I’ll start with this: The premise and design of Entrecard is brilliant. Graham Langdon has developed a great tool for promoting a blog and discovering other blogs. It has drawn a solid cadre of very experienced bloggers, from whom I’ve learned a great deal.

I’ve written about Entrecard a few times, so I’ll avoid doing yet another overview. What I’ve discovered is that the core concept of visit and drop has a fundamental flaw. This flaw is partially to blame for the higher normal bounce rate, but is more clearly felt on the forums with a regular, unanswered question.

Why visit a blog that doesn’t have any new content?

Entrecard users drop to earn credits and many of us return the favor by visiting their blogs and dropping back. We work our inboxes, often visiting sites that haven’t been posted to in weeks. Are they bloggers or droppers?

There have been a few “cultural movements” in the history of Entrecard that have distinctly highlighted this flaw. I’ll spend a bit of time discussing each one:

UDropIFollow
Initially, I thought this was a very good approach to Entrecard. Because I couldn’t fully commit to dropping on my droppers each day, I didn’t don the badge. But I didn’t try to work my inbox diligently.

I recently did a very unscientific experiment. I visited and dropped on the self-proclaimed founder of the UDropIFollow movement, Lee Doyle. I dropped using bot of the blogs I have at Entrecard. I did this for eight consecutive days. How many drops did that get me from Lee Doyle? Zero.

Wait? You mean the founder of the movement can’t or isn’t walking the walk? No, he isn’t. But maybe he was away? He was on the Entrecard forums regularly during the time I was doing this experiment. Maybe he gets more than 300 drops each day? Perhaps, but I did run this with two blog accounts for eight days. In the not so tactful language of my other blog, UDropIFollow is bullshit!

It isn’t enforceable. It isn’t sustainable. And it misses the true value of Entrecard. I considered carrying on the experiment a bit longer, or extending it to other bloggers, but other cultural movements at Entrecard woke me up.

Entrecard Bans Quick Drop Sites
When you’re dropping just to earn credits, quick drop sites rock! You get your credit they get their credit. Quick and easy just like a hand job in the alley. If credits are all you want, then Entrecard isn’t for you.

The ban and subsequent removal of the quick drop sites will do a lot to improve the quality at Entrecard. I applaud Graham and the crew’s efforts on this. I’m only now understanding this well enough to appreciate the ban.

Comment Bomb!
What if we collectively visited a blog with fresh, good content, read the post, dropped an Entrecard, and then wrote a comment? Novel idea? Not really. That is how I imagine Entrecard was initially envisioned. The results of the comment bomb were magnificent and energizing.

I felt a spark of home emerge. What had become a chore with a hint of addiction, now had a much more pleasant aroma. A glow of promise where 300 drops per account wasn’t a goal, but was a commitment to the community.

Digg Community of Entrecard
Graham next posed the suggestion that we form a collective Digg by Entrecarders. I had always seen Digg as a big tool for a small blog, unwieldy and cumbersome. But as a collective, we could do something cool. We aren’t one small blog, we are a network of thousands of blogs. The forums and comment bomb had made us a community. I now had over 250 friends on Digg (in a single day). With careful management (Digg will ban you for violating their TOS) this could be very powerful.

Then the shouting started. The incessant shouting! “Look here!” “Please, Digg this!” I taught my daughter that if she begged me for something she wouldn’t get it. It goes the same for me with Digg. Why on Earth should I Digg a post that consists solely of a YouTube video the blogger didn’t make?

So here we are. What did we learn?

Dropping for the sake of dropping isn’t productive and degrades the Entrecard community. While the premise of UDropIFollow is noble, in practice it isn’t working. There is a community here, but mining the value of that takes focus.

To make Entrecard matter, we as a network have to start where all great Internet media does, excellent content. We need a constant stream of blog posts that entertain and/or educate.

How do we do that? I don’t know if a technical solution exists. It starts with the users. We have to stop rewarding stale blogs.

Here is my approach:

1. If you drop on me, or get my attention on the forums or on Twitter, I will subscribe to your RSS feed.
2. Through my RSS reader (Bloglines), I will drop from at least one of my blog accounts on the blogs that have new posts.
3. If you have written a good post, I’ll Digg, Stumble, Reddit, etc. If the Entrecard community is behind you, it is likely I will be too.
4. At least once per month, I will post a “featured” (i.e., relevant) blog posts I found and enjoyed, with full backlinks.

Entertain and/or educate me and I’ll pay you back.

I moved my Entrecard widget to the sidebar “above the fold” because I believe in the Entrecard community.  I hope you’ll join me in pushing mediocrity out of the system.  Are you a blogger or a dropper?

