Archive for September, 2008
Written on September 30th, 2008 by Graham
Big news ladies and gents. We heard you loud and clear when you said “We want more things to spend our credits on!” So, without further ado, Entrecard Credits are now officially an accepted form of payment for:
- blog reviews
- text links (follow or nofollow -you choose)
- inline ads (just like this one ————————–>
- RSS inserted ads
- monthly 125×125 ads
- and more! all thanks to OIO-publisher
OIO publisher is the kick ass fully-automated advertising system that allows you to sell all different types of ads on your blog with the click of a button while keeping literally all of your earnings. This initiative is going to depend on everyone’s participation to get really awesome advertising options out there available for the EC community.
A rockin’ partnership
Entrecard has partnered with OIO-Publisher for its new 2.0 release. Previously, OIO was just available for Wordpress, but now it’s available for blogger and all other platforms as well (though you do need some sort of hosting account to set it up -even if you’re using blogger). Under the partnership, Entrecard Credits are now an accepted form of payment for people using the OIO system.
OIO has quickly become an industry standard for blog advertising. This is because you keep 100% of the revenue from your ad sales, completely cutting out the middle man, and it is all fully automated and runs on autopilot. Entrecard currently uses OIO to sell the 125 ads on our blog, and it has literally made us thousands of dollars.
My favorite feature of OIO publisher is that it sends your advertisers automated reports of how well their ads are doing, include their cost-per-click, clickthrough rate, number of clicks, number of impressions, and more. Anyone who has bought an Ad on the Entrecard blog of course is familiar with the awesome reports that OIO sends automatically.
How it works: Get OIO!
If you want to sell every form of advertising under the sun, and ACCEPT EC AS PAYMENT (I can’t stress enough how huge this is), you have to buy OIO. Yes, it costs money. Instead of charging a % of the revenue you make from your advertising, OIO instead charges a one-time fee for you to purchase the plugin/service. The price is typically $47, but with our $17 coupon you only pay $30.
So the first step is to buy it immediately and use the coupon code “entrecard” to save almost 20 bucks. Go for it, because this is one of those things where the more Entrecarders get behind it and start using it, the more everyone will truly benefit. Plus you will rack up the ECs as you sell monthly ad spots, blog reviews, text links, and whatever else you want.
It pays for itself
At our new price of $6 per thousand credits, OIO will pay for itself with the first 5000 credit ad you sell, which will probably happen immediately. If you’re more concerned about the cash, it will pay for itself once you sell just two ads at $15 bucks a piece. So don’t delay -get it now!
Knock $17 off the price with coupon code “entrecard”
When you purchase OIO, don’t forget to enter the coupon code “entrecard” to save $17. This brings the price down from $47 to just $30. That is an awesome deal for this plugin.
Activating EC
Once you’ve purchased OIO, use this guide to help you set it up. It is a very quick and easy process, and support on both the OIO team and Entrecard team will help you if you encounter any problems.
Once it’s installed and running properly, have fun choosing what kind of advertising you’ll offer on your blog in exchange for Entrecard Credits. There are a lot of options, including text links, blog reviews, inline ads, a grid of 125×125, and more! So have fun and be creative! They all implement seemlessly and without any more effort than a click. The system is truly amazing.
Finding Entrecarders who have OIO and accept EC as payment
The OIO marketplace on the OIO website allows you to browse through all the Entrecarders that are using OIO and accepting EC. It will tell you what kind of advertising is available. This feature is being plugged into their marketplace within 48 hours, and we’ll update you on the blog when it’s live. Until then, feel free to use the Marketing Forum to post your ad spots available with OIO.
What this means for Entrecarders
We’re pushing this hard, because the more people who start using OIO publisher and accepting EC, the more options will be available for purchase with your Credits in the entire EC economy. In fact, if we had the money, we would just outright buy a copy for every Entrecard member. Imagine browsing thousands upon thousands of blogs, and buying text links, RSS ads, blog reviews, monthly 125 slots, and more all with your Credits! Imagine earning cash and EC from your blog on autopilot as people come to your site, buy ads, and get handled automatically with OIO!
Buy OIO today (with coupon code “entrecard”) and be a part of the revolution that is changing online advertising forever.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does OIO publisher work for blogger?
