Entrecard Acquired by Ziprunner

I'm sure this will be posted everywhere in a few hours, but Entercard has changed hands, and this is bound to mean yet more changes. Graham Langdon, founder of Entrecard, sent an email at 12:50 EDT today:

It is with great excitement that I announce Entrecard.com, Inc. has been acquired by Los Angeles based ZipRunner Inc.

ZipRunner has the resources, vision, and dedication to Entrecard that will allow it to grow in pursuit of the vision I laid out nearly two years ago.

Moving forward, my relationship to Entrecard will be that of an adviser, and I will help the good folks at ZipRunner take the whole project to the next level. Expect a follow up communication from them very soon.

ZipRunner Inc. was chosen out of a number of potential suitors because of the resources they can dedicate to the project, their exciting vision for the company's future, and their understanding of social media and the blogosphere.

I urge you all to look forward to a bigger, better Entrecard, and I couldn't be more proud to bring it to this point before passing the torch. I've heard first hand all the great things that are in store for the company and it's members, and needless to say it has me quite excited.

Entrecard

web ad income July 15 (4 blogs, 2 web sites): Adsense $1.10 Adgitize $.55 Project Wonderful $.03 Shareapic $.01 Clixsense $.10 ______________________ Total: $1.79

Easy Traffic Solution - Traffic Exchange Site

Easy Traffic Solution is a very new traffic exchange program. I'm actually member number 68. It works really well, and it's biggest drawback at the current time is that it needs more blogs to belong.

Like most of the traffic exchanges the member pages open in a frame, and a link must be clicked after a certain amount of time. It's 15 seconds in this case. It is a 1:1 exchange which means that your page is shown one time for every page you view for 15 seconds. This is good- some sites are 1:2 or even lower. When you sign up you get 100 free credits so your site will become visible right away.

You can also buy credits through PayPal at a very reasonable price. Once you apply your site will need to be manually approved by the administration. This should take less than 24 hours. When people sign up under you, you get 0.1 credit every time a page of theirs is shown. Multiple blogs are allowed.

The quality of the sites you will view isn't quite as high as what you will see on Blog Explosion, but it's decent- not all get rich quick sites.

I like the fact that you seem to get hits to your site spread out a bit and not all bunched up as soon as you log in and start surfing.

There are no games to play or frills- just traffic exchange. If they can get enough sites to make it viable it should be a really good deal.

Easy Traffic Solution

Entrecard's Latest Fiasco?

Entrecard has announced that it is going to try to lower the bounce rate caused by those who drop on the sites in the system. In the June 30 Entrecard blog, Graham stated, "Starting soon, “dropping and running” will no longer give you credit. We are developing a proprietary algorithm to determine whether or not you engaged in the blog you visited in some way. If you did not engage in the blog, you will not get credit. We won’t be disclosing exactly the algorithm we use, so that people can’t game it easily."

Naturally this is causing yet another round of furor. Almost everyone is assuming that it will involve leaving a comment on every blog. This brings up a round of objections such as commenting on blogs that don't post every day, meaningless comments and more.

Other people think that it will be a simple timer. This doesn't sound very proprietary. Personally, I doubt that a comment on every blog will be required.

But no matter what the algorithm is, it seems really strange to me that the Entrecard administration would choose to shake things up again so soon after the last upsetting change (introducing paid ads). At least in my experience, things are just now getting back to some level of stability. Some traffic has returned and new connections are being made where bloggers who left created gaps in some networks.

Without a really high connection speed it isn't really possible to drop 300 EC's a day anyway. If credit now will not be given for some percentage of those drops, I think it's going to become increasingly hard to justify trying to earn enough EC's to advertise.

What do you think?

See Taking action against the bounce rate from Entrecard Blog

The Collapse of Entrecard Traffic

Now that the dust has settled a bit after Entrecard introduced paid ads, what is the condition of what is left of the once successful traffic exchange? Many popular bloggers left EC completely.

In my opinion, the site may be more financially viable, but as a source of traffic for blogs (its original purpose) it has become all but useless. I maintain four blogs with Entrecard widgets, and used to receive about 50 visits a day to each through EC widgets. This varied somewhat, in relation to how many other EC sites I visited.

