If anyone tried to access the blog earlier today and yesterday, you might have noticed it was temporarily down. We were changing over our servers and had a few bumps along the way. We’re still working on a few things, as well.

This blog will be back in business in the next few days with daily postings and tons of tips. I know it’s been a few months, but I look forward to all past our past readers coming back and I welcome everyone whose here for the first time!

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

4 Comments »

FROM: JOHNCHOW.COM: Misleading Credit Pricing
Something that Entrecard needs to work on is its pricing system. For the longest time, I was the most expensive blog in the network. Now I’m not even on page one. This is because of members mass dropping cards in order to inflate their price and build up their credits. The current number one site cost 466 credits per day but has only 72 RSS readers (he wisely removed the FeedBurner count from his blog).This gaming of the system is making it hard to tell which sites will deliver traffic and which sites won’t send anything. I wouldn’t spend 466 credit to advertise on a blog with only 72 RSS readers but all his spots are sold. People think high price equal quality but for many Entrecard member sites, that is not the case. Until Entrecard figures out a way to prevent gaming of their system, you should check out the site more to prevent having your hard earned credits wasted.Get 200 Entrecard Credits

Entrecard allows me to send any credit amount I want to another Entrecard user. So, the first 35 Entrecard users who writes a recommendation for me will each get 200 credit add to his account. That’s still not enough to buy a spot on this blog but it’ll get you a lot closer. You don’t have to use the credit to advertise on my blog - feel free to use it to buy space on any of the 2,500 blogs in the Entrecard system. In order to write a recommendation and get the 200 credits, you need to be an Entrecard member.

John Chow, of all people to complain about gaming the system, is doing exactly that. While bribing people with a measly 200 Entrecard credits to give him an Entrecard review, he bemoans the fact that he is no longer on the front page of Entrecard for his category. He belittles the higher priced blogs that are on the front page by speculating that they are just worthless mass card droppers and that your points are better spent on a “quality” splog like his. I recently read one blogger who paid for an ad on Chow and received a whopping 43 visitors from the ad. Whoooop didooooo … 43 visitors.

In reality, the leaders of the category “Making Money Online” are some hard working dedicated bloggers who post quality content and work hard to drive traffic to their blogs as opposed to such banal content as what they had to eat today or bribes for Entrecard recommendations. In the top 3 listings are the likes of Problogger, one of the top blogs on the Net, famous for it’s quality content.

Of course, John is no stranger to gaming the system. Bitch Slapped by Google, banned by Digg and Technorati, John is a Master Gamer. Gaming the system only seems to bother him when the tables are turned and someone else is on top. See also: John Chow Buys Comments | Evil Blog Promotion Ideas | Evil Blog Contest | John Chow Stuffs Cookies — Pretty obvious that Chow’s evil gaming methods have made his blog popular rather than quality content.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

15 Comments »

Main Entry: mogul
Part of Speech: noun
Definition: owner
Synonyms: VIP*, baron, beef, big cheese, big gun, big shot, big wheel, czar, executive, key player*, king, kingpin, lord, magnate, merchant, prince, notable, personage, potentate, prince, royalty, sachem, top brass*, tycoon
Source: Roget’s New Millennium™ Thesaurus, First Edition (v 1.3.1)

I have participated in a lot of “make money online” forums and one thing I’ve noticed is that when the newbies come in, some fresh from reading a “get rich quick” type of ebook such as the Rich Jerk ebook or others, they are still completely clueless as to what it is they want to accomplish and how they will get there. They’ve been sold a bill of goods … the “make money online while you’re sleeping” bill of goods, and they’ve swallowed it hook, line and sinker.

You can see the amateurish looking little splogs they throw together and release into cyberspace, and then they sit and wait for the dollars to start rolling in. After as little as a few days after their “big launch,” they begin to ask questions in the forum like …. “my site is up, where’s the money?” They’ve fallen into the trap of putting yet another review splog together, thrown a few banners onto it and they’re ready to be the next Dot Dom Mogul.

Perhaps some of these are just really lazy people who are looking to make money without putting much effort into it, but a lot of them have been sold this dream of “easy money” and honestly believe it. Just look at the title and domain of the blog I created when I first got into Internet Marketing and I fell for the same crap. Now I’m stuck with the domain. I’ve got a pagerank 3 and my Alexa rating is on the rise, so I don’t want to just abandon all that.

These Get Rich Quick gurus are gaming you. If you are a newbie and anxious to achieve Dot Com Mogul status or at least just make a ton of money, the hard reality of it is that like any other job, blogging for bucks or Internet Marketing is work and it takes time to build a successful online business. So … who am I anyway? Am I a Dot Com Mogul that carries authority and someone you should believe? Read the rest of this entry »

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

No Comments Yet »