Yes! The original version was just for Wordpress, but now its for blogger too, as well as every other blogging platform.
What does OIO do?
OIO allows you to sell 125ads, blog reviews, text links, inline ads, and more all with a few clicks. It also allows you to accept Entrecard credits as a form of payment.
Aren’t the links above affiliate links?
Yes, Entrecard will earn revenue off each sale of OIO publisher referred from our site. Your purchase of OIO publisher helps support Entrecard in a time of need, and ensures we will be able to offer this service well into the future.
How do I find blogs that accept EC for their ad spots?
Within a day or two, OIO publisher is updating their marketplace to include a filter for Entrecard, which will list all the advertising available for EC.
What was that coupon code again?
The coupon code is “entrecard” and it will save you $17 off the price, bringing the total to just $30.
What about Google?
To date, Google has not taken any action against bloggers using OIO publisher, nor have they announced any intention of doing so.
What about a transfer tax?
OIO uses our payment API, and as such a transfer tax of 12.5% of the credits being paid applies automatically. Think of this similar to paypal’s fees. Even though you keep 100% of what you earn with OIO, paypal still charges you transfer fees, and so does Entrecard.
Do I need hosting to use OIO?
Yes, you need some sort of hosting account to upload the software to. It doesn’t even have to be the same hosting account your blog is using, but you do need a server to upload the software too.
My personal pitch
If you’re not using OIO publisher for your blog’s advertising, you should be. I’m not just saying this. One look after installing it and you will realize that this is an amazing piece of software that is going to make you money and ECs. There is nothing out there like it. That is why the first time I used it, I called the team on the phone and told them how awesome it was, and how we need to get Entrecard Credits as an accepted form of payment and this thing can blow up. If you have ever thought about selling advertising on your blog, or if you’re looking to make some extra money or ECs, and thought it was complicated or a hassle, think again. This makes it so easy, so autopilot, that I can’t say enough good things about it. We installed it on the Entrecard blog and we’re never going back to anything else. It’s just that awesome. GET IT! -and offer lots of advertising options for EC!
Written on September 29th, 2008 by Graham
In order to continue operating in the long-term, Entrecard needs to make some significant changes. The changes are summarized below:
- Buy credits for less: Entrecard is now selling 1,000 credits for $6.00.
- More pricing increments: Instead of prices doubling every time, there are now a few more steps. The new price points can be found on the Advertising page in the wiki.
- Members are not allowed to sell credits: This goes for ebay sales, posts in the Marketing forum, and posts on other forums. If you have references on your site to the sale of credits, please remove them immediately, as it is now against our terms.
- Credit transfer limits: Members are allowed to make a maximum of 14 credit transfers a week, up to a maximum of 1,000 credits, whichever comes first. This means you can still run contests where you give credits away for free, and under 1k per week. Note: This does not affect linked blogs, you can transfer unlimited credits between linked blogs.
- Transfer tax: From now on, all transfers, including transfers made with our new payments API, will be taxed at a rate of 12.5%. The taxed credits will be sold to members (see #1).
- Blogs cannot be unlinked: Once you link a blog, it’s there for good unless you ask us to delete the blog from your account. This prevents linking/unlinking to get around the credit transfer limits, and it also stops you losing access to a blog if you unlink it in error, which happens a lot.
- No more coupons: You are no longer allowed to send coupons.
- Shop closed: Except for Entrecard upgrades (Featured Status, Fast Pass) the Entrecard Shop is now offline until further notice. Please do not request a seller token until the shop returns. When it comes back, it will be bigger and better. We’ll communicate more details nearer the time.
We really do believe that an economy with plenty of 3rd parties involved is a stronger economy overall, unfortunately just right now we’re unable to support that given the need to keep everything running. We hope that, by taking the steps we have, we will be able to reach a good balance between maximizing the overall benefits for our users and getting the revenue we need to pay the bills and expand the service.
Hopefully, in the future, we’ll be in a stronger position with a more diverse income and we’ll be able to reintroduce independent credit sales.
We appreciate all the feedback we’ve had over the past few days on this topic, please let us know what you think by leaving a comment.
