-On feature, you can go HERE.

If you want to utilize the EntreBar, download it from HERE.

SEE ALSO RELATED ARTICLES:

• My EntreCard Dropping Techniques Unleashed (Part 1)
• Too Many Things To Do, But Too Little Time

What Kind of Blogger Are You?

To answer the question on what kind of blogger I am, I deemed it best to collect the comments and citations I got from other blogs. That is to play safe and to do away from speaking biased, hehe!

The comments posted on the article Too Many Things To Do, But Too Little Time could very well speak as to what kind of blogger I am. These comments were very much valued. Some of the comments posted made me re-think my priorities.

I would like to especially quote four of the commenters because they have somehow influenced me to alter my blogging perspectives at some point. Now this doesn't mean I am playing favorites here for selecting only 4 of them. It doesn't mean I value less those who weren't quoted. I might just link them up in the next posts I am thinking of posting.

FOONGPC:

" I understand what you are going through. I also cannot find enough time in a day to write new post and drop Entrecards. I think dropping 900 blogs is crazy! I won't be able to achieve that and I don't think I want to. There is more to life than blogging and dropping cards. And if the reason we want to drop so many cards is to increase our page ranking in Google, then I think it's the wrong way to do so. Many bloggers who are earning big bucks don't join Entrecard and don't do any dropping of cards. We need to learn their methods instead of relying solely on Entrecard. I also learnt that some bloggers don't write new post for more than a month, and they are still earning huge money and getting lots of traffic, so my conclusion is updating your blog has no effect on the traffic to your blog. I don't have the answers but I'm learning. I love to blog but I don't want it to take over my life."

ERIC:

"How much extra time would you have if you concentrated on writing a couple extra posts rather than dropping 900 blogs? You have good content - you could have a lot more! "

ROBIN:

"I only started blogging within the past couple of weeks and already I'm beginning to feel the addiction. I can't imagine how you could possibly do that many drops in a day! When it comes to writing, I'm making every attempt to post daily but I don't want to get in the habit of posting just for the sake of it. At the moment, my writing is more for myself and in that way I can keep it honest. I don't want to fall into the trap of "writing for an audience" because I think doing so affects your perspective."

LILLY'S LIFE:

"Blogging is addictive and its hard to get that balance. I wonder how it's physically possible to even do what you are doing so my hat is off to you - you are dOing incredibly well fitting in 48hrs in 24hrs. Family is the most important things though and content is king. You write inredibly well though so seems like you have that covered. Hope you strike the balance that keeps you happy. But never feel guilty for not dropping, don't even go down that path..."

BLOGGING BOTH FOR FUN AND FOR MONEY

Has blogging took over my life?

I can say yes, it sometimes has. I tend to set aside some activities in favor of blogging and I spend more hours blogging than I usually intend to. Contrary to what FoongPc have said, I am not after for high PR. This blog is PR 1 but I am sure in the next Google update, I will be slapped with a zero yet again because I am into doing paid reviews. But I am not after of earning B I G bucks here. I do not dream to be like John Chow, hehe. Blogging is only my second priority next to my work and I have fun dropping cards to different blogs. I just wish there's more time for me to be able to drop more and more cards to even more blogs in a day.

Let me just emphasize here that I do the dropping of cards not for the SOLE purpose of earning money but because I do ENJOY it. Updating my blog is something that I always try my best to accomplish, 2 posts at least in a week. It's because I do not want my visitors to get disappointed by coming here and there's nothing they could see but all the same posts that's been up and running for a month! And I have all the time in the world to drop cards and not update my blog, huh! I think it's ridiculous! It hasn't happened for this blog as of yet. And again, it's NOT all about money. But who doesn't love added revenue? It only comes as a BONUS for me though.

BLOG FOR QUALITY NOT QUANTITY

There's more to blogging than just writing and hitting the publish button.

Quality is still king and mere quantity is nothing. Better to have one article that's well-written and properly laid out than to have written a lot but of poor quality. When I say quality, I mean it in MY own standards, not yours, hehe! Further, we need to go out of our respective niches sometimes to socialize and meet other bloggers from different parts of the world. We do not just confine ourselves in our own blogs.

