DotDriven.com

Is EntreCard worth keeping on a blog?

BackSeatDriver — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 22:21:24 +0000

I recently got a notice from EntreCard that my account was about to be deleted for not keeping my blog updated. Meaning I would lose credits I have built up, and never actually used, for well over a year. I’ve already lost one account with more than a years worth of built up credits and now they are ready to do it again.

Sure, it’s in their terms…you have to keep your blog updated, but why? People that advertise on my blog still get traffic from targeted readers. Although many of my post are older now the information in many is still valid. The same people that were once interested when the posts were first posted would likely still be interested in the same post now. So why does EntreCard care if I have up to the minute post on my site? As long as the people who choose to advertise on my blog are happy then why should they care when my last post was? And it’s not like it cost very many credits at all to advertise on my site with EntreCard.

So, I’m curious if others still feel EntreCard is even worth having on my site. I’ve built up credits so I could go on an ad-blitz sometime in the future so haven’t even actually used my credits…ever. So in essence they have gotten free exposure and placement for their members all this time and now they want to cut me off. Should I care? Or should I just delete them now and not bother with it anymore and stop the free spot they have gotten all this time?

Just looking for opinions really.

Justin Dupre got a kickass new Tatto…

BackSeatDriver — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 01:26:34 +0000

Ok, I admit it, lame headline but cool content…

Justin Dupre is having a cool little affiliate marketing contest with Tatto Media sponsoring. The cool part is you don’t have to be a great affiliate marketer to have a chance to win. Sure, it would definitely help your odds of winning but you get entry points for just applying (and getting accepted) to Tatto Media network. Then you can earn more entries for retweeting and blogging about the contest. Of course if you are an experienced marketer you can earn a ton of extra entries by just earning money. For every $100 you earn after signing up through Jusitns link you get 5 extra entries.

So what can you win? The winner will get their choice between a massive 25.5 inch monitor (Samsung SyncMaster 2693HM 25.5-inch LCD Monitor) or a very cool little Eee PC Netbook (ASUS Eee PC 1000HE 10-Inch Netbook)! I’ve been really wanting to get a netbook so I could have a dedicated “business” computer that I can use anytime and not have to share and such and this Eee PC gets great reviews. It would be perfect! Even though the Samsung monitor retails for more, I’d get the netbook anyday. Who knows, maybe Tatto would be willing to upgrade the RAM or something since there is a price difference heheh .

So who is one of the better CPA (also known ad performance marketing networks, or as Tatto prefers: behavioral advertising network) networks that you may not have heard of. There are quite a lot of choices for a publisher when it comes to CPA networks but there are some very obvious differences between a lot of them that many people don’t always notice. For example, rather than just jump on the buggy directtrack tracking system that a lot of networks use, Tatto Media has a custom built tracking system and backend that won’t have the same bugs and downtime that others networks using directrack will. They also have a ton of offers and are very competitive with payouts. They have less fluff in their system so can offer great payouts.

Although I am still just starting running some campaigns (just signed up) I have talked with Mike, who is now my affiliate manager, and he was really helpful and knowledgeable. I’m really looking forward to working with them more in the future.

Thanks to both Justin and Tatto Media for the great contest!

And of course there is the contest post (contest over). Be sure to enter but just don’t do too good…I want to share Justins blog and Tatto but I still want to win lol. Hey, I NEED a netbook so I’m sure you can understand

Yes, I admit. I am a sucker for free stuff and contest.

BackSeatDriver — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 10:35:34 +0000

Before I had the mindset of an internet marketer I was probably the perfect mark for those marketers back then. I signed up for everything and joined tons of contest. Yeah, I was one of those few back then that really got excited with the whole “free ipod” era. In fact, I was pretty heavy into the whole “free ipod scene” where I actually had a forum setup with a few thousand members all trying to help each other get referrals and such. During the couple years that I did all those referral sites I received probably about $25k in various “freebies” ranging from ipods, xbox 360s (probably got around 6 or 7 of these total!), a 61” HDTV (crappy rear projection infocus, but still) and a ton of other cool gadgets. As well as cash even. It was great to get all those cool freebies as well as save money by not buying the ones I wanted anyway and then just sell off the rest of the extras.