Written on September 27th, 2008 by Graham
The 48 hours that transpired since listing my site on Sitepoint have been incredible. In fact, no less than 20 people have reached out to me and gave me a phone call. Over the past two days, I’ve talked to business leaders, CEOs, advertising execs, Tony the CEO of BlogCatalog, VCs, biz dev people, a gaming company in Israel, companies in the UK, and more. I’ve been on the phone so long I’m probably developing a tumor.
One by one offers rolled in. I’m not going to say how much they were for. No one put in a bid on sitepoint, but I wasn’t expecting anyone too. The real bidding took place verbally behind the scenes. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me start with the feedback that I received, as it was overwhelming. People called me from all different companies, all over the workd, to tell me how amazing and unique Entrecard is, how other businesses would kill for the kind of traction and brand recognition we have in the blogosphere, how passionate our members are about the service, how in a year or two every advertiser on the planet is going to be trying to get into the blogosphere, how this is the pivotol moment where I get my shit under control and see through it. How I’m going to regret it if I let anything happen to it. How I’m lucky I didn’t get a VC and that I don’t even want one. People saw an entrepreneur who was losing faith, and they were rushing in to help me back up, and lend me a hand.
The whole experience has been amazing, humbling, and a reality check. Entrecard is a monster. It’s a runaway train. Everyone wants a piece of it. People are lined up right now for a piece of it, including a handful of people backed by big investors who made offers to buy it outright -and that’s precisely why I’m giving a piece of it to no one.
This is my company, I created it, it is my fate to see it through. The more offers I got, the more I realized I could not let it go. I guess you could say I’ve had a religious experience, and in the past 48 hours as my international network of people willing to help me has ballooned many times over. One thing is for sure, listing the site was the best move I ever made from a business development and networking standpoint. But it’s given me a second wind, a slap in the face. I started this thing and damnit, I’m going to make it work.
So no, I’m sorry, but I am not selling. No freaking way. We’re going to fix this and fix it right. The company finances are my mess, I made it, now I will clean it up and get it on track. Anyone can be an Entrepreneur when things are going great, but when life and business become more challenging than anything you’ve faced before, that’s when it’s time to pull up your pants, roll up your sleeves, and defy every thing and every one trying to hold you down.
All the tools necessary to make our business model successful and sustainable are right here before us. I don’t need VCs. I don’t need investors. I just steer this ship sharply onto course. So stay tuned.
Thank you
To all the people that reached out to me, to all the successful entrepreneurs who came out of the woodwork, and everyone who, I had never met before, who saw I had fallen down, who picked me up, and shoved me over onto the right path. Thank you for making me realize the value of blazing onward, and maintaining autonomy at all costs.
Onward and upward!
Written on September 27th, 2008 by Acadia
You may have participated in Entrecard contests before – but never one like this. The month of October is going to see you getting the general public surfing to your site trying to win the Halloween Scavenger Hunt. Participation is easy, and you get the chance for links, new traffic and new readers. Remember – the person who wins this contest will not be a person from Entrecard.
How can that be, you ask? Because the prize is going to be real $$, not EC’s. If you want in, you will have to donate some of your own cash. Money brings money, and this is the time to pool our resources and get some of the public surfing our sites.
Keep reading to see how it works.
Read the rest of this entry »
Written on September 26th, 2008 by Amanda
When customizing your Blogger template, you’ll find it useful to have a set of “tools” to hand: reference documents, image resources, and useful applications which will make the process easier to manage.
In this article, I’ll explain the main groups of resources which I find useful as a Blogger template designer, with links to free tools and resources that you can use in your own design projects.
Image by Boolean Split
Create a test blog!
Using a test blog allows you to customize (or create) a Blogger template and see it working as it would in your main blog without any of your changes affecting usability for visitors.
Blogger makes it easy for us to set-up and use a test blog for developing new blogs and themes:
- We can create up to 100 blogs for free and manage these from a single Google account
- We are able to download our existing template, and upload this to a test blog with ease. The same applies when uploading the completed design back to our main blog.
- Using the new “import” tool, we can import posts from our existing blog into the test blog, allowing us to see how customizations will affect the overall design of the blog and current posts.
- By applying settings, we can make our blog private, or make it difficult for the public to access it by preventing search engines from indexing the content and hiding it from the blogs displayed in our Blogger profiles.
For the most part, setting up a test blog is self-explanatory, but if you would like more information regarding possible settings and effective set-up a Blogger test blog, you may like to read this detailed article on Blogger Buster.
