www.affiliateconfession.com

Just a quick note to let you know that today and up until sometime around noon tomorrow is that last full day you can enter the contest sponsored by Market Leverage, Vat19.com and myself.

More than $500 in prizes will be going to one lucky winner chosen around noon Wednesday June 25th (that’s tomorrow). It’s really easy to enter the contest as all you have to do is write a short post announcing and linking to it and the sponsors and then leave a comment on the original contest post with a link to your entry and you are in.

The list of prizes includes a Nintendo DS Lite, 2 game cartridges and an AffiliateConfession.com T-Shirt from myself. Market Leverage is sponsoring a Flip Mino camera, an iPod Nano, a 2GB USB pen and a $50 Market Leverage rewards card that can be used anywhere you can use American Express. And that’s not all because Vat19.com is adding a USB Missile Launcher, a Banana Bunker (you really need to see this) and a Video Aquarium DVD to bring some ambiance to your indoor spaces.

If you want to get in on the fun, read the contest rules and submit your entry.

Popularity: 9% [?]

A few days ago I posted that Entrecard is now selling credits for $9.50 per 1,000 and suggested a less expensive way of acquiring Entrecard credits through eBay for less than half the price. That post got a couple of interesting comments I though would be worth discussing to see where everyone is with Entrecard advertising and branding.

John from JT Pratt’s Blogging Mistakes commented that rather than spend money on buying Entrecard credits, he would spend that money via Adwords, driving traffic to a niche site and hopefully see a better return on his advertising dollars. This raises a good question on whether Entrecard is a viable advertising medium at all, or if it is just good for getting a little traffic and occasionally meeting other bloggers through dropping your card on their blog.

I have to keep repeating that any way you look at it, advertising on Entrecard is a lot of work. I’ve purchased 25,000 credits or so in the last few weeks, spent about that many and have spent a considerable amount of time looking at blogs to advertise on. And the main problem I see with this method is that, even though I’ve generated some 200 to 250 extra visitors every day, in 8 to 10 days you have to start the process all over again because every bit of your advertising is used up. I think this is the achilles heel of Entrecard. Too much time spent for too little results.

But what about the branding aspect of Entrecard? Over the last 2 weeks or so, more than 300 blogs have displayed and who knows how many thousands of people have seen the AffiliateConfession.com 125 x 125 banner and domain name. So if anything else, the name of this blog is getting in front of more eyeballs on a daily basis.

The sole purpose of buying Entrecard credits for me is to brand Affiliate Confession. That’s where I’m at with this present effort. I’m not really trying to earn money by sending traffic to this blog through Entrecard, my purpose is to get as many people as possible to see the AffiliateConfession.com url and name and get that burned into people’s brains. The money from this blog will come later.

While branding through Entrecard is only one of the channels I’m working through, I don’t honestly know if it is worth it. Marketing your brand is hard to track since there aren’t really any dollars being generated directly from the efforts. I am seeing increased rss subscribers, comments and questions sent through my contact form, but it remains to be seen if this increased activity is due to the time, effort and money spent at Entrecard.

As John suggested, the cost is also an issue. With $100 you can buy roughly 10,000 credits through Entrecard itself or you can buy roughly 25,000 credits through eBay as long as someone is selling them. This is why I suggest going through eBay and saving more than 50%. Alternatively, if you price your keywords right, you may be able to send 500 targeted clicks to a niche site, or even your blog, through Adwords for that $100.

What do you think? If you were in the process of branding yourself, would you rather spend $100 for 10,000 to 25,000 Entrecard credits or spend that money on more targeted clicks from Adwords on something else?

Popularity: 8% [?]

In the past I haven’t been much of a techie sort of person. It’s not that I have a phobic fear of the latest gadgets, it’s mainly that I’m not interested. I have a cell phone because I want to talk to people when I need to, I don’t need it to check the latest stock reports while in the grocery line or see in the sports news that a NASCAR driver decided to do something innovative, like take a right turn (yea, I know, that would put them into the wall), it’s a freaking phone.

