The CronBlog

If you have been a webmaster for any length of time, you most likely know all about pagerank, and have been working to get yours up. If you haven’t, here is a general description from wikipedia:

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important”.

Put even simpler, we will start from the beginning. Google is the largest web search engine online today, and will always be. From junior high schools to retirement homes, the latest trend when you want a question answered is to “Google It”. This phrase has swept the nation and almost everyone currently uses it. If you’re a webmaster, you want to be on the top of the results and to do this, you need a decent Google PageRank.

Google PageRank is based on a scale of 0 to 10, with 10 being the highest. Sites with PR0 have either just started, or were bought and never had any content or traffic. You should be able to attain a PR1 quite easily. Your PageRank is based on the number of links directing to your sites from other sites. The more you have, the more you will go up in rank obviously. But don’t be fooled, some sites are better to be linked from than others. Being linked to on a PR7 site will do a large amount of good compared to a PR1. PR0 links are virtually useless as they are new and have no content, so their links mean practically nothing.

PageRank does work and is efficient for getting your site into some keywords on Google’s monopoly of a search engine, but overall it is not worth the hassle and is a dead market. Google does not show results on a page solely based of PageRank as some seem to think. If you swap links with some large sites and manage to get a higher PR than that of a site that has been running for 5 years solid, they will most definately get the higher result. Why? Established sites mean everything. Google strives to link it’s users to the most relevant information and most likely the site that has been active for 5 years will have better content and more information on the subject than your 3 month old site. Inevitably, PageRank is just another tool to rank yourself against other websites of the same niché to see where you stand.

Google has opened an entirely new market by simply allowing this new feature to be used. While it is somewhat beneficial to the engine as a whole, it could simply be hidden because it is not solely relying on backlinks like everyone believes. Users are now paying up to $100+/month to have their link posted in a PR7 link directory. A link directory is a site that contains just links, and that is all, it is created solely for the use of boosting PageRank and is against Google TOS. People have literally wasted thousands of dollars getting backlinks. Sometimes it works out in the end but most often, it does not.

As stated above Google is now a monopoly online and quite literally anything they brand with their logo, they will start making millions from. There is no denying that PageRank is an excellent tool to use in their search engine, but it has started a spending spree that is leading most people nowhere.

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Entrecard is the bloggers traffic exchange. Specifically made to hone to a bloggers needs, Entrecard is a great way to get free traffic to your website. Like any other online traffic exchanging system, Entrecard has it’s high and low points. Hopefully with the information I am about to provide you, you will be able to make a final decision on whether you will decide to use this program.

The great part of Entrecard is that it is a very simple setup, and anyone wishing to use it can get it up and running in minutes. There is no complex form or html code to put on your site. To get going just sign up, verify your email address, choose the image you want to use for your site, and insert the small html code onto your page anywhere. That’s it, you’ve set it up, Entrecard is installed and ready to use on your site.

Now that you’ve got it set up, you will probably get a few advertising requests in the next hour or two. This is normal because your blog costs only a few credits to advertise on currently. When a new blog joins, it only costs 2 EntreCredits to advertise on. Each time an advertisement is bought, that number doubles. When you first join you will get a few advertiser requests because 2 EntreCredits is a very small price to pay for advertisement. After a while you will casually rest at a cost somewhere near 32 EntreCredits, sometimes a bit lower.

As for actually earning these EntreCredits, there are many ways to do so. You get 1 EntreCredit for each blog that you “drop” your EntreCard at, and 1 for each other blogger that “drops” their card on your blog. ”Dropping” means visiting the blog, finding their EntreCard widget and clicking the “drop” button. You also earn 25% of the advertising credits you earn on your blog. This means if someone pays 100 EntreCredits to advertise on your blog, you will earn 25 credits just for letting it run.

On top of the cheap advertising and easy usability, their forums also provide a great place to expand and meet other blogmasters. While you most likely won’t get any real customers for anything you are selling, you can make friends with those who have users that might. Perhaps you will meet someone willing to do a linkback, or even a full article about your site. Even if you don’t post in the forums, if you are an active “card-dropper” your image is shown to the owner of the blogs you drop at every day. The owner may see you frequently and check in on your site to see if it’s any good.