Set up image hosting with Picasa
If you plan to use images in your Blogger template design (IE: for backgrounds, icons, visual appeal), you will need to arrange external hosting for these images.
While Blogger hosts images which you upload for your posts, as header banners and in image widgets, Blogger does not supply hosting for images you use in your non-standard templates.
A little known tip is to make use of your free Picasa Web Albums account to store images for your template design.
As you already have a Google account (all Blogger users now sign in using Google accounts), you can simply visit Picasa Web Albums to activate this service if you have not already done so. You will also notice that all of the images you have uploaded for your blog are stored and organized in these albums.
You should have 1GB of storage in total for your Picasa Web Albums account, which generally is more than enough for all your template requirements. It is possible to pay for increased storage if required. As far as I can tell, there are no limitations on bandwidth. So if your blog does happen to hit Digg’s home page, you’re assured that your images will still appear as hoped!
Uploading images to Picasa is pretty simple, simply follow the screen prompts to get your images uploaded to the Google servers. Make sure the folders you create for your template images are publically accessible, otherqise you will be unable to link to these images in your template.
It can be a little more tricky to locate the URLs for your images, so here is a little tip.
Once you have uploaded your images, view each one in your albums individually. You will notice a magnifying glass to enlarge images in the upper right-hand side of the page. Enlarge each image, then right click on the image. One of th eoptions of your right-click menu should be to “Save Background As…” or “View Background Image” (depending on your browser). In either case, you can use this function to copy the URL of your image to your clipboard, and save for later use.
For smaller images, it may be possible to simply right-click and copy the URL of the image. For larger images (typically above 500px wide), you will need to save the “background” image location as explained above.
Color Schemes
When designing new templates, I find it useful to work from a color scheme for backgrounds, fonts and choice of images.
Image by My Aim Is True
Here are some color scheme resources which I personally recommend you try:
You may also want to check out this post by Antonio Lupetti for more color scheme resources.
Free Image Resources
Very few blog designs are constructed using color alone. Most designs include images of some form: either as backgrounds, headings, icons or other visual appeal.
Image by Moriza
Here are some excellent resources of free images which you can use in your designs. Some may have restrictions for use or distribution, so be sure to check licenses before use!
Background images
Resources for tiled background images and large textures:
Icon Sets
Here are my favorite resources for free icons (though there are literally hundreds more if you perform a Google search!):
Free Images and Photography
Here is a list of stock photography and image sites. Do check any restrictions and licensing for these images as many require attribution or have limitations for use:
Image editing
If you are using images in your Blogger template, chances are you’ll need to use an image editing application at some point.
Photoshop is an excellent and fully featured tool, so if you already have this installed on your computer, you’re set for enhancing, resizing and optimizing your images for your design. However, if you do not already have a good image editor installed on your computer, purchasing one could prove to be an expensive venture.
Here are some free image editors and online resources you could use instead:
- GiMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program, almost as fully featured as Photoshop and well documented).
- Paint.NET
- Photobie (Free Download, easy for beginners to use)
- SnipShot (edit images online)
- Web Resizer (Crop, edit and optimize for the web)
Inspiration
Browsing through designs and templates built by other bloggers is a great way to understand the possibilities of template design, and gain inspiration for your own Blogger template.
Here are some excellent sites and resources which you could browse to seek inspiration for your blog color scheme, layout, and overall visual design:
Where do we go from here?
In my future posts here on the Entrecard blog, I’ll take you through a step by step process of creating a themed template for Blogger. Each article will cover one aspect of the design in great detail: from choosing and designing the perfect layout, to adding color/background images, navigation and much more.
Be sure to bookmark this page for future reference and check out some of the useful resources posted here as we will be using these throughout the series of tutorials!
About the author
Amanda Fazani is a full-time blogger and web designer who writes about Blogger in detail at BloggerBuster.com.
Written on September 25th, 2008 by Graham
My vision for Entrecard is enormous. From day 1, my goal was to build “the currency of the blogosphere” -and on top of it an entire economy of bloggers buying and selling not only advertising, but all sorts of products and services. The benefit for bloggers to participate was always the promise of more traffic, more community participation, comments and subscribers.