BLOGGING FOR PASSION

I am very passionate about blogging because it's the only hobby and past time I know. Blogging have enabled me to come across wonderful blogs and beautiful people. I am using all these to my own advantage.

To finally end this post, AZ BLOGGING has this to say about me and my blogs:

"I can’t really explain how much I love blogs that mix up personal diaries and ramblings. Lainy’s Blogs (Lainy’s Musings and Our Journey to Forever) are very good examples of such. On her blogs, she talks about her work, her prince, her country, and also gives us an update of the things she does. She puts them down in a plain manner, free of sugarcoating and one can really learn quite a lot from them."

I took the blogging test for the question what kind of blogger I am and the result of the test is:

You Are a Life Blogger!

Your blog is the story of your life - a living diary. If it happens, you blog it. And you make it as entertaining as possible. You may be guilty of over-sharing a bit on your blog, but you can't help it. Your life is truly an open book. Or in this case, an open blog!

What about you? Would you want to know what kind of blogger you are?

Top 10 EntreCard Droppers for the Month of August

Giving due recognition to my Top 10 Entrecard Droppers is going to be a monthly citation here in my blog. This is to give credit to my serious and loyal Entrecard droppers who never failed to drop a single card for the month that was. The month of August has been a pivotal month for this blog for making it to the Top 20 Popular Blogs, even surpassing my older blog's rankings, Our Journey to Forever.

My Top 10 Top Droppers shall receive 100 EntreCard credits each in their respective accounts (a total of 1, 000 EC credits give-away). They shall also have a month-long slot in my blog for added promotion. I hope this will motivate more EntreCarders to drop their cards more frequently.

To all my regular droppers, a HUGE THANK YOU for never failing to swing by this humble blog of mine. Keep those drops coming and I can guarantee it will never be a wasted effort.

On the Purchase of Entrecard Ads

This blog is barely four months old. I've never given this blog much attention, not until I've noticed the increasing number of visits it got per day. Today, I got too overwhelmed by the number of drops this blog got from Entrecard. I never fail to drop 300 cards daily. I do get return drops over 300. But today, the return drop is 507! It's the first time for this blog's history to have received that much number of drops. Breaking into the Top 20 Most Popular blogs at Entrecard is also unbelievable! It even surpassed my other blog's rankings. Don't mistake me for bragging about this but I sure as hell got very ecstatic. Out of more than 15, 000 Entrecard members, my blog is slowly inching closer to the top. Though I am well aware that rankings for the most popular blogs is never static and keeps changing every minute, it’s something that I think this blog can never accomplish again. I'm all the more humbled by this blog's progress.

One thing noticeable here is that I have only purchased one slot for advertisement which has been up and running at this site. I’ve purchased it for 1, 024 worth of credits. I didn’t think twice in purchasing the slot because that particular blog is always in the Top 10 most popular blogs.

I was faced with a huge challenge today in choosing the blogs I would drop my cards on out of the 507 blogs who made their drops for the day. It’s kind of hard because I can drop cards to only 300 blogs. I need to make a sound judgment on which blogs would likely return my drop again. Let’s face it. There are some Entrecarders who aren’t serious in dropping cards. They may have come across your blog by chance and tried to drop and that’s it. They never come back. I’m hoping I have indeed made a sound judgment in choosing the blogs I’ve dropped on as I’ve just finished dropping cards to 300 of them.

The blog who purchased a slot for my site today got 273 drops! I hope the blog owner is happy with the turn out of her ad purchase in my blog.

All these could not have been possible without my regular droppers and advertisers. Thank you from the bottom of my heart!

I have made a run down of the things I’ve learned today. These are as follows:

1. Never hesitate to purchase big amount of credits for advertisement.
2. Be wise in choosing the blog you want to purchase your slot for advertisement.
3. Purchase slots from the campaign tab, go to the MOST POPULAR blogs at Entrecard, then choose ALL CATEGORIES and select NO maximum amount.

If you have a better way of purchasing your own slots for advertisements that gave you big numbers of drops, feel free to share it in my comment section.