Entrecard and Constant Contact and Commission Junction, Oh my!

You are likely sitting there in your chair, looking at that title and thinking I'm completely off my rocker. Sure, I haven't posted in awhile, but this is a good one.

How would anyone in their sane mind, think to combine Entrecard with Constant Contact or even Commission Junction? Well ladies and gentlemen, prepare to be amazed.

First, lets begin with a step by step rundown.

1. All Bloggers should have an Entrecard account, it's free and it can generate wonderful traffic. If not, sign up at www.entrecard.com

2. From here you have 2 options, depending on your blog's traffic. If you have a blog that generates a lot of traffic, then you should be able to simply put the widget on your site and leave it, just occasionally confirming ads for your site so you get EC's. If you site only generates mild traffic, you can use Sitehoppin, with this, you can stumble across various sites that have entrecard installed, and just drop your card, this will also generate EC's for you.

3. Now the fun starts. I don't think I've promoted Constant Contact before, but they are a great email marketing service, the best part, 60 days free!

4. After you sign up with CC, you need to generate EC's like a madman. Inside the shop, someone will post a sale for Opt-In email addresses. Buy Them!

5. Now go back to Constant Contact and type up an advertisement for one of your products from Commission Junction, and then send. Rinse/Repeat every time you see a new auction for Addresses, and you can make yourself some quick cash for a little bit of work.

Another great thing about Constant Contact is that you get your own personal representative to help you along your way. I was rather surprised after I signed up and about 2 days later I had a live person calling me asking how I was liking everything, and offering to send me tutorials and such. They sure invest a lot in a 60 day trial, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to keep it. Unfortunately, it's the email equivalent of cold calling, so many people will simply delete your email, but if you keep at it, you will eventually get enough people to click it.

Good luck, at let me know what you think!

Blogging Tip: 10 Ways to stay focused on the task at hand.

This article can be used for multiple purposes, not just for those who are taking the blogging for money pathway. Lets face it, you will not make money on anything if you aren't focused. Here's 10 tips for anyone to use to make sure they are on the top of their game.

10. Set Goals: Before you can execute, you need to know what you're looking to do. If you just went into a blog without any goal, you would have no reason to do anything.

9. Don't over commit: Make sure the goals you lie down are goals you can attain, sure, I could make the goal of of 10,000 visitors to my blog, and a new post every day, but with the rest of my life, this simply isn't feasible.

8. Don't worry: As long as you are doing something you care about, or in this case, writing about something you care about, don't worry about what your next post will be about, brainstorm, you will get it.

7. Be organized: Know what you are going to do before you do it. I have my blog topics set usually about a week out, so that way I can finally adhere to a normal posting schedule. Keep notes, knowing what you are going to do takes a lot of the stress out of it.

6. Work/Life balance: If you decide to blog full time, don't spend your day researching, typing, editing, linking, etc. Spend awhile brainstorming, type a little bit, edit later. If you work 24/7 you will burn yourself out so fast, there is no point in doing it.

5. Minimize distractions: I have 3 internet browsers, IE (because it comes with the computer), Firefox (for Stumbleupon, before it was IE compatible) and Opera. I do all my blog posting in Opera, not because it's easier or more compatible, but because stumbleupon doesn't work for it, so I'm not tempted to start stumbling while I'm trying to post.

4. Reward yourself: Make sure you know your reward ahead of time, it gives you a reason to push. (My first AdSense payout will buy me xyz.)

3. Prioritize: Know what's important to you, if you have side-projects and little time, figure whats most important. I have a few blogs I run, this one is one of the only ones that have a regular reader group, so I know I will need to get new content on time because people expect it.

2. Minimize side-projects: This will cause you to want to jump around, with 1 topic, you're more likely to stay motivated simply because it will begin to excite you more and more.

1. Stay Unfocused: Sure, this post is about staying focused, but this blog is about making money, most of my ideas are ideas brought to be by stumbling or just trying new things, if I was focused all the time, this blog would rarely be updated and never any good content.

Side note:
My personal favorite way to stay focused is to be organized. My day usually consists of a set schedule. Wake -> Work -> Check Taketheinternetback for new content -> Check analytics and AdSense -> Stumble -> Post -> Check Entrecard for other bloggers posts -> Sleep. Of course add in eating and various off the computer activities, but I find if my computer time is set, I stay focused better.

Blogging Tip: Generating Traffic with Entrecard

For those of you who took up the blogging for money hobby that I posted a week or so ago, or really anyone who has a blog, may want to check this service out. It's called Entrecard, advertised as "your internet business card".

It's an extremely easy service to use, and to date it has generated more blog traffic for me than Stumbleupon or Digg. Here's how it works:

Step 1: Visit Entrecard.com, click the giant link that says "Sign Up FREE", follow the prompts and you're good to go.