As you all may or may not know, I recently met with some VCs over a two month period. We were working out a deal in which they were going to invest a $700,000 “seed round”, which would open a headquarters and allow us to hire 10 employees, with a follow on Series A round of 2 to 5 million six months later. The deal fell apart in the 11th hour, because they lost faith in my ability to execute the plan as the only member of a one person team.
Around the same time, a family emergency ocurred that is demanding some time and money, which I don’t have much of right now while running Entrecard.
And finally, in the end, I want Entrecard to become the best it can be for you, the bloggers. This means putting it in the hands of someone who has the resources to invest in developers, designers, and roll out all the features that we have planned that will make Entrecard rock even harder.
I will not be putting the site into the hands of someone I think won’t act in the best interest of the bloggers, and I will not be putting the site into the hands of someone who I haven’t talked to extensively and gotten on the same page about where Entrecard goes from here. Bascially, I’m looking for someone who can execute my vision, because I don’t have the money or manpower to do it, and I’m disenchanted with VCs at present and don’t feel I have the resolve at this point to work out another deal with another firm.
Entrecard needs a team. It has gotten too big too fast, and without more servers, more developers, designers, and so on, it will buckle under its own weight. And so I have come to the opinion that the entire company, and all the bloggers using it, would be better served with a better-endowed owner.
I know this may come as a shock to many of you, but don’t worry. Nothing is final. I may not end up selling it. I may decide to cancel the auction and chase down the VCs with a second wind. But one thing is certain, something needs to change, and Entrecard needs the resources to get to the next level, and it is unfair to you, the bloggers, to make you the promises I have made of features to come, with no clear plan in sight to get them built.
That is all. Here is the link to the sale on sitepoint.
Written on September 24th, 2008 by Richard Catto
This is a guest post by Richard Catto of Cape Town news. The opinions expressed in this article are mine and not necessarily those held by EntreCard.
Amassing EC credits
The whole idea of EntreCard is not to amass EntreCard credits. If you manage to amass 1 000 000 EC, you will still not be a real millionaire. You will still be broke in real life. 
The real goal of EntreCard
The real idea behind the EntreCard community is to PROMOTE your blog.
You want to increase your traffic and enlarge your community of regular readers. You do not want to become an EC millionaire. So spend your credits on advertising. Dump it regularly on advertising, even if that advertising, at times, is not particularly effective. Keep spending it in different places until you find where it works best.
Those who came before
Before EntreCard came along, there were others. Many others. The first blogging community (or social network) that I joined was MyBlogLog. Then blogcatalog. Then BlogRush. StumbleUpon. Digg. Reddit. FaceBook.
BlogRush came along just before EntreCard and it promised huge amounts of additional traffic. For each time your BlogRush widget displayed, your latest blog post would be displayed somewhere on someone else’s BlogRush widget along with 4 other headlines.
BlogRush failed miserably, because nobody clicked on the stories syndicated throughout the BlogRush network.
Where BlogRush failed, EntreCard saw a way to succeed.
Instead of promoting a single blog post via a text RSS feed headline, EC promotes the entire blog via a 125 pixel square graphic advert.
Where the EC traffic comes from
EC’s original idea was that it would drive traffic mainly via adverts placed on third party blogs.
However, as it has turned out, that is not the only way EC drives traffic to blogs. Sometimes adverts placed on an EC blog results in a very small amount of traffic. EC also generates lots of traffic via your drops on other EntreCarders’ blogs.
An EC ethic
An EC ethic arose out of nowhere that if you drop on someone, generally they will drop back on you. Some prefer to state this explicitly by belonging to an EC clique such as “U DROP I FOLLOW”, but generally more and more EC members are adopting this drop style even if they don’t announce it. I follow this method, and the more I follow it, the better it works for me.
The only way possible to get the most out of EC is to drop the maximum everyday. If you drop less than 300 entrecards a day, you are going to receive sub optimal results.
How I drop
I return drops from two lists I compile from cards in my inbox:
The first list contains those blogs I always drop on every day. This list includes my top droppers – that is everyone in my top 10 drop list and others who frequently drop on me, plus other blogs I include at my discretion. Currently I have about 45 blogs in this list. I intend restricting it to at most 100.
