Blogging, Social Media

Entrecard is For Sale

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For those of you who don’t know what Entrecard is please read this post about what is Entrecard. I was doing my random Saturday surfing and came across some posts that mentioned this sale on sitepoint. I use Entrecard on a daily basis, thanks to the toolbar, and I am hoping the company that buys Entrecard will keep up the high level of quality and offerings that the current owner has been giving. Personally it sounds like he’s selling for a couple of reasons. One: VC money backed out, and two: it sounds like he might not have expected the huge growth that Entrecard has received. Here is his words for why he’s selling:

Entrecard holds a very special place in my heart. The vision for the company is enormous: aggregating all the advertising inventories across the long tail of the blogosphere, creating a virtual economy for the blogosphere at large, and providing them with a virtual currency that integrates with all other types of services via API.

I am selling because I have come to a stalemate. Entrecard is growing fast, but I do not have the resources to put behind it. I recently met extensively with Venture Capitalists who were going to make a 700k seed investment and a 2-5m follow on Series A investment in 6 months. The deal fell through in the 11th hour, right before the terms sheet, because they lost faith in my ability to execute the plan after a series of tests in which I did not know I was being tested. The valuation we were discussing was 8 million. We were going to open a headquarters, hire 10 people, and go straight to the top. Then it fell apart, and after getting my hopes up, I just haven’t been able to get back on my feet. I’m a wreck and feeling like a failure to come so close only to drop it due to my idiocy.

I also received an Angel investment several months ago at a valuation of $500,000. The network has more than tripled in size since I received that small investment. Month after month the growth rate just increases.

I would love to have the resources to purchase Entrecard and keep it doing at it’s current momentum but I don’t. I’ll just watch the sites and see what is going on regarding the sale of Entrecard.

While you’re at it, go join Entrecard and leave me a click or advertise on my blog. Get Firefox 3 and the Entrecard toolbar and get to dropping!

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How to Change Number of Posts in Wordpress

It took me some digging to find this so I figured I would post this in hopes of helping out someone else who is looking to change the number of posts displayed on the home page for a wordpress blog. To change the number of posts displayed go into your admin area and select Settings (Top right) -> Reading. On that page you can select “Blog pages to show at most”. This is the number of posts to show on your home page. I also changed the number of posts displayed in the RSS feed. I display a higher number in the feed. I also recommend showing the full story in the feed. (For each article show: Full Text). Remember, a read is more important that hoping someone reads half and is interested enough to click to read the rest.

I hope this article was helpful for you. Feel free to subscribe to my feed or add a comment.

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Add Your Products to Google Base

E-commerce merchants can add their products for free to Google Base. Google Base is the top “shopping” link in the google search engine. I do not know if many people use this service as it is not highly publicized. Sometimes these search results also appear at the top under “product searches” when a term is searched for in google. Merchants can upload each item individually or they can create a feed of their products. A feed is available for many of the popular shopping cart programs such as osCommerce. By using a feed merchants can quickly create an export of their products in the format required by Google. More advanced shopping carts can also automatically post this feed to Google Base. These shopping cart systems automate the process so that every 30 days a new feed is uploaded. If it is not done automatically the merchant is responsible for uploading a new product feed every 30 days or those products will not be listed.

Google base is a free channel for merchants to list their products. It also provides a link back to the merchants website so that a potential customer can purchase their desired item. Google also shows the product reviews a merchant has received, which will help customers decide on whether or not to purchase from a particular merchant. The Google Products page is where the end user searches for their desired product. Try searching for your companies products after your feed has been added. It usually takes a couple of hours for a feed to be processed (possibly more if it is a new feed) and the merchant will receive confirmation from google when the products have been added and are searchable.

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How to Get a Free Link to Your Blog

I’m doing something that not alot of people are doing right now. I am giving free links to Entrecard droppers on this blog. To earn a link all someone needs to do is go and register at Entrecard and drop their card. I am giving a free link to my top droppers and also to the most recent droppers. The code I am using caches the data so your link may not be immediately available. That’s all I have for this post. Go check out this blog and drop your card. I will soon be implementing the same system on this blog.

