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This has certainly put me off from commenting on such blogs.  Why? Blogging is 2 ways.  Usually if you’re commenting on an article you’re either interested in the subject and learning or you’re first hand experience in the subject.  Surely this type of interaction benefits both the author and the reader?

Comments are great.  If they contain some interesting.  This could be a different direction on the subject in hand or maybe some advice that could enhance your thoughts/opinions. With all this in mind it gives me reasoning behind adding the commentluv plugin. What is the commentluv plugin?

Pass a bit of luv onto your commenters by providing a titled link to their last blog post. This plugin attempts to parse the feed of the comment author by visiting their site and looking in the standard locations for a feed. If no default feed is found, it will attempt to parse the users page for a feed link and parse that instead.
* source : http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/commentluv/

This blog is still in birth really but the commentluv plugin I hope will entice readers to comment

While I think it’s important to earn some cash from online posts I am a firm believer that this takes time and slapping on a shed load of adverts on a 3 week old blog or a blog that has < 1000 subscribers is just a waste of time.  There are alot of blogs out there making money online and while being successful it is the result of phased stages and strategic thinking.

I have put on the top of my list to go back to entrecard and start using it to its full potential. Might not be anytime this month, but soon.  I have a couple of blogs in my favourites that use entrecard so getting off the starting block should be simple.  I hope that using such a system will also bring the discovery of new blogs.

Another form of media is podcasting.  There are thousands of podcasts out there each bringing there unique slant to the table.  Podcast subjects vary from music, health, fitness and business. While there are numerous podcast directorys out there this site comes with a difference.

The site which is very new has a slant in which it’s driven by the community. When a podcast is submitted the author can add a widget to his or her site with the amount of times it’s been tuned into. The more tune ins the more exposure the podcast gets.

Already I have found some interesting podcasts that I wouldn’t of normally found.  You should check it out www.podcastkicks.com

flock logo

The number of social networks out there are increasing every day.  Trying to keep up would take a good amount of organisation.  It’s the norm that us as users will sign up to the site “that’s in” and after looking about and getting use to the new car smell the initial idea can eventually wear off. 

Off the top of my head I know I have an account over at You Tube, Flickr, Facebook, Digg and Stumbleupon.  There are many ways to keep up to date with these sites.  It could be using a rss feed that you’ve added to your reader or your online presence, netvibes.  This is where I introduce Flock.  The Flock browser is powered by Mozilla and is aimed at the social side of the web.

Flock is focused on fundamentally evolving the browser, bringing a refreshing new approach to how people use and participate on the web and simplifying social and web-based applications by bringing them one step closer to the user and integrating them directly into the browser.
* source flock.com

Once installed it’s so easy to add all the relevant information so the browser can go away and work its magic. If you like your social networks then this browser could make it easier to compile a daily list of changes, additions and updates.  What you waiting for, check out Flock.com

Congratulations to all the took place.  Recent browser figures show that FireFox now has a 39% hold over I.E 7 which sits at 26% and I.E 6 at 27%.

Source: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

Within the month I have dropped about 350 cards which really isn’t alot considering the upper limit a day is 300.  I am still using a default entrecard design aswell which in all seriousness isn’t that nice.
As for other blogs on my entrecard I am getting about 4 a week.  Think this has something to do with the fact my blog costs only 8 or 16 ec a day.

Where do I go from here?  This week I am going to focus on the design of my entrecard while looking into sites that I personally find interesting that I want to drop on.

Once the above is complete then I will start dropping to the limit allowed and taking note of traffic.

People who blog should always have some sort of quality control. This checklist would involve making sure no mistakes were found, something like the following?

• Check the title has no spelling or grammer mistakes.
• Can the title be expanded on?
• Does the context of the post read right?
• Is the context of the post free from spelling mistakes?
• Is the post structure right in relation to H1 - H5?
• Could an image be used instead of trying to explain something?

What annoys me is that if i start reading an article and such basics aren’t met then I’ll just stop. This is a shame as I have no doubt that the authors who are writing these articles know what they’re talking about but when it comes to the even the basics, it’s a big put off.

Mistakes happen, could be down to being tired, writing in a rush or even having a short attention span.  I myself tend to drift off when writing a long post. If I notice myself drifting off I tend to save the post in draft mode and come back to it at a later time. This results in the post having my full attention and being able to go through my checklist before going live.

If you blog be sure to set yourself some standards, step back from it, pretend you’re a reader not an author. Doing this may help not to deter people like myself.

Entrecard is an easy way to network with other blog owners;

 The whole point of this system is that you place a widget somewhere on your blog whereby other bloggers on the network come along and “drop” you.  This drop adds 1 credit to you and also the dropper receives 1 credit.  As more and more bloggers come along and drop on you the more your blog is worth.

When I say worth I mean part of the widget is used to advertise other blogs.  If somone wants to advertise on your widget then they would do it through the campaign section within the entrecard dashboard. The amount of credits is dictated by the amount of drops and the popularity of people wanting to advertise on your blog.  For more information check out the entrecard blog.

When you signup you put yourself into a category your site matches.  This way other blogs on the same level as you can apply to advertise and can read your blog. Another part of the signup is uploading an image that you can use on your entrecard. Currently I am using one of the basic ones but have found a nice little source of pre-made ones: http://www.romelo.com/2008/04/07/generic-cards-for-entrecard-members/

I’m hesitant to use them though as I am not sure if the images are from Romelo’s own collection or if these have been taken from somewhere else where permission is needed. I tried to post on his post but got an ajax error about not being able to post.  I managed to comment on the page and kindly enough Melo posted a comment below confirming that the images can be used.  Fantastic.  If you click on the above link and get a 404 it’s due to Melo updating it with more templates to use, so check back at a later date.

One of the reasons I joined was to generate some traffic and to read some blogs  that I would never normally read or find.  Already I have discovered some interesting reads of which I plan on sharing my thoughts