The second list comprises everyone else who has ever dropped on me. It’s getting longer and longer and it contains many more than 300 blogs, so obviously I cannot drop on everyone on the second list everyday. Instead I remember where I left off the previous day and start from there the next day. Currently I have over 1200 blogs in my second list, so it takes me roughly 4 days to go through the entire list before I start back at the beginning again.
Once I’ve gone through it once, I add to it any newcomers who have dropped on me. In this way, the list grows all the time. I also prune my lists to remove those who never drop back on me and those who drop out of EntreCard.
This method of mine, combined with regular advertising, has resulted in a lot of additional traffic to my blog. I also fairly regularly receive more than 300 drops back per day now. I saw results using this strategy within 7 days of starting it, and as time goes by it seems to be gaining more and more momentum for me.
The Ten Rules of EntreCard dropping
Here are my suggestions for the most effective EntreCard dropping strategy:
Read the rest of this entry »
Written on September 22nd, 2008 by phirate
We need to have an outage to generally do some database cleanup and get things moving a bit faster.
This outage will start at 6am Boston time (click for more timezones) and last for 1 hour.
I apologize for the interruption. During this outage widgets will continue to operate, however the toolbar will be non-functional and you will not be able to drop or log in to the site. Hopefully things will be a bit quicker after we come back.
update: Outage completed successfully. Thanks everyone.
Written on September 20th, 2008 by MTMD
The “Favorites” Feature of EntreCard is absolutely my favorite feature of the site as it not only helps me keep track of the blogs that I want to visit on a daily basis, but it also helps me grow both my traffic and the readership of my blog.
As you can see from the image on the right, I currently have over 100 blogs in the Favorite Section. I use Favorites three ways.
The first and simplist way I use this feature is part of my daily dropping strategy. Once a blog is added to my Favorites Section, for as long as it’s there, I will drop on it on a daily basis. All blogs that end up in my Favorites Section will remain a Favorite for at least 30 days. Nine of my current favorites have remained in this section since I originally added them shortly after joining EntreCard back in April. It’s the fluid nature of this section that makes it so useful to me in building traffic and readership for my blog.
The second way that I use this section is as a tool to help me grow my readership. When I come across a new EntreCard blog that I find interesting or engaging in some way, I’ll favorite it on EntreCard. What this does is put it on a kind of “Watch” List. As a favorite blog, I will visit the blog every day and drop an EntreCard on the site. If the post that caught my eye is typical of the blog, chances are most of the content on the site will interest me in some way. If I’m interested in a post, chances are I’ll comment on it and engage the blogger. Normally, bloggers reply to their commenters in some way. Some times if you comment on another person’s blog, they’ll visit your blog and comment on your posts as well. But after thirty days or so of “Watching” a blog, discovering if there are interesting posts and commenting on those posts, I usually have gained a reader or two.
Here is a specific example of how this has worked for me on Meltwater. Torrents. Meanderings. Delta.: Right now, the U.S. Presidential Election is the top news story every night. A lot of bloggers are blogging about it. Go figure, right? Well, I’m engaged in the election and in politics, so I’ve started reading the posts on other blogs that I come across, and if you look at the screen shot of my favorites above, you’ll see most of those blogs are political blogs. Well, as an opinionated blogger, I have often left comments after reading the recent posts on these blogs. The bloggers have replied to my comments and a lot of back and forth has ensued. This led me to create a Political Blog Roll in my left sidebar.
Many of these blogs have added MTMD to their blog rolls as well and these bloggers are reading me just as much as I am reading them. They are commenting on my posts and there’s a lot of healthy debate going on. Not only has this increased my readership directly, it also helps indirectly. Each of these blogs have their own readerships. And I have tapped into those readerships through the listing of my blog in their blog rolls, and they have tapped into my readership by being listed in my blog roll. And through the comments we leave on each other’s blogs, we also allow others to discover our blogs through the comments and the discussions that we engage each other with.