It is a simple question. But the answer isn’t always apparent. Are you being true to yourself when you post as a blogger? And is that voice coming through to your readers?

Having a solid voice in your writing comes from first being honest with yourself. It means that you take the time to understand how you really feel about a topic and why you feel that way. Then, you take that and turn it loose. That is the rawness that makes great bloggers great.

I have a personal blog where I most definitely lay it on the line. I put things about myself on that blog I would usually reserve for a close friend. This blog is more of a sandbox of sorts. As such, I often wonder if my real voice is coming out. It may not be. And this blog is poorer for it.

I might not change that. Particularly since I’m not looking at this blog with a success versus failure view. It is merely a place to share distinct blogging lessons. But going forward, I will be very cognizant of the difference. Are you yourself?

Probably not the best of questions to ask a reader, huh? But it is one you should ask every day. Why are your readers coming to your site? What are they after? Are they getting it? Are they going to come back?

The way readers use blogs is so different from other websites. When a websurfer goes to Web MD, they will read an article that is years old. But on a blog, they are typically looking for fresh content. Will they drill down to other articles you’ve written. Sometimes, but more likely, they are only looking at the most recent post.

Are you creating regular, fresh content? If so, then you’ll likely see regular traffic. Are you making it easy for them to find related content on your site? If not, then you’re missing an opportunity to hold a reader. This can be addressed simply by linking to older stories. You can also look at the layout of your blog. Are your categories what they need to be?

Perhaps your site is more about the present and less of an information resource. Then you need to have a strategy to create a regular posting pattern. You’ll need to ensure your readers get their daily, twice weekly, weekly fix. That takes planning.  Fortunately, Wordpress allows you to schedule out posts.  That can be a life saver.

While I know this site should be a reference source, most of my current readers are looking for regular, fresh content.  I need to address that if I want to maximize my revenue from this site.  I tried a little experiment this past few weeks.  I made a generally good post about my first month blogging.  The number of hits and comments were very good for me.  I found that leaving the good content up longer drew in more readers.  Now I just have to find that sweet spot.

In any case, if you don’t know what your readers want, you might not be providing it.

I’ve been at this blogging for money stuff for about a month. How did I do? Well, I’m not quitting my day job any time soon. But I did learn a great deal!

Lesson #1 – Crowded Market

It is a crowded market. If you’re not offering something of value, something unique, you’ll get buried in the mush. Personally, I know that I have a unique perspective, but I’m not sure I’ll make it as a Make Money Online (MMO) blogger. And I don’t have a passion for it the way some do.

Lesson #2 – Focus

There is no shortage ways to make money online. From ads (text and graphic), affiliate marketing, and pay-per-post, the ways and number of vendors is overwhelming. My advice, find one or two that work well for you and stick to them (especially when you’re new at this). More is not better.

If you focus on just a couple, you’ll figure out how to maximize them for your site. Also, you’ll hit your payout amount that much sooner. It does you little good to have regular, but small earnings on several networks and not ever hit the payout amount for any one of them.

Don’t be afraid to experiment with them, but once you find one you like. Stick with it and make it pay.

Lesson #3 – Integrity

Integrity matters. There are tons of people who use inappropriate ways to make the money they make. They will trick you into signing up for a subscription service when you think you’re buying one e-book. They will lie about various aspects of their strategy or the amount they’re able to generate with a given strategy. Or they will post about something they don’t know anything about or really use all for the sake of getting paid for the post. Don’t sell your integrity. The price goes down fast when you start down that road.

Lesson #4 – Work

Posting fresh, well-written blog entries takes a lot of work. From research, writing, editing and posting, a good post takes a lot of time. Also, to keep an active audience, you’ll need to post regularly. At a minimum that will be two to three times a week. Many MMO bloggers post one or two posts per day. If you’re looking to make a post once a week, you won’t draw much traffic. And if the quality of the content isn’t there, it won’t matter how many posts you make.

Lesson #5 – Promotion

To get and keep traffic, you will have to promote your blog. There are lots of ways to do that, from directories, commenting on other blogs, traffic swapping, and social media. Each promotion opportunity will give you a different amount and quality of traffic. Pick the one that matters most to you. Also, if you don’t continue to promote, you’ll usually lose most of the traffic you were getting. Promotion takes time and effort. Make sure you dedicate enough time to this pursuit.

Lesson #6 – Be The Brand

A blog is an extension of you. If you are an interesting person, with good writing skills, you can be a successful blogger. But, to make that happen, you’ll have to connect it all together. Your promotion should blend naturally with your blogs. Your ability to connect with readers through the comments takes it to the next level. This is the building of a brand. If you have a consistency across all of this, you have a brand. Then you can focus on building the best brand possible.