Now, I receive only 5-10 visits each day through Entrecard. Each of my blogs has tumbled to about 50% of its former value in EC credits. I have chosen not to display paid ads on two of them, and will accept some paid ads on the other two. The only blogs that seem to have retained their original value are some of the ones which were already in the top few spots in each category.

In all honestly, I have to admit that I, myself, am doing less surfing too. I am much more likely to come to dead ends now... recently one EC site has flooded the widgets with paid ads so that their "card" shows up on about every other blog. This only makes me want to never click on their ad.

While I met some of my most faithful readers and favorite bloggers through Entrecard surfing, unless a whole new generation of EC users signs on and discovers the pleasure of exploring new blogs by surfing widgets, you might as well join a few traffic exchange sites and just pay for page views.

In the past few days I've been trying to drop on more EC cards. Perhaps some other people will revive the practice as well.

Entrecard

Try Easy Traffic Solutions

New Traffic Exchange site! Easy to use, but takes a few hours for your blog to be approved for surfing. Sign up early and get traffic sooner.

Easy Traffic Solutions

Traffic Exchange Business - Second Thoughts

I've been a member of Traffic Exchange Business for a couple of months. As I said earlier you can quickly work your way up to a nice point level on their site.

However, there is one fatal problem with the program. They want a splash page that displays in their frame. That means unless people click through from the splash page (or text links or banners) that you don't actually get traffic on your site. So that's not too helpful.

The new owners seem to be focused on other pursuits at the moment. Not much is happening at Traffic Exchange Business.

Traffic Exchange Business

TrafficNowFire Higher Levels- Inbreeding?

Traffic Now Fire is a link clicking program that sends traffic to your site and has the potential to earn money.

I have continued to explore how one can earn more with this site. I've finally found a page that explains more, but I don't think that I want to get involved with this type of site too deeply. It's one of the type of site that I call "inbred."

There are two types of points: regular points and ranking points

Regular points
One can earn regular points by clicking on links and voting those sites up or down. If you complete member offers you get a lot of points, and also you get points when people you refer sign up under you. Regular points can be traded for bold or icon studded links, banner ads, or guaranteed surfing time on your links. They can be cashed out at a rate of 25,000 for 25 cents.

Ranking points
Ranking points have more value. These are awarded to regular users of TrafficNowFire. You get 0.1 points every time you log in. You get a point every time you complete a member offer. You get a point for posting 5 links a day (but you can't do this unless you trade points, or already have a higher rank). Actually about all they are good for is to give you access to better offers to sign up for.

Member Offers
Member offers are things that one signs up for, and these give you ranking points. Members can also create offers for other people to sign up for. The more offers you sign up for, the more ranking points you get. However, you also usually have to have at least 3 ranking points to sign up for any of them. The one that I was eligible for (with 1 ranking point), is a "guaranteed income for life" scheme. It's a pyramid scam. You have to pay $20 each to 3 people, and then just wait for the $20 bills to come to your account.

I call these sites inbred, because it's all based on a bunch of people completing each others offers. All the offers are for money-making schemes; it's not really a site to promote blogs or sites that have some independent purpose. The only way to really accumulate points is to sign up for offers.

Your odds of doing better are greatly increased if you pay for a Pro Membership.

If you are comfortable with the sleaziness of the whole process you can participate. I think some of the schemes are illegal in the US. I'll just use it for some traffic generation, and forget about trying to make a few dollars.

Read the page on how to earn points at TrafficNowFire
SeeTrafficNowFire Revisited
SeeTrafficNowFire

Ping Your Blog or Website Free

To "ping" your blog means that the content is pushed to a server that notes that your blog has new material on it. That means that blog search engines and news aggregators will know that there is fresh content.

Pingler will send your blog address to 91 ping services (a great many of them are Google in various countries), and you don't even have to sign up. You can use the service as a guest.

However, if you do choose to sign up, and purchase a premium account for $2.99 a month, you are allowed to store up the details of up to 25 websites in your account. These sites will be automatically pinged every three days. A premium account not only saves you the hassle of having to ping each of your sites manually, it ensures that pinging is performed frequently and in a timely manner.

