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Archive for December, 2007 Page 3 of 4
I am always on the lookout for new blog promotion ideas and techniques - which is why I signed up for and have been trying out Entrecard for a few days (entrecard.com). This is one of the newest in a long line of web 2.0 style widgets, designed for blog sidebars. This widget idea goes beyond blogging though, as it can be implemented on any web platform, but it definitely fits the blog-widget genre. The idea is pretty simple - every person who signs up creates an “entrecard” - basically a 125×125 pixel ad, or business card, to promote your site. You have the option to “drop your card” on the widget of any other Entrecard member, which puts your card in their inbox.
Things quickly get more complicated when you introduce the features found beyond “drop a card.” There is a credit system, and for every dropped card you earn a credit - but that’s not where it ends. Credits can be used to buy the advertising space provided on other sites, by every entrecard widget. There is an approval system, so any advertising request has to be approved by the potential adspace owner, and the purchase price for each user’s entrecard space is figured based on the number of cards people have dropped into the inbox of that user. Confused yet? It gets even better - as a publisher of people’s ads you earn credits equal to half of the cost to advertise on your widget. Ads run for 24 hour blocks, and each user’s account has a limited number of spaces in the ad queue. In writing this I have found that it is a very hard system to describe, and I would suggest that everyone look into it for themselves if they are still confused.
There are a few flaws in the Entrecard system that I have found in my days of testing. Firstly, it seems that the longer a user is involved in the network, the more credits they will amass, and the more credits it will cost to advertise in their adspace. Basically, newbs don’t have a chance to do much advertising, and they may find it hard to catch up to a user who joined a week ago. They may never be able to attain enough credits to advertise where they would like, because the prices for most sites are continually increasing as people drop cards on their widgets. As the network grows in size some of these issues might become less obvious, and get spread out over a larger group of people - but the fundamental problem of a pyramid structure, isn’t necessarily sustainable. Newbies are also overwhelmed upon joining the program, because initially the cost to buy an ad from a newb is only 2 credits, and all of the existing users flood them with requests, in an attempt to get a good deal on advertising.
Secondly, some of the widgets (including the one currently found in my left sidebar) aren’t easily identifiable as anything beyond a 125×125 ad - the entrecard network isn’t displayed prominently enough in some of the widgets. It blends in as just another ad.
Lastly, because a user can change their display ad whenever they want, a publisher has an impossible job as editor - you may approve an ad that looks decent today, to be displayed on your blog in 3 days, but if in 2 days that user changes their ad to something you would rather not see on your blog, you are left with two options - either let it run - or cancel the ad and look like a jerk; and that’s assuming that you log into your account and notice the change. I would like to see the feature added that once an ad is approved, that image is locked in for that ad run, even if the user changes their card before it runs.
The big question that is important for a service/widget like entrecard is, does it actually drive traffic? As a new user, I actually did get a rush of traffic from people checking out my site as I dropped my card around the network. I got a good number of referrals from the actual “campaign” area of the service (listing of sites to advertise on) while my cost to advertise was only 2-5 credits, but now that my price is 16 credits, that traffic seems to have trickled off. I believe that if I continually dropped my card for other bloggers I might get a small trickle of traffic, but I don’t find that it’s worth the effort, as many entrecard users are likely ignoring the cards that flood into their inbox (like I am). The still unanswered question is, do the purchased ads actually drive traffic? Of course, this would depend entirely on the traffic at the publisher sites, but my results so far have not been good (only 2 clicks for purchased ads so far) - this may improve once I expand my purchased ads, or target higher profile blogs, but for now it’s not sending me much.
I think with a few changes entrecard could have a good run - and may even stick around as a useful service that isn’t forgotten after a few weeks, but it will have to evolve with the community, and make beneficial changes continuously. Also, I have to say that it’s launch on the blogosphere has been impressively well executed. I also like the interface - I haven’t found any problems with it, and it is easy to follow and well set up. If you run a blog, definitely try it out, but try not to get wrapped up in the card dropping madness.
Traffic Driving Ability: 
3/5
3/5
Widget Quality: 3/5
Launch Quality: 4/5
Potential: 4/5
Interface: 4/5
Overall Rating: 
What do you think of Entrecard so far?
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Spend five minutes in the morning throwing ingredients into a pot, and when you come home at night, it’s a delicious, hot, nutritious meal - it’s the promise of a slow cooker, and something I’ve been hoping to achieve for months. Last week I decided to finally go after my goal, and I bought a Hamilton Beach slow cooker, model number 33157. It was about $22, a very reasonable price compared to some of the competing slow cookers on the market. It is black and silver, fits 6.5 quarts, and goes nicely in my kitchen. Unfortunately, I don’t have counter space to leave it out all the time, but I have a feeling it might be out on the counter quite frequently anyway.
