It’s time for another contest. This time, I’m giving away 1,000 (that’s ONE THOUSAND) Entrecard credits. If you have an Entrecard account, you probably already know that John Chow has one and it currently costs 240ec (that’s like Entrecard bucks) to put your card on JohnCow.com for a day. Just think… You could get 4 days on JC’s home page for free!
Entering is really easy!
All you have to do to enter is drop your card on my page. Every time you drop your card, you are entered, so that’s once per day until Christmas morning. If you blog about this contest and link back to this post, I’ll count you in for 20 more entries (if the trackback doesn’t show up below, just comment with the link below). Let’s recap how easy this is:
Drop your Entrecard on me = 1 entry
Blog about it with link = 20 entries
Winner chosen Christmas morning!
You don’t have to celebrate Christmas to win, but that’s the day I’m drawing the winner. So if you celebrate, come back here to see if you won. The winner will be chosen randomly, as always.
This morning, I dropped my phone from about 3 feet onto carpet. I’ve dropped many a phone before, but this is my first touch screen and I guess it hit at just the right angle this time. What new phone should I get?
My phone is insured, but whenever this happens, I usually take the new phone they send me and sell it and my accessories on ebay and buy a new model. When life hands you lemons, make lemonade.
I will be heading to the VzW store later today. So what should I buy? Keep in mind, I’m with Verizon, so the iPhone is out. I need it to sync with Outlook, touch screen is ideal but not critical and I don’t actually use any of the web surfing, so that’s also not critical. I love my qwerty keyboard.
I plan to write a review of EntreCard over on my other blog, [link removed because I sold it and they turned it into a porn site], and I might even include some nice tricks I learned on how to get a ton of traffic from the site easily, so look for that over there.
For now, though, I just wanted to let you know that it’s there and it’s a great site for added traffic. Just look at my Alexa traffic for the last few days and you’ll get my point, especially given that I haven’t posted anything substantial for a few days (but that’s coming). So if you have a blog or site to promote, head over there and sign up because EntreCard is blowing up.
NewestOnTheNet.com is a blog by Fred Petersabout blogging, social media, internet marketing and any closely related topics. In Fred’s own words:
I have created Newest on the Net to provide you with the latest trends occurring in our online world. This blog was born from my love of technology and my fascination with social networking, blogging, podcasting and all the other ways the Internet is allowing humans to communicate with one another. When I was younger, I used to always think that my grandparents were so lucky to have experienced some of the greatest inventions, e.g. cars, airplanes, rockets and television. However, with the invention of the Internet I am no longer envious. The Internet is the greatest invention of our time, maybe of all time.
That alone should get you to head over there and poke around if you’re a techie and and internet junkie like me, but I agreed to a free review and “free” means I can be completely objective, with no regard to Fred’s feelings. [insert evil laugh here] Time to dig in.
It’s a blog, so after reading the About page (most of which I’ve copied and pasted above), I headed straight for the first post, StumbleUpon – A Blogger’s Secret Weapon, and I agreed with it before even getting past the title. StumbleUpon was, for me, a kind of mental note that got ignored. For a while, it was that social media site that I kept meaning to play with, but didn’t really see the value in it. Anyway, I’m not reviewing SU here, but let’s just say I had a moment of clarity a month or two ago and now realize the incredible value of StumbleUpon to a blogger. Fred gives a good description of StumbleUpon and why you should use it, points out where you can find him on the site (critical thinking there, Fred), follows with a 4 step guide to promoting your blog articles with the site, and finishes with more follow-up resources than you can swallow. It’s a good read and definitely bookmarkable [Shut up, Firefox spell-checker! I'm MAKING it a word]. I liked it enough to stumble it, and that’s what’s important. If you’re thinking of heading over there for this article, check out his series-starter, From Zero to 190,000 Page Views In Just 3 Months.
Moving on, I decided to read 35 Guaranteed Ways To Increase Your RSS Subscribers, the first article listed in his “Most Popular Articles” list, because the guy has 238 RSS subscribers in just a few months and I want that action, too. It had some of the typical information I’ve read several times on several blogs, but I did find a couple new tips I hadn’t seen before.
Write an article explaining what RSS is and how to subscribe to your blog. Bloggers tend to be very technologically savvy. Sometimes we forget that our readers might not know what RSS feeds are and how to use them. You should write an article on your blog explaining what RSS is so that your readers will know that subscriptions are available. Darren Rowse has a great What is RSS? page on Problogger.net. DoshDosh also has written a great example for how to tell your readers about RSS subscriptions. Also, please check out Rich Gilcrest’s article describing RSS feeds.
That’s a nice idea, and I imagine it will help, but how much? Maybe I shouldn’t question the guy who has a lot more subscribers than me. Still, I have to think that this next bit was a lot more valuable, and is something I hadn’t even thought of, as simple as it is:
Use the MyBlogLog Widget. One of the best ways to increase the number of people who subscribe to you blog is to ask them to subscribe. Sometimes readers need to be encouraged or coaxed to subscribe. Maybe they aren’t even thinking about subscribing or maybe they are not using an RSS Reader. By asking them to subscribe, you remind them that subscription services are available. These next few tips provide ways for you to track who is visiting your blog, so that you can send them messages requesting them to subscribe. The MyBlogLog widget allows me to track who is visiting my site. When a new MyBlogLog visitor appears in my sidebar, I click their avatar and send them a message. I typically thank them for visiting and ask them to subscribe, including a link to my RSS feed.
When I promised to review blogs, products, etc for free for anyone who asked, I was worried I’d have to start it with a scathing review, but Fred’s blog gave me a free pass. In short, he’s got subscriber #239, and I clearly have some promotional tricks to learn.