The third way I use the the Favorites feature on EntreCard is to increase traffic to my blog. Slowly, but surely, through my daily dropping habits I am increasing traffic to my blog. On any given day MTMD is usually somewhere between #30 and #60 of EntreCard’s most popular blogs. I accomplish this partly through regular dropping on the same mix of blogs and getting reciprocal drops, but partly by tweaking my dropping habits to get a better return of reciprocal drops from those that I drop on daily. And I use the Favorites section in the following way to manage that better return on my drops:
As I’ve already explained, when I come across a new blog that interests me, I’ll favorite it. Hopefully by engaging that new blog, I’ll increase my readership as well. But often when you come across a blog, there might be only one or two posts that interest you that are not representative of the blog and future posts. That blog might also be updated infrequently so there’s rarely new or interesting content. That blogger might not respond to comments. And that blogger might not reciprocate drops. If any of these things are the case, I’ll probably lose interest in the blog pretty quickly. But when you first discover a new blog, you don’t know these things about the blog.
So if I’m interested in the blog at all, I’ll favorite it and watch it. I’ll drop on that blog every day for about a month. If there’s content in that blog that I really like, I’ll keep the blog in my favorites section even if that blogger never drops on my blog. If it’s a blog I like with content that’s interesting to me, I’ll often comment and engage the blogger that way. Worst case, I’ve found a blog I like even if the blogger never drops an EntreCard on my site.
However, life is usually not a worst case scenario. After dropping on a blog for thirty days, chances are that blogger will begin to drop on my site as well and become a regular reader of my blog. I monitor the dropping habits of bloggers listed in my favorites section by dropping on their blogs from the favorites section of EntreCard. I right click on each of the blogs in my Favorites Section and open up a new tab. This doesn’t bring up the blog directly, it brings up the EntreCard Profile of the blogger. There you can see how many times each blogger has dropped an EntreCard on your own site.
My minimum criteria is a 33% return. If I drop on a site every day for a month, I expect that blogger to drop a card on my site at least 10 days in the same month. If after a full month of daily dropping, the blogger doesn’t make at least 10 drops on my site, I remove the blog from my favorites. And usually, if there are less than 10 drops on my site, it means the blogger isn’t serious about blogging, the blogger doesn’t update his or her site very often, the blogger doesn’t always reply to comments, etc.
So by using the Favorites section in EntreCard as a tool to grow readership, I find it’s incredibly effective because it’s a fluid management tool to help me keep track of the blogs I’m interested in. As a tool to increase traffic, it’s a highly effective tool to monitor reciprocal dropping habits and to tweak my own dropping habits. If I only get 300 drops a day, I want most of the drops to go to blogs that drop on me most often. And by using the Favorites Section as the core of my dropping strategy, I can guarantee that the time I spend dropping EntreCards will be spent at least partly by looking at blogs I have a genuine interest in, which makes the process of dropping cards more enjoyable because dropping cards then becomes a process to look forward to rather than a tedious task to get done to accumulate EntreCard Credits.
Thanks for reading.
Written on September 19th, 2008 by Amanda
Blogger is very user-friendly: you can create a free blog in just a few minutes; change the design at the click of a button, and add widgets to your layout with ease.
My favorite feature of Blogger is the ease of customization. Unlike other free blogging services, Blogger users have complete access and control over their template and design.
From simple color changes to extravagant magazine-style themes, it’s possible to customize Blogger templates in almost every way imaginable. But before we dive in at the deep-end,let’s look at some basic principles of customizing Blogger templates and gain an understanding of key concepts.
How are Blogger templates constructed?
Blogger templates are essentially XML files (eXtensible Markup Language): a file format which offers a structured system that can extract the data for your posts and widgets then display as regular HTML when viewed in a browser.
As such, we could see Blogger templates as a tree-like structure where each branch represents an element of the blog such as the header or sidebar. Each branch is then broken down into smaller sections (metaphorically smaller branches or leaves) which perform a unique function such as displaying comments or generating the date of each post.
Within Blogger templates, you will see HTML code (HyperText Markup Language) such as <div>, <span> and <h1> tags. You will also notice specific families of XML tags which are used to generate dynamic content: your blog posts, widgets, dates, and even the style of text and color schemes.
Here are some of the most commonly used XML tag families in Blogger templates, and what they are used for:
- <b:skin> and </b:skin> All content between these tags is used to produce the “stylesheet” or design of your blog.
- <b:section> This defines a “widgetized” area of the template, a place where you can add widgets in the Page Elements section of your blog.
- <b:widget> These tags are used to generate widgets in your template, and always appear nested between <b:section> and </b:section> tags.
- <b:includable> Widgets can only contain <b:includable> tags; however, these tags can contain HTML code and other dynamic tags to generate widget contents.
