Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Contest#1.1 - review my blog

I'm still a bit disappointed about the feedback to my first contest. But we'll just try it again and make it simple this time.

What can you win ?
1st place: Ad spot (125x125) on my blog until the end of the year
three random entries will get 1000 ECs each

First place will be selected via vote on this site. Other prizes I'll do a draw from all entries.

How do you win ?
All you have to do is post a review of my blog on your blog or website and leave a comment here linking to that post. Your review should include the following points:

  • general blog review
  • best post and worst post
  • at least one improvement suggestion
Voting on the entries will start on 18th of september and will last until 25th of september.

Good luck to all....

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Monday, August 16, 2010

Halftime results

August is half way through it's time to check how I'm on my way to achieve the goal I set me. My goal for august was to get 1000 visits for the month. So far I only got 273 visits so I'm not on target so far. Also I think some of the effects should be kicking in later in the month. Let's check my list of actions:

  • be active on entrecard => check ... 178 visits where from entrecard + 19 from entrecard ads
  • implement a new design => still open :-(
  • do a contest => check ... I started my first contest, but I am not happy with the results so far. Until now not a single person entered and it only lead to ~10 visits from different shout boxes where I announced it. Plus 15 visits from a comment I left at one other blog. Any feedback why you don't like the contest or why you think others don't enter is highly appreciated.
  • other actions => I think a very good way is by useful comments on other blogs. So I'll add that to my action list.
So I've got ~750 visits to go in 15 days. Which means approx. 50 per day. The contest is open for one more week and some people really should enter in the last few days. If you are the only one entering you will get 1400 ECs and the ad spot until the end of september. The ad spot is worth at least another ~1500 ECs. Remember even just entering will gain you 400 ECs if you are one of the first three to join.

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Friday, August 6, 2010

Contest#1

A couple of days ago I posted about my goals for this month and one of the items on my action list was to finally do a contest to help generate traffic. Here is it! And because I just recently found a nice way to make some change on the side by reading articles the objective of this contest is also set.
The winner of the contest will be determined by who can make the most money via readbud in two weeks. What is the prize for the lucky winner...because as we all know there can be only one. Whoever wins will get:

  • A 125x125 link banner on this blog until the end of september
  • 1000 Entrecard credits
If you want to take part in this contest all you have to do is make a short blogpost about the contest on your blog whichs shows your current readbug balance (so people who already made some money there don't have an advantage) and then leave a comment here with a link to this post. On saturday in two weeks you should make another post on your blog showing how much you earned until then.
I'll do a shoutout on my blog to the top five and how much they made and the first will receive the prize. Good luck to all of you!!

Update: The first three joining the contest will receive 400 ECs each just for joining.

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Thursday, August 5, 2010

Read articles to earn money

Some might already know that option but I just discovered this easy way to earn some money today. There is no startup cost and you don't need to provide any private details besides an email address.

readbud - get paid to read and rate articles

All you have to do is read some articles and rate them between 1 and 5 stars depending how well written they were.
You can choose between different topics from which you like to read articles. I found about 1/3 of the articles I read so far really interesting and useful. So I actually enjoyed reading them. Very few where really bad and sometimes hard to read. But it really is a good way to get some interesting ideas from the topic you have choosen which might even help you for own posts.
And as I already said you get paid to do it. Here is the payment structure which depends on the number of lines the text has:
  • Under 100 : 1 cent
  • Between 101 and 200 : 2 cents
  • Between 201 and 300 : 3 cents
  • Between 301 and 400 : 4 cents
  • Between 401 and 500 : 5 cents
  • Between 501 and 600 : 6 cents
  • Between 601 and 700 : 7 cents
  • Between 701 and 800 : 8 cents
  • Between 801 and 900 : 9 cents
  • Between 901 and 1500 : 10 cents
  • Between 1501 and 2000 : 15 cents
  • Over 2000 : 20 cents
So what are you waiting for sign up now...it's free and easy.

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Tuesday, August 3, 2010

setting a goal

A new month has begun and most people are setting goals on how much money to make or how much traffic to achieve. But in my opinion many bloggers are missing important things when settings goals. They say "I made $y last month and i wanna make $x this month by blogging". That of course is a goal but if you achieve it or not often seems to be determined by chance. If you set yourself a goal you should always focuse on the following items:

  • the goal
  • a timeframe until you want to achieve it
  • a plan of action to get there
  • (constant) reflecting if you are still on your way
the goal
The goal you want to achieve should be set realistically but as high as possible.Never set easy goals for yourself. You don't get anything for achieving easy targets besides an ego boost. If you miss a goal that was set to high you still achieved something. If you set yourself a target that's impossible to reach it is also impossible or very hard to reflect on what you actually achieved.
In my special case I got a blasting 146 visits on this blog in the last month. While I was not very active. My goal for this month is to have 1000 visits by the end of this month.

the timeframe
In this scenario of course the timeframe is already given. But if you wanna achieve other goals like a certain amount of money or something else you still should always set a fixed date by when you wanna reach this goal. Otherwise people always tend to get lazy and do things "soon".

plan of action
This is what must bloggers seem to miss. They want to achieve something but it often seems just like wishful thinking. They always miss that they have to do something to reach their goal. Of course if you set your aim at the same result as last month you only have to continue what you are doing. But that's not having a goal...
You should have a plan on what you want/have to do to achive your goal. That can be a whole list of items. And if possible you should already estimate how that will help you to reach your goal.
In my current case my list of actions is:
  • Be active on entrecard => this should gain me about 10 visits each day (310 total)
  • Implement a new design for the blog => longterm
  • Do a contest to get backlinks and visitors => longterm + approx. 400 visits
  • Post more often (at least once a week) => +5 visits from blogger (160 total)

reflecting on your progess
Using the plan of action you can also trace your progress:
  • What have I already done and how much did I achieve by doing it?
  • Did a certain action really "gain" me as much as I thought?
  • Am I still on pace to reach my goal ?
  • Are there other actions that might help me to reach my goal ?
I will write a post about the progress of my goal in two weeks from now (17th of august) and reflect on all these questions. And see if my actions are working and if I estimated some of the traffic correct.

Even though this post uses my personal plan to gain more readers I think it shows the important points for all kind of goals someone tries to achieve.
Hope this helps others to achieve their montly goals too.....

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Monday, July 26, 2010

entrecard - why you should drop your card

as you might already know from my previous post i use entrecard. i wrote a short description about how entrecard works here. today i wanna show you some results if you use entrecard and how much traffic you can expect just by dropping entrecards on other blogs.
there are three reasons you should drop cards. and you should drop many and frequently.
1) each drop earns you one credit - which can be used to advertise on other blogs. so if you drop enough cards you can get a lot of incoming links to your site each day.

2) most people are going to have a look at your blog after you drop a card at their site. have a look at the following screen shot of my stats.

the last graphic shows the number of cards i dropped on other blogs. now let's have a look at that last peak and what happened after it. i dropped 120 cards on that day. and received a total of 36 cards over the next 4 days. plus a total of 33 clicks to my blog from entrecard. as you can see i did not have any adverts running at this time so all this cards and clicks are a direct result of my own dropping.
i did get about one click for every 4th card i dropped. with the possibility to drop up to 300 cards each day this would result in about 75 clicks from entrecard alone. that's a good way to generate some traffic for any blog and especially newer or smaller blogs.

my next step will be to analyze how effective the adverts are working and if it's better to invest in one expensive advert or multiple cheaper ones.

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