Sadly this was before I knew anything about “making money online” otherwise I could have really cashed in with the amount of traffic and regular visitors I was getting back then on that site/forum. But I was blissfully happy with all the cool toys and the small amount I made with adsense on the homepage (the one ad company I actually knew about at the time). God, just think of how much I could have raked in with zip/email submits and all the other freebie offers out there.

I did sell the site/forum for a couple grand in the end when it died down at least but I still have a weak spot for those freebie type sites, offers and contest. Regardless how much money you make, getting a free ipod in the mail is awesome! Helping two dudes unload and carry a 200 pound 61inch tv off a truck, that you got for free, isn’t too shabby either lol.

Anyway, this is all just a lead-in to yet another contest I am entering. My wife wants one of the newer Flip HD cameras…I guess the regular non-hd isn’t enough for youtube silliness but I love the Flip and I definitely wouldn’t mind an HD version.

Ryan From SmarterWealth.net is giving away a HD Flip to one random blogger who joins his mailing list (which looked good anyway) and then blogs about the contest. So I figured I might as well try my luck and see if I can actually win something here. After all, all my freebies stopped coming in years ago and I miss getting big boxes in the mail.

Ryan explains the contest better than I do so here is the info in his words:

Ryan McLean from Smarter Wealth is giving away a brand new Flip Mino HD to one lucky reader. This will be the easiest Flip Mino HD to win because barely anyone is going to enter meaning more chances that you can win.

The Flip Mino HD is the coolest gadget around. You can shoot one hour of video in HD (so you can play it on your plasma) and you can even edit your footage right on your device. This device is so small that it will fit in your pocket so you will never miss capturing a moment ever again.

To enter all you have to do is sign up for Ryan’s newsletter and post about the competition.

Check out all the details of how you can enter the Win a Flip Mino HD competition now.

Shopping Ads banned me :(….lol yeah right.

BackSeatDriver — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 23:58:51 +0000

Service used to be decent and actually a cool little widget while shoemoney owned it. Went to hell a little before he sold it (stopped supporting it?) and just went downhill from there. I always had issues with tracking and back then researching it, TONS of people had the same issues. Rather than address the problems they just deleted post/threads asking about it. In my opinion if they are profiting off clicks from my traffic but not giving me credit then they are scamming me. I got paid a few times before I finally just decided to take it off. Only problem was I still had like $48 bucks (short of the payment threshold) in there that, although not much, the last thing in hell I wanted to do was give these bastids. So I was thinking of throwing it back on one of my sites for an hour or so to get to the $50 payment minimum but hated the idea of getting screwed by them anymore so just left it. Thankfully they helped fix my problem…actually two problems. I get paid and I don’t have to deal with them again!

Dear “publisher”,

ShoppingAds is undergoing a revamping and in the process has redefined the requirements of quality and traffic volume for the publishers we work with. Due to this restructuring, we regret to inform you that we have had to deactivate your account moving forward. If you have remaining earnings in your account from your last payout. You needn’t worry- you WILL be paid on or after our next payout date, March 1st, 2009.

Thank you kindly for your cooperation, and good luck with your future marketing endeavors.

The ShoppingAds Team.

my reply

That’s great news! That means I don’t have to put your shitty app on my sites again to hit the payment threshold. I was wondering how to get my money from you without having to support your network and this works out just right.

Thanks much for the great news!

Were you one of the ones who was still running ShoppingAds and are now left without an ad network to use? Here are a few shopping ads alternatives.

ShoppingAds Alternatives

TTZmedia – a lot like shopping ads, or better yet how auction ads used to be. TTZ is owned by John Chow as well so if they screw you then you should have some great linkbait lol.

