raymondloesch.com

Keeping a Blog is hard work, and to make money from that blog is even harder work. Don’t let anyone kid you, there is no program and I mean no program or Guru who will teach you how to make money overnight. Blogging is easy, put your thoughts down in a post and your good to go, but try to monetize that blog and you have another thing coming. Blogging is not like a “Field of Dreams” you don’t build it and they will come. You have to build traffic slowly and methodically, and understand that not everyone who stumbles upon your blog will like your writing style or even what you are writing about. Can you please everyone every time? No! But you can please the ones who are interested in what you are writing about. I see a lot of bloggers that ramble about just about anything their mind is set on for that particular moment in time. When it comes to Blogging I feel the best thing to do is to pick a Niche, something that interests you or has a following that you feel you might be able to cater to.
With that said, how do you build traffic to your blog? Do you use Google Adwords, Banner Ads, Social sites or traffic generators. To me it’s pretty simple, it’s who you know. The more you get yourself out there, whether it’s by commenting on other blogs or forums or joining social networks the more readers you will get to your blog. In my last post I spoke about Jack Humphrey’s new Social Network, and in just the past couple of days since I became a member I made lots of new friends and gained a lot of new RSS Subscribers. I have also been participating more on StumbleUpon and Digg, these sites are not just for promoting your posts and blogs. They are there to network with other people and build a presence for yourself through friendships and partnerships.
Another thing I have been using very heavily is Entrecard, it takes some time but I feel it is well worth it as I have gained a lot of new friends and continued visits to my blog.
So how are you building traffic to your blog? Are you out their networking? Please take a moment and leave a comment and share your thoughts and ideas so that the rest of us might benefit, after all if we all share somebody might just learn something.

Hey friends, it’s been about a month now using Entrecard and I just wanted to take a post to fill you in on what that has meant to raymondloesch.com – Earning a Living Online. Next to [Tag-Tec]StumbleUpon[/Tag-Tec] and Organic Search it’s been holding it’s own in terms of bringing in the traffic. here are my stats as of today:

As you can see the stats are pretty good, although I don’t think these stats are for the whole month as I know I dropped more than 1,914 cards. Speaking of which I had my first 300 card drop day yesterday, I can’t believe I was able to reach that mark as I tend to read most blogs I drop a card on, It took over 6 hours to drop 300 Entrecards. I don’t think I will be able to do that again, although with the new script I picked up from TechiePortal.com I just may be able to hit that number again. The script opens a new EntreCard site on pressing the Win+Z button, you should definitely check this one out. The stats claim that I have advertised on 28 sites, I know that is wrong also, I know I have advertised on at least twice that and still have 20 adverts pending a couple from as far back as Jan 3. I am afraid to cancel these adverts I think that may hurt my stats someow, just don’t know how yet.

If anybody can make sense of the stats please drop me a line, I would like to have a better understanding of how they arrive at some of their numbers. Is Entrecard bringing quality visitors to my site? I don’t have the full answer to that yet, but I can tell you I have made quite a few friends, found some great blogs to subscribe to, increased my RSS subscribers and have learned a few new things. So all in all being an Entrecard member has been a tremendous benefit to me and my blog. The biggest benefit I see to being a member of Entrecard is having your blog seen by people who might not otherwise find your blog. I advertise on as many blogs as I can, some bring good traffic and some bring little traffic, but they all at least bring some traffic.

Finally I wanted to give a big thumbs up to CavemanConclusion.com for the ingenious little trick he has going on with his Entrecard Widget. Half of the Entrecard sites you visit try to hide the widget at the bottom of their site, so you will at least read through to get to it. Now I understand the reasoning behind this, you want your visitors to see what is actually on your site. The rest of us proudly put it above the fold so it easy to find. Cavemanconclusion.com makes his widget jump around a few times before you can actually click to drop your card, I love this. I don’t recommend that others do this as the novelty will wear off very quickly, but it is very cool so please do go and check it out.

Hi Friends, Hope all is well with you and you are enjoying your Holidays. It’s been a few days since my last post due to the overwhelming demand of my time from the job and family obligations brought on by the Holidays. This week I have been playing with a new web service called Entrecard. If you have not heard of it or have and just not have gotten into it yet, Let me fill you in on what is going on in the world of Entrecard and what my observations have been over the past week.