I just head over there and submit my sites for free every few days.

Pingler

Free Advertising Forum

The Free Advertising Forum is free. Really. You can post links to your web site. It's a basic forum software.

There are only a few rules:

• Do not post anything offensive. We will delete anything we find inappropriate.
• Do not post the same ad in more then 2 categories. We will delete over-posting.
• Do not spam members with Private Messages.
• Please find the category that suits your ad the best and post it there.

No tricky stuff, no clicking, just a free link. I like it.

There are categories for businesses, blogs, web sites, traffic generation sites, marketing, referrals, work-at-home, and known scams. (And there's a chat category)

That said, I posted links to two of my blogs there a couple of days ago and have gotten no hits at all, except one from me to be sure that it would show as coming from that site. On the other hand, I haven't spent time there getting to know anyone yet.

Free Advertising Forum

TrafficNowFire Revisted

Traffic Now Fire is a link clicking program that sends traffic to your site and has the potential to earn money.

A few days ago, I signed up at this site. Much to my surprise it has resulted in some quality traffic. Every time I post a link (at my level I am allowed one link post a day), I have gotten over 20 hits in the next 24 hours. Now, most of those have to be low value, click and run, I understand that.

There is SOME incentive for people to read a little bit. If they vote a site up or down, they get a few extra points. In theory this means that they might look at the site for a few seconds.

But I have been quite shocked to receive two comments on my blogs where people said they found me through Traffic Now Fire.

I have been clicking and voting on a few links every day, and posting my one link. I haven't even got enough points to earn 25 cents yet, but I have generated traffic. And I do believe that one needs to get people going by a site. Then it's up to me to get them to come back.

Also, I have read several blog posts by real people who say that they have indeed been paid by Traffic Now Fire. If I come across them again, I'll add them here (forgot to bookmark.)

Traffic Now Fire.

Vinefire is a House of Cards

Vinefire is a pay-to-click program that claims amazing payment rates, as much as 90 cents per click for certain links.

However, when one reads the fine print, you may get a lot of cash accumulated in your account, but the whole scheme depends on some larger company buying them out so that they can actually pay the bill. To be honest, they are making this clear, but I wonder how many people actually read that far?

They cleverly state that they retain the option to pay some people (anyone they choose) before they are acquired, but they do not promise any payments unless they are purchased.

This may be a way to get clicks to your site with a nebulous promise of cash in the future, but don't be misled into thinking that the cash will definitely be forthcoming.

Traffic Now Fire

Traffic Now Fire is a link clicking program that sends traffic to your site and has the potential to earn money.

I signed up and clicked a number of links. I put in the one link per day that new basic members are allowed. It did result in several clicks to my site.

You receive points for clicking on other sites. If you vote (either up or down) for those sites you get a few more points. The number of points depends on the type of membership you have. These points can be traded in for cash at the rate of 25000 points for 25 cents.

My initial assessment is that you would have to spend way too much time clicking to get enough money to make it worthwhile for earning money. But every time I post a link I instantly get at least 6-8 hits through to my site. I will probably click a few links every once in a while and add a link to one of my sites.

TrafficNowFire

May income from Adgitize = $11.08- $14.00 for an ad from Project Wonderful = $1.36 from Adsense = $1.58 payment from Shared Reviews (old balance) $80.00 ____________________ Total for May $80.02

Concerning the Tax Number and Entrecard

I actually received an answer from Entrecard support in reference to needing my tax ID number. They said "Entrecard requires the tax information for all participants in the cashout." There was no comment on the insecure form.

As I said in a previous post, no other online site that I earn from requires that information until the $600/year threshold is reached. I've decided that I'm not willing to give that information out for the very few dollars I might make in a year. Whether many of the allegations of poor management are valid or not, I won't submit that information via a simple online form. The few other sites that I earn more money from had me submit a regular W-9 tax form, a much more business-like method.

Since this means that I will not be cashing out any credits, I may decide to not accept any paid ads. To date, I haven't really objected to paid ads in theory, although I don't care for some of the particular ads. However, I've just rejected those ones.

