Entrecard Test Number 2

The results from my second EntreCard test are complete.

I spent a little over 700 credits on advertising. A couple ads were 64 credits and most I picked up days before the test at 4 credits.

My best performing ad cost 64 credits and generated close to 80 visitors. This is by far the best ad I have ever purchased.

What did the visitors do that came in from Entrecard. Not much. I picked up over 100 drops and about 5 RSS subscribers. Comments increased by a couple. But overall not much happened.

My suggestion for Entrecard is to spend the credits you have on advertising. Spend them all. Check back once a week and spend whatever credits you have accumulated.

If I am in the mood to browse new blogs I might do some dropping, but I don't see any value in dropping as a means to earn credits.

Entrecard is a nice site, but the traffic is not worth spending time earning credits.

Michael

The Economy News Mover

Have you noticed the sharp ups and downs on Wall Street. Investors are buying and selling like crazy.

Have you noticed the news media around the current state of our economy. Notice any trends?

Everyone wants to know where the bottom is so they can buy back in or buy more to offset their losses.

The only problem is there is no way to tell when we are at the bottom until prices go up and keep going up.

The news constantly reports how bad things are. For example a couple months ago the big story was the price of gas. But instead of mentioning how cheap gas is now they report that the price of a barrel of oil dropped and how bad that is for the economy.

Sounds to me like the media should look for the positive in things and report the truth in a positive manner.

The 3-4 day cycle we are currently seeing is showing no signs of letting up.

I am not one for giving out financial advice. I just pay attention to the news and the markets. Heck I don't have much invested, so even if I am wrong I can't loose much.

What are your thoughts on how the news media can move the markets?

Michael

Grow Your BLOG Network And Traffic

Growth Over Time

Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow, it doesn't matter what you read in the news. We are in a recession, but what does that mean for you.

Are you working harder to get traffic to your BLOG?

There is no guarantee, but over time a regularly updated BLOG should continue to grow. Growth is ultimately limited only by market size.

What can you do now to grow your BLOG readers and traffic to your site. The ideas below will help you work smarter and faster.

Participate

I joined The Internet Marketing Inner Circle (TIMIC) to network and learn from successful internet marketers. Many that make over $1 Million a year and plenty that make a full time living selling online.

I participate in the forum and in the group projects. It is like having a personal coach help me navigate making money online. Great people and great ideas. I recommend TIMIC to anyone who struggles to make money online.

There are free forums too like Warrior Forum and Webmaster Talk. But I frequent TIMIC. You know what they say about free ... you get what you pay for.

Fill Your RSS Reader

Plan to add 5-10 new RSS Subscriptions to your RSS Reader at least twice a week. This isn't to say that you should load your RSS reader with junk. Subscribe to BLOGs that interest you and unSubscribe from the BLOGs that don't continue to deliver great content.

The RSS URL for The One Penny Project is http://feeds.feedburner.com/OnePennyProject

If you are not currently using an RSS Reader, welcome to 2008. It takes me 10 minutes to review the 58 updated sites in my RSS Reader. That would easily take over an hour if I had to visit each one. And that doesn't include the time saved by using the notepad and save features of my RSS reader.

I use the Google RSS reader at reader.google.com but there are plenty of free readers to choose from.

Get Lucky

I know what you are thinking ... that is another kind of BLOG.

I once read that Luck is when Chance and Opportunity meet. Not that 5 lottery tickets are better then 1 or marketing 100 BLOGs is better then 5.

Opportunity involves learning the skills needed to succeed as a Blogger and putting those skills to use in the right way. It is a circle. The more you learn the better you get and the better you are prepared when an opportunity to get "lucky" comes along.

My current test is almost complete and I will post the results here early next week. Please stop back.

Do what you love and the money will follow.

Michael

My Second Entrecard Test

Today I started the steps to test EntreCard a second time. This time around I am going to do a much larger scaled test.

Did you know that EntreCard provides a ton of useful stats to help you make decisions? Oddly enough I never clicked on that button thinking it was the same info provided on the dashboard.

I was wrong. The stats page showed me the EntreCard cost per click for my past advertising campaigns and placements. Very cool stuff.

This second test will take a few more days to get completely set up and about a week to 10 days from there to complete.

The hard part will be to avoid dropping during the test. I did that last time and think it may have skewed my results slightly. This time I am going to not visit EC during the 3 day test period.

Best of success!

Michael

How Does the 20% Rule Apply to The Economy

This is a thinking out loud post. You know what I mean. There is stuff in my head that may not be formalized, so I think about it out loud and organize it later.

Please excuse the mess, this is just a brain dump on my thoughts about the Economy.

What I don't understand is how the CEO's of these big businesses involved in the bailout can walk away with huge salaries. Forget fairness for a moment, the amount of money these guys made for poor decisions is beyond understanding.

Where is the 20% rule in all of this?

Could that be what is going on in the stock market. Bargain hunters looking for the 20% that are going to explode in growth and value once the economy improves.