I have only made one meal in my Hamilton Beach slow cooker so far, but it turned out great. I had no problems unpacking and setting up this slow cooker, and I was quickly on my way to cooking a delicious dinner within a few minutes. It has “low”, “high”, and “keep warm” settings, and each seems to work as required. Most of the day it was set at “low” - and worked perfectly, at the end of the cook cycle it was set to “high” and definitely got more heated than “low”, and worked well. “Keep warm” also worked perfect, as I left the meal on this setting for about 30 minutes after it was done, with good results. The lid seems to sit well in it’s place, and I had no spillage during my inaugural cooking.
I am planning to use it for more meals in the near future, as well as for a dip recipe I have, Caesar artichoke dip; I expect that it will work well. The fact that it has a decent capacity means that I will be able to use it for most recipes, and I don’t have to limit myself because of size. I guess it’s not incredibly impressive for a slow cooker to work correctly, but I don’t have any complaints about any of the functions or features of this slow cooker, so I have to say I am satisfied. The one feature I haven’t yet used is a “travel strap” that is basically a big rubber band that holds the lid in place, in order to move the cooker and ingredients to a new location (like a holiday party) without any spills. I am not really that impressed with this “feature” and I doubt I will ever use it, but I can see how it might come in handy.
Cooking Ability: 5/5
5/5
Price: 4/5
Appearance: 4/5
Capacity: 4/5
Overall Rating:
Do you use a slow cooker? What cool features does yours have?
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I’ve been hearing radio commercials for the Carl’s Jr. Green Burrito Taco Salad for a few weeks now, so it was only natural that while sitting at work last week, this was the first thing that popped into my head as an idea for lunch. Unfortunately, the idea popped into my head about 3 hours before lunch time, and I spent most of that three hours making myself hungry thinking about delicious mexican food. I have always enjoyed taco salads, and even though it is a fast-food burger restaurant, I figured I should give Carl’s Jr.’s rendition a try.
I know what you are probably thinking right about now, “this guy’s diet sure is unhealthy.” I’ll be the first to admit, my history of food reviews so far doesn’t paint a portrait of healthy living, and this review certainly won’t help (this taco salad comes in at nearly 1000 calories), but in the future I’ll try to come up with some healthier food reviews, just for you. For now, on to the calorie-fest…
Unfortunately, I went into this lunch plan without any idea of what this meal would cost me, and being the frugal person I am, this concerned me. Unfortunately, after thinking for the past three hours about eating a taco salad for lunch, I really didn’t have a choice. I was therefore somewhat disappointed when I ordered the taco salad, and found out that it was going to cost me $5. My ideal lunch budget doesn’t go over $3, but I guess sometimes it’s okay to splurge a little, to try something new, and get something new to review in the process; at the same time, I probably won’t order this again because of the price. Fortunately for me, when it came time to pay, the woman at the cash register rang up my order wrong and only charged me $4.02 - I offered to pay the remaining 98 cents, but she told me not to worry about it, and I got my lunch at a 20% discount.
A little cheered up by my unexpected discount, I dug into the taco salad, eager to quell my hunger that had grown so large. Thankfully, this taco salad was actually very tasty, so there was no problem in filling the void in my stomach. In fact, this was a very filling meal, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The Carl’s Jr. version of a taco salad includes a crispy shell, refried beans, lettuce, salsa, hot sauce, ground beef, two types of shredded cheese, and sour cream. The “salad” part of the name is of course almost a joke, the lettuce drowned out by all of the other delicious ingredients, and I found all of the ingredients to be fresh and good. Basically, I got just what I was expecting; there wasn’t anything that made this taco salad stand out above the rest, and there wasn’t anything that made it less desirable either, but it was very satisfying. This meal was a bit messy, but well worth the extra napkins.
One thing that confuses me about this taco salad is the “Green Burrito” prefix on the name - I don’t know what burritos might have to do with a taco salad, but I am guessing that maybe “Green Burrito” is a brand name that I haven’t heard of. If you have any insight on this issue, I would be happy to hear from you.
Taste: 4/5
4/5
Price: 2/5
Uniqueness: 3/5
Freshness: 5/5
Overall Rating:
Have you tried Carl’s Jr.’s Taco Salad yet? What did you think of it? Have a recommendation for a better taco salad?, leave me a comment!
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As I’ve mentioned in previous posts I recently moved into a new rental house, which of course means I had to go through the aggravating process of cleaning up after myself at my old apartment, including my least favorite cleaning adventure, the bathroom. Two months before moving out I ran out of “daily shower spray” - and I was unfortunately too forgetful to ever get a new bottle, so my shower wasn’t in great shape when we moved out. After trying all the normal cleaning supplies with no luck I was referred to the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser.