I need to think about this a little longer. But if I am not going to benefit monetarily at all from the ads, I'm thinking that I don't feel a need to display them.

Entrecard

web ad income today (3 blogs, 2 web sites): Adsense $.01 Adgitize $.77 Project Wonderful $.02 ______________________ Total: $.80 Total to date in April $14.10 Total in March $4.88

Is 125 Exchange Worth It?

125 Exchange claims to be a different kind of traffic generator. They don't promise lots of traffic, they propose that their service will deliver quality traffic that is targeted to your area of interest.

I've belonged to 125 Exchange since early February 2009, and I can't figure out if it has been a useful tool or not. They give you 5000 free impressions when you first join. But I can't figure out the system they use to give you impressions after that initial amount is used. As far as I can tell, my banner hasn't been shown on any other web site for days while they are getting an ad on my blog, My Quality Day, that is above the fold by requirement.

I'm open to hearing an explanation of their system that is understandable.

125 Exchange

web ad income today (3 blogs, 2 web sites): Adsense $.53 Adgitize $.69 Project Wonderful $.01 ______________________ Total: $1.23 Total to date in April $10.99 Total in March $4.88

Serradinho Free Pixels

Until they are gone, you can advertise your blog or web site at Serradinho's Free Pixels!

Just head to the site, stake out up to 6 squares, upload your banner and the URL it should link to and you have a graphic link to your site. That's hard to beat for free.

As of today, about 1/3 of the real estate is taken.

Serradinho

web ad income today (4 blogs, 2 web sites): Adsense $.04 Adgitize $.85 Project Wonderful $.02 ______________________ Total: $.91 Total to date in April $9.76 Total in March $4.88

Entrecard Opens Applications for Cashout- BEWARE the Insecure Form

Entrecard users will now find a link in their dashboard to the application which, when approved, will give a member the ability to cashout credits at the rate of $1 per 1000 Entrecard Credits.

This all seems straightforward enough. They do need a real life identity and PayPal email address in order to process the cashout requests. I started to fill out the application, but balked before I got to the end. They are asking for a tax ID / SS#. Note that this is an insecure form! That is my first concern.

My second concern is why they need this information at all. I make money from quite a few online sites, and unless I break the $600/year threshold, that information should not be needed at all. When income from one site rises above that (in the USA), then a W-9 form must be supplied to the payer/employer.

So, for now, I'm not signing up for cashout. You should NOT enter your SS# unless they fix this form, even if you are willing to provide it.

web ad income today (3 blogs, 2 web sites): Adsense $.63 Adgitize $.84 Project Wonderful $.02 ______________________ Total: $1.49 Total to date in April $6.74 Total in March $4.88

Blog Explosion Policy on Money-Making Blogs

Today I received the following message from Blog Explosion concerning this blog.

Sorry your blog has been declined at Blog Explosion as we are no longer accepting blogs that primarily contain advertising, or promote business opportunities.

So there you have it. I'm not sure what else one can say. Guess I should have started this project earlier.

Blog Explosion

web ad income today (3 blogs, 2 web sites): Adsense $.05 Adgitize $.81 Project Wonderful $.05 ______________________ Total: $.91 Total to date in April $2.63 Total in March $4.88

Blog Explosion - Reasonable Traffic Generator

Blog Explosion is a traffic generation site that has been around long enough to have survived some bumps in the road and figured out how to do some things right. For all that, I use it reluctantly because it is very slow and some features are really annoying.

It is exclusively for blogs, which is nice, because you won't see page after page of get-rich-quick or advertising sites. They say that there are almost 90,000 blogs in their membership.

When I first joined it took four weeks for my blogs to be approved. That seems like way too long.

You earn points by viewing blogs in Blog Explosion frames and after 30 seconds you click a number that matches one shown you to get credit for that visit. You have to remember to assign these credits for your blog to be viewed. There is an auto-assign feature but I've never been able to get it to work.