From an internet marketing perspective what are the trends that will emerge as a result of decreased spending. Will advertising prices drop because of decreased effectiveness and lower conversions.

I tend to look for the positive in bad situations. What do you think will be an emerging internet marketing trend in this current economy?

Michael

EntreCard Test Results

I mentioned a few days ago that I was back to using EntreCard again. Mostly because it is a free form of advertising.

But like everything in life Free does not always mean free. For example to earn EntreCard credits you must visit other blogs and drop your card on the EntreCard widget. If you have a popular BLOG you can also earn EntreCard credits when bloggers purchase an EntreCard ad on your blog. The higher your traffic numbers the more an ad will cost on your blog.

For my test I purchased an ad on a blog for 256 credits. The BLOG I picked to advertise on was in my niche and because of the ad cost I felt it was a blog that got good traffic.

My results ... I am satisfied with the traffic increase during the time my ad was running. I also picked up a few new RSS Subscribers during that time. Card drops were up the day of and the day after my ad ran. This helped reduce the "cost" of my ad by replenishing some of my spent credits.

Cost: Free, no money spent on this test.

Time: About 30 minutes to earn credits and find a blog to advertise on.

Income: Not Tracked, this was a traffic test.

Benefits: Received 1 visitor for every 6 credits spent. Traffic to BLOG increased, EntreCard drops were up and there were a couple new RSS subscribers.

Once I have enough credits built up I will do another test with a top 3 blog. Subscribe to my RSS feed so you don't miss the results.

Michael

MyBlogLog Traffic Secrets

Do you use MyBlogLog to drive traffic to your BLOG?

I have used MyBlogLog off an on way before Yahoo bought the site. I remember back when the site was new and the features were few.

Today I have over 10,500 contacts listed on MyBlogLog. And my pageviews is well over double (almost triple) that number.

The best way I found to get traffic to my BLOG from MyBlogLog is to add people as my contact.

Its that easy. Not posting messages with links on peoples profiles. Not requesting community join swaps. Not anything unethical.

I simply add contacts to my list and a few of them visit my BLOGs.

There is a trick that I figured to help me get a higher percentage of visitors as opposed to just randomly adding contacts. For now, that will be my secret.

No matter what you do and how well you thing you are doing it, always look for ways to improve.

Take Care,

Michael

FaceBook on Your Cell Phone

I joined FaceBook a while ago. Myspace never interested me. It seemed to be filled with Junk.

But when FaceBook started to get popular, I hopped on and joined. It took about a year for popularity to take off to the point that it is now one of the sites I need to check daily.

Last week I hooked up the mobile portion of FaceBook to my cell phone so I can get my friends status updates and a few other things sent to me as text messages on my cell phone.

The process was simple once I found the right place to fill out my cell phone info. On the upper right side, click on settings, then click on the mobile tab. Once you fill out a few fields on the mobile tab you will get a code sent to your cell phone. Enter that code in the form on FaceBook and you are set. After your phone is confirmed you may want to edit the default settings to limit how many text messages you will get sent in a day. You may also want to add your friends status updates to the list. This didn't default, I had to pick each one from the list.

The line between the internet as we know it and our cell phones is growing thinner (like my hair). One day we may all be using our cell phones in place of full size computers and laptops.

Take Care,

Michael

Trading Time For Money

It doesn't matter if you are self employed or if you work for an employer. We trade our time in exchange for money.

For those that work for someone else. Working harder, learning more and becoming an asset to the company often lead to promotions and a higher salary. That equates to more money for the same amount of time.

The same doesn't always hold true for the self employed. Many start-ups and small business go out of business within the first 3 years. For those that are successful hard work pays off with increased earnings and more money for time spent working.

How about blogging, internet marketing, affiliate marketing, selling on ebay or the 100's of other ways to make money online?

I spoke before here on the One Penny Project BLOG about leverage. Doing things that can be re-used to produce income in multiple niches. Using automation or tools to become more efficient.

It isn't about how many hours per week we work, it is about how much money we make during that time.

Would you rather work 4 hours per day at $50 per hour or 10 hours per day at $20 per hour?

Over the next few days I will be writing about ways to automate your online business. I also will do a writeup on my current Entrecard test.

Please consider subscribing to my RSS feed and also check out some of my older posts.

Michael

The Big Secret of Making Money Online

Do you know how to make money online?

Doing a quick Google search you will come up with millions of websites. Hit the forums and there are thousands of people telling you to join their program or buy their product.

But how you make money online or otherwise is based on you. What you do is unique. That could be why so many fail to succeed.

What works for one may not work for another. What I found is to learn as much as I can and test ideas for myself.

For example on one of my sites a 125x125 ad works best, but on another a 160x300 skyscraper converts the best. Some sites AdSense works and others generate noting.

The key, for me at least is to learn and test.

So what is the big secret of making money online? Well that would be unique to you, but the best way to find out is to learn as much as you can and test what you learn on a small scale before going big with it.

Michael