Lesson #7 – Socialize

The most successful bloggers are very social. They comment on other blogs. They are responsive to readers of their blogs by answering comments and emails (I read about one blogger who even takes phone calls from his readers). They are also active on the primary social media networks, such as Twitter, Digg, and StumbleUpon. While this may be fun for some, to do it successfully as a blogger, you’ll need to make it an extension of your blog persona. And therefore, it is more work.

Lesson #8 – Analyze To Grow

It is vital that you know the details about your site’s traffic. Where are they coming from? What were they looking for? Did they find it on your blog?

There are a ton of questions. The answers come from reviewing the analytics for your site. I use Google Analytics as a means of getting the data I need. I am only beginning to get enough data to be able to know anything. The data is eye opening. I will use it, and as a result, I expect to get better at this.

Lesson #9 – The Art of SEO

Despite what people tell you, SEO is an art not a science. There are truckloads of “SEO Experts” out there trying to sell you on their work or tools. While there are some good general rules to follow relative to SEO, how it will work on your site/keyword situation takes trial and error. And, the rules change from time to time as the search engines (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!) tweak their search algorithms.

The basics of SEO can be wrapped up in one phrase, “Keep It Simple.” If you write good prose, keep your content fresh, and keep at it for a while, you’ll place well relative to your overall niche.

Lesson #10 – Take Breaks

It is easy to get so involved in the whole cycle that you lose sight of why you’re blogging in the first place. It takes a heavy investment in time and effort to get a good blog going and keep it going.

However, you’re human. And that means you need a break from time to time. To be a good writer, you need to have a life. Experience new things away from the blog. Enjoy!

Have you ever gone to a blog and seen comments where the commenter has their picture next to their comment? At first, I thought this was just how blogger or wordpress.com rewarded their members. Mine would always be a gray blob or a gray square smiley face. Well, it wasn’t something they did, it was something the commenter had done.

It is called a gravatar and you can get yours at gravatar.com. At the site, you register the email address that you use for your blog comments and upload a picture. That’s it. Blogs that allow gravatars will pick up yours based on your email address.

Why is this important? Blog brand. Yes, your blog has a brand, whether you want it to or not. And if you aren’t maximizing your brand, you’re minimizing it. Like the flavicon I posted on last month (see Flavicon From A Picture File), a gravatar shows professionalism and polish.

My flavicon and gravatar… sounds like a kid’s robot cartoon a bit there, doesn’t it? Sorry , I’ll be back on topic. You’ll see that I used the same picture for both. I also use this image for my message board avatars and for Twitter. With this, I’m keeping my brand intact across sites. I’d encourage you to do the same.

Happy blogging!

I found this little gem while surfing around other blogs and needless to say, it kept me on the site longer than I otherwise might have been. Nothing graphic, but just enough to make me watch.

It got me to thinking. I know we’ve talked about content. Content is king (or queen)! But what makes good content? Or in other words, can you make your site sticky?

The short answer is, “it depends.” Who is your audience? And why are they coming to your site?

I have built up some traffic to the site in six core places, Entrecard, Sitehoppin, Mybloglog, BlogCatalog, Twitter, and by commenting on other blogs. The audience is clearly identifiable. They are other bloggers, which is perfect for this blog because this is a blog about blogging. For other sites, a pure diet of bloggers might not be a good fit.

So, now I know my audience. Why are they here? Most of the bloggers that come to my site are doing so to promote their own blogs. I use Comment Luv, so all comments return a back link to their site (hint, hint). And they know I’m much more likely to visit them if they write good comments here. There are new bloggers joining the fray every day. Many of them, like me, are looking for easy to understand answers. That is my niche.

Now I just need to ensure I do three things:

1) Provide regular and fresh content.

2) Provide it in an easy to understand (and preferably entertaining) fashion.

3) Rinse, lather and repeat.

P.S. My apologies that the video was off topic. Stick around a bit longer and join the conversation and I’ll feel less inclined to pull out the gimmicks.

Now that I’ve been at this a while (okay, a few weeks), I’ve looked at a lot of opportunities to make money online. So far you’ll notice that I’m mostly talking about affiliate opportunities. What I haven’t discussed are the “pay per post” opportunities. Why not? In one word, integrity.

I’ve looked at a few of these opportunities and I must admit that they are quite impressive. Some of these sites will pay you upwards of $30 just to make a post about their product. Seems like a good deal, right? Well, maybe not. For one, if I haven’t used the product, then what business do I have touting it? And if I’m getting paid to post about it, can you really trust what I have to say?