In addition there are some games you can play at Blog Explosion for extra credits. The only one I really like is Blog Rocket. You add your blog to the bottom of a list (costs 1 credit) and it rises to the top as new blogs are added to the bottom. A blog usually gets 5 to 7 clicks before it is rocketed off the top. People are motivated to click on these blogs because there is a chance to win 1000 credits each month.

Other games are Battle of the Blogs where you wager credits and people vote for which blog they like best, a scratch card for credits, and others that I may cover in separate posts. I find them all pretty boring, and they mostly just cost me credits.

I don't like how long you have to wait before you can click to the next blog, but if I remember to log in, do some clicking, assign credits and do Blog Rocket I can guarantee ten or so hits a day. Seems like a lot of work.

One perk that is pretty good is "Ping my Blog." You can enter your URL and it will automatically be pinged by 19 different services.

It's definitely worth a look. You might like some of the games more than I do.

Blog Explosion

web ad income today (4 blogs, 2 web sites): Adsense $.07 Adgitize $.82 Project Wonderful $.03 ______________________ Total: $.92 Total to date in April $-1.08 Total in March $4.88

Traffic Exchage Business- Update

I've been a member of Traffic Exchange Business for five days now, and I'm really pleased.

One day I had Traffic Exchange Business and Blog Explosion side by side in two tabs, and TEB is definitely faster, and you get points faster. In those five days, with some dedicated clicking, I've earned my way up one level so I now get even more points.

I've added a second blog to the site too. In that time my sites have received 80 hits. I also have banners and text ads running, and have received one click from those. Like all similar traffic generators you need to remember to convert your points and clicks into impressions for your own site, but this is really easy to do in the Members area.

The one thing that is lacking is more people to sign up there! With enough sites to make it pay, this could be an excellent traffic generator. Right now it's top heavy with make-money-online type pages. But that can change quickly as more bloggers sign up.

It is to anyone's advantage to get in early if you would like to try this sort of thing. For every day that you surf 125 pages you get an entry into a drawing for a free month at a higher membership level.

Click the graphic above, or text below, if you would like to try it out. The basic membership level, nicknamed Executive, is free.

Traffic Exchange Business
See Trying Out Traffic Exchange Business

web ad income today (4 blogs, 2 web sites): Adsense $.05 Adgitize $.20 Project Wonderful $.02 ______________________ Total $.27 Total to date in April $.27 Total in March $4.88

Trying Out Traffic Exchange Business

I signed up at a new traffic generation site yesterday. I've yet to know how it works out, but it's brand new. There are some things I like and some I'm not sure about yet.

First let me say that I was drawn to this enterprise simply because it is being undertaken by Shari and Cindy of the Shari's Gone Country blog, and I really like that.

The site works similarly to Blog Explosion (and I suppose other such sites). A splash page for member sites show inside a frame which contains your clicking stats, some ad links and banners and a timer. When the timer runs down (meaning that you've viewed that page long enough to keep the bounce rate from soaring), a code appears that you must match and click to load the next site. There are occasional prizes of points that pop up. This interface works much better than the one on Blog Explosion. Due to using a splash page rather than the actual web sites, it loads faster, with fewer errors, and only makes you wait 10 seconds to click on to the next page. Of course you have to create a splash page. They say that they will be rolling out some templates for those soon.

What do you get for the clicking? Each site is worth 0.4 of a point. There is some conversion factor that converts points into cash. Even people who sign up at the free level will be able to either cash out their points or trade them in for banner and text link views. Impressions can also be traded for views. There are higher levels of membership for a price at which you get a better return on clicks.

You can now enter your own 768x60 banner and create text links. Still no info on how to enter a splash page.

Nevertheless, it is to anyone's advantage to get in early if you would like to try this sort of thing. Until the end of March there are bonuses for having people sign up under you, and for some amount of time yet for every day that you surf 125 pages you get an entry into a drawing for a free month at a higher membership level.

You are allowed to convert points to a one higher membership level as well.

Click the graphic above, or text below, if you would like to try it out. As I said, the basic membership level, nicknamed Executive, is free.

Traffic Exchange Business

web ad income today (4 blogs, 2 web sites): Adsense $.02 Adgitize $.19 Project Wonderful $.04 ______________________ Total: $.25 Total to Date in March $17.85