It’s a presumptuous name for a product, and I was prepared to be disappointed with it’s cleaning ability, but I have to admit that this “magic” sponge lives up to it’s name. The magic eraser’s ability to easily wipe grime off of my bathtub was very impressive, and left me wondering what kind of innovative material it is made of, as it is obviously the material and not a chemical that is doing the cleaning when using this sponge. A quick stop over at Wikipedia let me know that the magic eraser is made of a material called formaldehyde-melamine-sodium bisulfite copolymer, a microporous material, which acts as a kind of small-scale sandpaper. After using the sponge, and seeing the way that dirt and grime seemed to flake off of the bath surface, this makes a lot of sense.
This product is sold in packages of two sponges, and is pretty reasonably priced - I picked up the two-pack for about $2. I ended up needing four total sponges to completely clean my bathroom, but they worked so much better than anything else I tried, and they were well worth the price. I also learned in the process that I probably shouldn’t ignore my bathroom cleaning for so long in the future - but we’ll see how it goes.
The only downside about the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser is that it comes in a package with the creepy picture of “Mr. Clean” stamped on the front - he has a crazy look on his face, and he seems so out of place on a cleaning product. He would certainly fit much better on a pirate ship, or possibly in a biker bar. I would like to suggest to Procter & Gamble that they quit the entire “Mr. Clean” line, and start over with a less creepy mascot.
Cleaning Ability: 5/5
5/5
Price: 4/5
Creepy Packaging: 2/5
Overall Rating:
Have you ever tried these sponges? What did you think? What’s your favorite bathroom cleaning product?
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Due to a great response to my request for blogs to review, I was feeling motivated to write another blog feedback post, so here it is. Thanks everyone for the great response to my request, and I will try to get through the waiting list as quickly as possible, but I do have to leave room for other reviews as well.
This is a “blog feedback” post. To learn more about my blog feedback category, please visit the Blog Feedback section. Below are a few reviews of other blogs. I would like to thank the blog owners for submitting their blogs for reviews.
Blog #1
Money News - My Financial History
http://moneyne-ws.blogspot.com/
First Impressions: This blog took a long time to load - possibly because of all the external widgets in the sidebar. I like the theme, and the blog title and subtitle seem to let me know right away what I should expect. I noticed a lot of ads right away, but they are not intrusive, and I think they work well for the number of them.
Aesthetics: I do like your theme, it has a good color palette, and it’s simple. The only thing about it is, it reminds me of a lot of blogger themes, and so you don’t necessarily stand out from the crowd. This isn’t something that is very easy to do, but you may decide to work on it later on, because having a unique look can help keep visitors looking at the site for a bit longer.
Your sidebars are very cluttered. I was scrolling through looking for things that you might want to remove, and there are surprisingly less extras than most people have. I would suggest removing the technorati favorites button, the labels (or make it so that it is collapsible, and collapsed by default, although I am not sure if this is an option in blogger), the blog directory buttons, maybe the blogcatalog widget, and maybe the bumpzee widget. You might also consider moving the google search box to the top of the sidebar where people might notice it, otherwise it probably isn’t worth keeping either.
I find the “recent comments” on the footer of the page to be mis-placed, you may want to either remove it or move it to the sidebar, I doubt it will get much use in the footer.
I like your About Me blurb, but you might want to add a sentence that explains that you make some of your online money through playing games - as this isn’t common for “make money” blogs.
Content: You have focused content, with good posts. The only concern I have for your content is, some visitors might be looking for the “John Chow” style of “make money online” site, and while you cover all aspects, it seems that your focus is on making money in online gaming. Maybe I am off track here, but if I am right, you might want to change your sub-title, or in some other way signify that you post a lot about your experiences in WoW. Maybe a custom header image with art from the game?
Overall: You don’t necessarily stand out from the crowd visually, but I think you have the critical need for good content somewhat tackled. You have a well defined niche, and I imagine if people find the blog, you won’t have trouble building a core audience. To help increase load time and reduce clutter, you may want to trim down the sidebar. Keep up the good work in writing unique and interesting posts.
Blog #2
Suburbian Queen
http://suburbqueen.blogspot.com/
First Impressions: You have a nice, simple theme. I like the fact that the leaves and berries (is that what they are?) are repeated, and that your color scheme matches the background/header.
I like how the “queen” theme is repeated throughout the sidebar.
While it’s not defined in the title, I felt that I knew what type of blog I was on just by seeing it for a few seconds, so you have done a good job of giving your blog a setting and a feel.
Aesthetics: It seems that your header might be too similar in style and coloration as the background, because it doesn’t necessarily stand out as a unique image. You might consider working with your header in an attempt to make it stand out more, or possibly lighten up the background image so it’s not so bold.
It took me a few minutes browsing around to notice the links at the top, under the google link bar. You might consider making these stand out more by using a brighter color, possibly one from the background berries.
Content: Your writing is very easy to read, engaging, and consistent. I like the philosophical undertone that you have in a lot of your posts, you certainly seem to have plenty to write about and a lot to say, and you have a subtle humor that works well.
Overall: Great blog. You seem to know exactly what you are doing, and you a have a purpose in blogging. I don’t have a lot of suggestions for you, but thank you for submitting anyway :)
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