One issue stands out above all else on EntreCard, the quality of traffic. While normally we take a neutral stance on traffic quality, this is one of our few exceptions. Nearly all traffic you get to your blog from EntreCard is from other bloggers using EntreCard. The only reason you get hits is because they want to hit the little “drop” button on your blog. Some may view for a little bit, but most won’t stay. Even if a regular person clicks your image on anothers site, it takes them not to your actual site, but to your EntreCard page. If they decide they still want to see the site, then they must click on your URL listed on the page, this concept gives very low conversions.

One last note I have is… DON’T GET ADDICTED TO ENTRECARD!!! Many webmasters think EntreCard is good, just like you should after reading this, but some of them use it as their primary source for traffic. This is a bad(actually horrible) thought and should be immediately omitted from your mind. EntreCard is not the solution to your traffic troubles and should be used just for a few spare hits here and there. If you start getting bad or no conversions, just remove it, don’t waste valuable space on your blog for it. You shouldn’t have to put serious amounts of time into EntreCard to make it work for you, if you are, you should stop using it.

EntreCard gets $3.50/$5.00 simply because the traffic lacks any real users, and conversions are hard to get from their bounce page. Other than that the service is wonderful and an excellent idea for anyone entering into the blog world. If you have a blog, you should have EntreCard.

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Are you considering purchasing traffic to boost your site a bit? Have you decided where you are purchasing the traffic, or what kind of traffic you are looking for? If you haven’t, perhaps you should consider what each different course of traffic offers. Remember, there is a difference in the traffic  you purchase.

Once you’ve decided that you want to purchase some traffic, why not look a bit deeper into what you are purchasing? Any schmuck can sell you traffic on a web forum and deliver it all to your site. But what if you are looking only for US-based users, or perhaps users wanting your specific genre, should you pay extra? No! Chances are these users are being coaxed to your site and being compensated(paid) for it. They don’t really care what genre your site is, or what your site even is altogether. They view the site solely for the purpose of getting paid to do it.

While targetting seems like a good idea, in the long run traffic is traffic. If your content is good enough, you will be able to convince them to stay. 19/20 people forced to view your site when someone purchases traffic won’t stick around on your site any longer than they are paid to do so. If you want real traffic, advertise your site, don’t purchase traffic.

When you purchase things online, you always get what you pay for. When you purchase advertising, you get advertising. When you purchase traffic, you get traffic. Make sure your site has content to keep them stuck to the page, if you rely solely on the hope that all of the traffic you purchase decides to stick around, you are going to be very distraught once your traffic flow has ended.

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That’s right win a Nintendo DS + 1 Game(Mario Party DS) for absolutely free! To kick off the blog I have decided to give away a decent sized prize, coming straight from my own pocket! The system is brand new and the only reason the box was even opened was so I could take a few pictures of it(shown above). It has never been turned on and is 100% brand spanking new! Heck, even if you don’t want it, the combined worth of the system and game is $150+, why not just sell it?

If you really don’t want the Nintendo DS that bad, I am also offering 5,000 EntreCredits to the winner. Either or, it is a great prize and is absolutely free!

I’m sure you want in on this lovely prize, so perhaps you would like to know exactly how to get it. It’s actually quite simple and there are three easy ways to get yourself an entry into this extravagent contest.

1. Sign Up To The RSS Feed And Activate It If You Haven’t Already
2. Post A Comment On Another One Of My Topics, If You Provide Solid Input I Will Award You An Entry
3. Post An Article On Your Blog/Website Telling Of This Contest

Do not ask if your comment is good enough to earn an entry ticket, you will be removed from the contest completely! If you subscribe to our RSS and activate please post a comment here and put your email that you used for the RSS feed as the email it asks for, this way only I will be able to see your email and you still get entered in. If you post a blog article, please ping us so I can see your post and credit your ticket accordingly. If you just made a post on your website, please leave a comment here.

Everyone can only have a maximum of 5 tickets in the contest, this means multiple website postings or multiple quality comments. The contest will end once the blog reaches 150-200 RSS subscribers. Give or take, depending on how good the turnout is. Good Luck To Everyone!

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