When customizing Blogger templates, it is not nescessary to have a deep understanding of XML; however, it is advantageous to understand this tree-like structure and how different elements are nested within each other and that they are related.
Here are some useful reference pages to help you understand Blogger’s XML tags and how they work within the template:
CSS Based Layouts
Blogger templates produce layouts which are based on CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). For those of you who are unfamiliar with CSS, this may seema daunting concept to understand, so I’ll try to make it simple.
Blogger templates (like most modern web page structures) divide the page into sections using <div> tags. These tags act like containers for each section of content. To specify what each container will look and act like, we add identifiers (a class or ID) to each <div>, then use CSS style statements which identify these tags and add the appropriate style.
This is a shorthand way of telling the browser viewing a web page what we want the page to look like. For example, if I want a section to have a black background, white text and a red border, I could use the following statements:
.example {
background: #000;
color: #fff;
border: 1px solid #fc0;
}
CSS offers us an unlimited amount of customization options for our Blogger templates. Using CSS, we can customize:
- Background colors, background images and borders
- The size, color and style of headings and text
- The appearance of lists
- How blockquotes appear
- Add interest to images using borders and backgrounds
- Enable visual changes when the cursor hovers over a link, image or other element
- …and so much more!
You can read a very useful introduction to CSS on Blogger’s new help pages, or by referencing the W3C Introduction to CSS.
Photo by Adactio (via Flickr Creative Commons)
How CSS is referenced in Blogger templates
Regular web pages (and other blogging platforms) reference CSS style statements between <style> and </style> tags, or by calling an external style sheet.
Blogger templates operate slightly differently: CSS statements are referenced between <b:skin> and </b:skin> tags instead.
The reason for this is because we can use variables for various colors, fonts and font styles. These particular styles can then be changed quickly and easily in the Fonts and Colors page in our Blogger dashboards.
The fonts and colors variables appear like this near the very top of our Blogger templates:
/*
* Variable definitions:
* <Variable name=’bgcolor’ description=’Page Background Color’
type=’color’ default=’#fff’/>
*/
These variables are then referenced in the style statements for each HTML element like this:
body {
background: $bgcolor;
margin: 0;
padding: 40px 20px;
}
If you are familiar with CSS, you can omit any reference to variables and use your own statements instead. However I personally find Blogger’s variables system is easy to use; it can blend with regular statements and ensure minor template changes are very easy to make without having to edit the HTML code each time.
You can learn more about Blogger’s fonts and color variables on this page of the Blogger help section.
Customizing your design begins with CSS…
Some of the simplest and most effective customizations for your Blogger template are achieved by adding or altering the styles of your layout.
From adding background images to creating horizintal navigation menus, CSS becomes the backbone of great blog design.
…To add extra functionality, you need to edit the template code.
Once you become confident in using CSS to alter the visual design of your template, you may also like to add extra functionality using scripts and by manipulating template tags.
By “functionality”, I refer to things like post excerpts, related posts, feed-based widgets and magazine style layouts. All of these functions are possible for Blogger blogs, but these require more extensive customizations of the actual template, rather than modifications of the style section.
What can be achieved using Blogger templates?
I have been working with Blogger templates for a good few years now, and each day I learn something new about what is possible to achieve using this free blogging system.
By experimenting with CSS, template tags and JavaScript, Blogger “hackers” have discovered innumerable methods which we can use to customize our designs. Most functions available to those using Wordpress, Movable Type and other advanced blogging engines can be duplicated in Blogger templates by customizing template tags, adding JavaScript functions or manipulation of CSS.
Here are a few inspirational Blogger designs which express just what can be achieved using this free blogging system:
SketchBlog
Woork
Agenda Creactiva
The Blog of Doug Cloud
Learn more about customizing Blogger templates
This is my first post for Entrecard, which I hope has provided a useful overview of customizing Blogger templates. Over the coming weeks and months, I will build upon the information here by writing tutorials for customizing every aspect of your template: from simple CSS styling to magazine style layouts and beyond.
In the meantime, why not check out some of these great resources which offer useful information to help you build a better blog with Blogger:
Feel free to let me know if there are any particular customizations you would like to learn about, or offer your opinions on my first post here on the Entrecard blog by leaving your comments below.