Here is an example…as you can see, it works a lot like shopping ads:

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Amazon Associates – If you somehow never signed up for amazons affiliate program it might be a good choice as an alternative for shopping ads. They actually have a ton of newer tools to make it super easy to promote amazon items. I absolutely LOVE the newer “site stripe” which is basically just a header bar that shows up when you are signed in…then you just find pages of items you want to promote and click the button in the header and it automatically creates an affiliate link for you that you paste into your blog. SOOOO very easy to do when you are doing niche blogging or just want to link to a book real fast.

Here is an example of one of their many widgets:

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Ebay Partner Network – they also have newer widgets and tools to promote their auctions.

Here is an example of one:

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And lastly, CJ has a TON of advertisers to choose from. Might not be as easy as just throwing a widget up on your blog/site and letting it automatically display “related” items, but to be honest, this is probably where the most money is to be made with this kind of thing. If you know your audience, know your niche and know what they want you should be able to put super targeted products/services on the site which could really convert for you. I loved the ease of the widgets myself but after dealing with shoppingads/auctionads and getting ripped off by not getting credit for clicks and such, I’m starting to see that being lazy was costing me…though that seems like it should have been obvious for some reason lol.

Permalinks in wordpress: easy to change?

BackSeatDriver — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 05:30:59 +0000

I’ve gone and pretty much killed my old post as far as links go, at least so far. I decided to change my permalinks to make them even shorter and more direct, dropping the “index.php” and “month” to get the meat of the post in there. Thankfully wordpress does fine updating internal link structure automatically but any inbound links you have out there to any of the old post will become broken.

Supposedly, it’s an easy and there are even a couple plugins to automate the migration (301 redirects for the old post/path). Unfortunately, I seem to be an idiot and can’t figure out how to make them work lol. I tried 3 different plugins and couldn’t seem to get any of my old links to work to redirect to the new post. Which means, if I don’t fix it I lose whatever small amount of incoming links I used to have as soon as google cleans up all the broken links. Besides wanting to save those, I’d like to finally learn how to fix this as it is something that can be used on all sorts of sites and could come in handy for other uses.

Has anyone changed their permalink structure and/or used one of the plugins to help fix their old links and gotten it to work easily? My guess is I am just doing something simple wrong and breaking it because of user error on my part. The current one I am trying to use is from Dean Lee

Here is my old and new link structures:

OLD – http://DotDriven.com/index.php/06/sample-post/
NEW – http://DotDriven.com/sample-post/

Any tips?

Besides breaking my old links I was reminded of the importance of updating, or even creating, a 404 page. Here are a few links about putting your 404 page to good use:

- making money online with missing pages
- turning 404 page visitors into blog readers
And this one I thought was pretty funny…
- SEO Boost from 404 plugin? (see if you can spot the hidden irony)

Zak Johnson and Motive Interactive giving away cool toys

BackSeatDriver — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 17:20:31 +0000

Motive Interactive looks to be getting in on the affiliate contest by sponsoring a pretty cool challenge on Zak’s blog . Most of the really cool prizes require some real super affiliate kind of numbers, like a freakin SMART CAR! But there are also plenty of cool prizes for other levels and even though that push $1k in earnings can get an xbox 360 elite package!

Here are ther "teirs" that are open to win:

TITANIUM TIER: $300,000 Commissions Earned
Reward: A New Smart Car ($11,990 Value)

PLATINUM TIER: $90,000 Commissions Earned
Reward: VIP Las Vegas Vacation
1st Class Air, Stay at the Wynn for 2 nights , $500 Cash

GOLD TIER: $10,000 Commissions Earned
Reward: 32 GB iPod Touch with $500 iTunes Gift Card

SILVER TIER: $1,000 Commissions Earned
Reward: XBox 360 Elite Package

The contest ends at the end the month though so if you want to get in on the prize levels you need to really push some traffic fast.

You can also get entered into a drawing for some other smaller, but still cool, prizes just for blogging about the contest.