Step 2: Create an eye catching 125x125 logo, this is all you get, so make it good.

Step 3: You earn credits by dropping your card on other peoples widgets, when someone clicks your widget or when someone advertises on your link.

Step 4: Make sure to pay attention to your Dashboard, pending advertising offers come in as soon as the code hits your blog, simply because you're cheap, to put it bluntly. Your price is determined by how many people drop cards on your site. Example; to advertise on 03Cents, it will cost you 24 credits as of 2/06, against ProBlogger which costs 356 credits.

Tips and Tricks

1. Use SiteHoppin'; This browser in a browser will allow you to browse sites that use entrecard similar to how you can browse the web with stumbleupon, only this requires no sign up, no download, just clicking 2 buttons, 1 to change sites, the other to drop your card.

2. Research your site, if you have the Alexa tool bar, you can see a sites Page rank and Alexa rank. Use this to your advantage when choosing what site to place your ad on.

3. Scrape the bottom, sometimes you can get more traffic by putting your ad on 10 10 ec priced pages than 1 page for 100. This goes back to tip 2, when someone is new to Entrecard, their pages will be cheap to advertise on, but they may have tons of hits.

For those who go this route, what have you had the best luck with?

Blogging for Money

This one of the most widely used online money making techniques, blogging. A blog is easy to set up, easy to operate, and all you really need is something to say.

How do you know if blogging is for you? Here's 5 questions to ask yourself.

1. Do you have time for it?
If you are serious about blogging for money, you want to be able to put yourself in it. This blog will never take-off like some out there, for one simple reason, I don't have the time to put my whole self into it.

2. Do you have enough to say?
Sure, you can sit here and ramble off a couple ideas that may make great blog posts, but if you run out of steam within 2 weeks, you blog will sink and that will be the end. Give your readers something to come back for and they will.

3. Can you keep up with the times?
No one wants to read about something they already know about. Stay with the times, post as it's happening. As of 1/25/08, Congressional Economic Plan, Heath Ledger, both big items, already old news, stay with the times, know whats happening NOW.

4. Can you keep up with the technology?
Technology changes, you want to be able to master the art of traffic, without vistors, you're writing a diary. Know how stumbleupon works, submit to digg, make sure you have an RSS feed, without these, your hoping someone falls upon your site and tells 500 people, the odds of this? 1 in a million, with the rise of social bookmarking, you can go from 0 to 100 visitors in a matter of hours if properly used. I will write a later post about this so you may want to subscribe to the RSS feed.

5. Do you really want to do this?
Sure, I can stand here and say,"leik omg, blogging is so totally cool and everyone should like do it!" and everyone will jump gleefully and start posting their own blogs. But in order to be successful in blogging, you have to want to do it. A writer not involved in their work shows. It seems like easy sailing, but it does take a little work, although blogging is much easier than some forms of work involving writing.

So you decided to stay, good to hear. Hopefully over the coming months, we can share some good ideas on making a successful blog, for testing purposes, I have created another blog where we can compare techniques for adsense placement and various other ideas. Head on over to 02sense.blogspot.com to check it out, I'm going for a humor/satire angle for the site, tell me what you think.

So let's get started:

Step 1: Find yourself a good host, I use blogspot, obviously, it allows me to alter the html for the template and also add any widgets of my liking. This is very nice when it comes to posting adjustments, say the digg window on the right side, or the bookmarking tools on the bottom, all edited on the template. Wordpress is nice as well, loads of customization, the only downside to wordpress is the need to host your own site. The wordpress hosting site will not allow javascript, so you will be unable to monetize.

Step 2: Find a topic, this could really be step 1, but if you don't know where to put it, no sense in having an idea. Finding a good niche is always a good idea, if you're too general it will be hard to keep traffic, but also beware of being too specific as it may alienate some readers, think of it this way.

If I write a blog aimed at "Men" or even "Men aged 18-45" it's too broad, different men always have different tastes, a 20 year old college student in NYC may find something very different intriguing than a 35 year old father of 2 living in TX. Also, you don't want to be too specific, how many left handed women, aged 32, living in Oklahoma, who's favorite color is teal, can there be?

Step 3: Read up on the topic. Things change, make sure what you're writing is up to date. If you want to come across as an expert in your field, make sure you know it, having a career in the field is good, who better to write about computer programming than a computer programmer?

Step 4: Monetize. Go with adsense first and foremost, there is NO reason why not to. Also look into specific companies to promote with commission junction.


What you do after this is totally up to you, please check back in with me as I will be adding some more blog tips to the site. Also check out other blogging sites like ProBlogger, there is an abundance of information there for you to read.