That is changing a bit since I received all the prizes in the Webmaster Talk contest. I am totally digging using my new Macbook Air and the iPod Touch is a thing of beauty and it is near nirvana to have all of my favorite tunes right on something the size of a small pad of paper. I’ve been using the MacBook Air to sit in the living room and work while my wife is in our shared office or I’ve taken it out a few times to the local coffee shop to blog or work on a BANS site in a different atmosphere than being at home all day.

The Flip video camera is another great little gadget from the Webmaster Talk prize cache that I haven’t had that much time to work with lately, but plan on doing some more YouTube videos soon. I’m looking over iMove video editing software on the Mac which looks to be pretty comprehensive for a free program.

So I’m slowly moving from a non-tech person to a tech guy. After only a couple of weeks of owning these new gadgets I can see how one would get attached to them. It’s not that I have to have my iPod with me every second of the day, but it is nice to sit down on the couch and be able to listen to a few Pink Floyd tunes without having to put a CD in the stereo. It’s also great to take it to band practice on Thursday nights or church on Sunday and be able to listen to the song we’re working on instead of just listening to someone talk through the parts of it.

Maybe having some of the more useful gadgets isn’t such a bad thing after all. The Dot Com lifestyle, even on a scale much smaller than John Chow, is a wonderful thing. I might get use to this.

Popularity: 5% [?]

I’ve been doing a lot of advertising through Entrecard lately and have had some pretty good results. As you can see in the image above at the height of my advertising spree after accumulating 30,000 credits, I had 48 ads running at one time. I have also increased my traffic by 200 to 250 visitors a day via ads.

I still think it takes way too much time to find good places to advertise coupled with the fact that your ads only run for 24 hours. It is quite time consuming to maintain a level of running more than 30 ads a day. However, Entrecard has made it easier to visit the blog you are interested in advertising on by being able to go directly to that blog from the category rather than the individual users profile. This saves you a click for each blog you are interested in placing ads with.

Entrecard has also made it easier to get credits because you can now buy them on the site and they are priced at $9.50 per 1,000 credits and sold in bundles of 1,000, 5,000 and 10,000 credits each. So, 10,000 credits will end up costing you $95. It would take you over a month to earn that many credits by dropping the limit of 300 per day. So, in some ways, that is a fairly decent way to spend a little of your advertising dollars.

But it gets even better when you find out you can get Entrecard credits on eBay for less than half of what Entrecard sell them for. I purchased 5,000 for $22 and 10,000 credits for only $40 recently and as I write this post there’s a Buy It Now offer for 10,000 credits for only $30 and there are usually 10 to 12 auctions or sales of Entrecard credits going on at any one time.

Pretty simple math, if you want to do massive advertising with Entrecard and save a bunch of money on the deal, buy Entrecard credits on eBay.

Popularity: 7% [?]

If you don’t have your entry in yet to win some cool gadgets in the latest blog contest here then you only have 6 more days to go before a winner is chosen. Market Leverage, Vat19.com and myself are sponsoring over $500 worth of prizes to be given away to one lucky winner around 12 noon on Wednesday June 25th.

To be eligible to win the contest you have to write a post announcing it and link to the original contest post and link to the 2 sponsors listed above. You also have to leave a comment as your official entry on that post as well. You can read the complete rules right here.

The complete list of cool gadgets and prizes are as follows:

AffiliateConfession.com T-shirt added to the prizes.

Nintendo DS Lite and 2 games
Affiliate Confession t-shirt
from me.

Flip Mino video camera
iPod Nano
$50 Market Leverage Rewards Card
2GB USB Pen
All from Market Leverage

USB Missile Launcher
Banana Bunker
Ambient Water DVD Video Aquarium (What a great concept, having fish, but not having to feed them)
All from Vat19.com

That about wraps up the prize stash. If you want to have a chance to win it, submit your entry here.

Popularity: 10% [?]