I also don’t feel it is a good deal for the advertisers. Yes, they get some good press, but who is reading it? And do the readers trust them?

In my opinion, affiliate marketing is different. I present the ads and the reader decides whether or not to act. If I like the product or service, I’ll often blog about it. The readers know how I feel. And the advertisers only pay when I bring them leads.

I hope over time that my readership and their trust of me increases. At that point it will be a win-win-win.

When I heard about More Niche, I thought it was too good to be true. I mean, an affiliate market partner that wants your business so much that they will pay you to join (and pay those who refer you!). How much will they pay you? Try $15 just to create an account. And for each person you refer you get $20.

Here is my account screen. I did nothing but sign up and there it is, $15 in my account.

There’s a catch, right?

Well, no. They have some really good products (one of which pays a commission of as much as $300). I really think you should check moreniche.com out! Tell ‘em baldeagle sent ya!

All good bloggers know that it is important to read other blogs. How many and which ones are really up to you. There is a fine line between networking and wasting time. One of the best ways to stay up with a blog is to tap into their RSS feed. Until recently, I would just collect those feeds on my Firefox browser. They line up along the toolbar, which is very convenient. But when you get more than ten feeds, it gets a little cumbersome. Don’t get me wrong, Firefox is by far the best browser available, if you’re not using it, I’d advise you to get it now.

Then I found Bloglines.com. This handy website lets me save all of my RSS (and atom) feeds in one place. The look is very similar to the way you see web-based email. You can set up folders for the different types of feeds you take. And, the best part, it shows you when there are unread feeds! No more checking each feed for fresh content.

But, my favorite feature is Bloglines.com’s ability to find the feeds for me. All you have to do is type in the website’s primary url into the Add search form and it finds the feed (or feeds if there are more than one). This saves me a ton of time adding new blogs.

With this new found efficiency, I’m not subscribed to about 80 different feeds. I can organize them in meaningful folders, scan for new content very quickly and add new feeds on the fly. I highly recommend you check Bloglines.com out.

It is often said that a successful blogger is a regular blogger. Most professional bloggers will post at least once per day and most agree that starting bloggers should post at least a few times a week. I want to be seen as the former rather than the latter, but it is so hard to keep up. Between posting, reading other blogs and sometimes commenting, researching and networking/promoting, it seems there is a never ending stream of work ahead of me.

Which begs the question, how is my time better spent?

The case for content:
My first inclination is that content sells. If your write something that educates or entertains, people will enjoy your site. For many bloggers, the value of their content is that it does both. We all want more laughs in our lives.

And it is very clear that users won’t spend much time at your blog if it doesn’t have current content. Unfortunately, every blog entry you make has the date. So readers know when they’re reading old content. Many will opt to find a more current source unless there is a compelling reason for them to read yours.

So, having good, relevant content is more important that writing frequently.

The case for reading/commenting:
There are literally millions of bloggers. And they all have their own perceptions and paradigms. I get a much better understanding of an issue when I take the time to read more than one blogger. And sometimes one person’s words just seem to make more sense to me.

Comments on blogs often take the topic through a to a deeper place. To make a good comment, you must read the full post and the comments that came before, lest you seem like an idiot. Also, don’t forget the promotional value of a good comment.

The case for research:
If you look around, it doesn’t take you long to realize that most of the content is regurgitated from blog to blog with very little substance added to the new versions. Just a small bit of research can be enough to give your post the zing it needs to stand above the rest.

Research can take many forms. From interviews, to empirical evidence, to case studies, to full on population testing. For most blogs, you won’t have to boil the ocean to get enough to make your point. But know that any work you do will be well received.

The case for networking/promotion:
If a tree falls in the woods and nobody is there to hear it… Ode to the unread blog post. I’ve written many blog posts that were never read. Sad but true. The core reason for that? I wasn’t promoting my blog the way I should have.

One of my main purposes for forming this blog was to practice different networking and promotional tools to see what works. In only a few weeks, I’ve learned a great deal. More significantly, I’ve learned that I have a lot more to learn. Networking and promotion are likely just as important as content. Welcome to the reality of blogging.

The Verdict
We have a hung jury.  There is no clear winner.  You need to do all of the above to be a successful blogger.  The trick is to do them to the extent that makes sense for you, without burning yourself out.  It is very easy to reach that level.  You have to pace yourself.

What few newbies understand is that traffic is built over time.  Yes, there are ways to get big hits now and then.  But those storm surges die out just as fast as they came if you don’t keep working them.  The best traffic for you is the slow burn kind.  The kind that actually find your blog useful and want to come back for more.  Those loyal readers will build you a foundation that has substance.

Isn’t that the kind of blog you want anyhow?