First, what is Entrecard and how does it pertain to the world of Bloggers. If you belong to a Chamber of Commerce or a Small Business Association you have been to a networking event. What these networking events do is allow members to network with each other, share triumphs, failures and basically learn from each others successes and failures. One of the key features of these meet and greets is to pass around your business card and hopefully drum up some business. This in a nutshell is what Entrecard is all about. You sign up your blog at Entrecard.com, place the widget on your site, visit other sites that have the Entrecard Widget and drop your card.

With Entrecard you get out of Entrecard what you put into it. The best way to utilize Entrecard is to log in to your dashboard, click on campaign and start choosing blogs to go to and drop your card on their sites. Soon you will get other sites wanting to advertise on your site, you earn credits by dropping your card onto the widget on the other sites and by other sites advertising on your site. You pay for these advertisements with the credits you earn, the newer the site is to [Tag-Tec]Entrecard[/Tag-Tec] the lower the credits needed to advertise on these sites.

So now that you have your Internet Business Card, here are a few pointers on how to maximize Entrecard and bring more traffic to your blog. What I do each day is log in to my Entrecard account and check the campaigns section, I usually check the most recent section. This shows the latest 30 sites that registered with Entrecard, and usually these are the cheapest in terms of credits it cost to advertise on their site.

When you first sign up for Entrecard you will be on this list and other sites will see you and advertise on your site, for the same reason the cost to advertise is very little credits when you first start out. When these people choose to advertise with your site they go to a queue in your dashboard where you can approve them or not. As a rule I usually approve everyone unless they are not appropriate for my readers, I always go to their site and check out the site to make sure they are appropriate for my readers and while I am there I drop my card and earn another credit.

When you drop your card for someone, by clicking ‘Drop yours’ on the bottom of someone’s widget, your card will be displayed in their inbox when they log into Entrecard. The Entrecard member can click through to visit your site via your card in their inbox. I use this on a daily basis, what I do is click on the cards in my inbox and visit the site, then drop my card on their widget then click on the ad to check out the next site and drop my card on their site. I follow these advertisements until they run out and then go to the next card in my inbox. You can rack up quite a few credits doing this as well as find some very interesting blogs that you might want to visit on a regular basis or even sign up for their RSS feed. If I like the site or a particular post I will [Tag-tec]Stumble[/Tag-Tec] and [Tag-Tec]Digg[/Tag-tec] the post, I feel this is a nice way to pay back to the community.

In the image above you can see the Inbox, the key is to keep on top of it and check these sites out. Also in the image above you can see my stats, I have been in Entrecard for a little over a week and have had over 200 visitors thanks to Entrecard. To put this in perspective I have been displaying the Blogrush Widget on my site for three months and had only 16 visitors from Blogrush. Might be time to rethink that piece of real estate on my blog. Entrecard is turning out to be a fun little community to be a part of that is growing each and every day. I have found some really great blogs that I might have never found thanks to Entrecard.

First I have to tell you, I am the worlds lousiest Internet Marketer. I read all the Guru’s blogs and subscribe to a couple hundred RSS Feeds from fellow internet marketers and I still am having a hard time getting the hang of Adsense. I build the sites, put on quality articles and still no adsense. I spent all day Sunday reading about this new community Swypefile.com , posted a few articles, wrote a post in my Blog and of course Swyped a few sites. Today was my best Adsense earnings ever, I have to assume it came from [Tag-Tec]Swypefile[/Tag-Tec]. Anybody know how I can track my Adsense clicks to see where they are coming from? Gotta go, Time to check out what’s going on over at Swypefile.com

What you never heard of [Tag-Tec]BlogRush[/Tag-Tec]? Just look to the right of this post and you can see this great new widget in action. So how does it work? BlogRush is a network of blogs that run this widget on their blog, when the widget is loaded it contains 5 links that are blog post titles to other BlogRush members posts. When you click on one of the links in the widget it opens a new browser window bringing you to the blog and the full post. When you sign up and use this widget on your blog you earn credits for each time the widget is loaded, you also earn credits based on all the activity through 10 levels of referrals.

BlogRush now in Phase 2 has pulled the plug on 10,000 blogs that was using this widget due to not adhering to the rules. With greater reporting statistics and a more streamlined dashboard, users can eally get an idea of what credits they have earned and what credits have been used along with what posts have been read from readers of blogs that clicked on their posts from within the BlogRush widget. Since releasing Phase 2 BlogRush has seen a 42% increase in click-rates across the entire network of blogs according to [Tag-Tec]John Reese[/Tag-Tec] at [Tag-Tec]Income.com[/Tag-Tec].

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