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Entrecard, Part II

Since writing this previous article I have installed the Entrecard toolbar for Firefox 3. I upgraded my home PCs firefox to FF3 specifically to use the toolbar. I highly recommend this toolbar! You first sign in and then all of your linked profiles are readily available. The first thing I did was to drop cards on my favorites. You can go through them individually or there is a “super drop” (that’s what I’m calling it) button that opens up ten tabs with ten of your favorites loaded. Drop, then check out the new content. You can also check out blogs in the different categories. I selected gaming because one of my blogs is a gaming blog. I used that blog profile and dropped and checked out other gaming web sites. There is also a heart icon in the toolbar. Click the heart to add the site to your favorites. The current advertising cost is also shown and the toolbar gives the opportunity to advertise without going to the Entrecard website.

The bottom line is if you are serious about getting the most out of the Entrecard system the toolbar is a must have. The downside is not all Firefox extensions are compatible with FF3 but it seemed like the ones that were not compatible were old ones that I did not use.

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What is Entrecard?

Entrecard is a new way for bloggers to advertise their blog. Entrecard gives members a 125×125 space to create an ad for their blog. Bloggers can advertise their blogs on other blogs in the Entrecard system. This is done through the “campaign” link at the top. The best feature in the campaign area is the search feature. Potential advertisers can search by newest to join, by how many “credits” it costs to advertise, by blog title, by blogs who display the Entrecard badge, and blogs that are currently accepting ads.

Entrecard credits are what is used to purchase advertising. Credits are earned in several ways:

• A blogger drops their card on your blog – 1 credit
• You drop your card on a bloggers badge – 1 credit
• Someone purchases advertising on your blog – credits vary, explain below

The biggest way to receive Entrecard credits is when another blogger advertises on your blog. To advertise the cost starts at 2 “ec” or entrecredits and grows exponentially based on how many advertisers are in your queue. Let’s say you have 3 advertisers, including the current advertiser, in your queue. That means the next ad costs 2^3 or 2*2*2 credits to advertise. The more advertisers in your queue the costlier it is to advertise, and most likely that is a sign your blog is more popular. Entrecard limits users to 300 credits per day per blog. Per blog: Entrecard also lets you have multiple blogs managed by one login. If a blogger has multiple blogs they simply login with a single username and password and use the “Switch” feature at the top to go in and manage another blog. Management has to be done because advertisers are approved manually. No advertiser will automatically go into the users widget without approval.

Entrecard also lets a blogger define “favorite” users. Any action that your favorites take such as when they advertise on someone elses blog is available in the “News Feed” section of the dashboard. This is a great feature to see what similar blogs are advertising on. Favorite users posts will also show up in the “Friends Feed” section. This is a hint to visit that site and drop your card on their widget. Entrecard also gives the user the ability to view who has dropped on their widget. This is good and encourages the user to go drop on that user. Any currently running and pending ads are also available through the dashboard.

Entrecard also has a marketplace. Users can purchase items such as web hosting, wordpress installation, graphic design, blog reviews, and writing services. All of the aforementioned items are not purchased with direct cash but with entrecredits. Entrecredits can be purchased through Entrecard, through other users in the Entrecard forums, and also on ebay. Ebay scares me with how low their prices are and I do not think there is any verification process that is done prior to the transaction to ensure the user does have the credits they say they do so be careful.

Go check out Entrecard today. I use it here on the right plus in another blog. If you’re already a member, drop your card and I will check out your blog and drop mine also. If you’re a member also please post a comment below so others will know to visit your blog and drop their card. Happy dropping!

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How To Change Your Twitter Background

Nowadays it is all about personal branding, and keeping that personal branding consistent. Not too many people are aware that twitter will let them upload a new background for their personal twitter page. Here is what mine looks like, click the image for a larger view.

To do this you simply create a blank document, mine was 2048 pixels wide and 1200 pixels tall. I did some manipulation in Photoshop to create the repeating background and then to add my Mii in. Finally I took the top part of my blog and made it into a box with rounded corners on the left. I didn’t worry about the right side because it’s generally not shown. It took a couple of tries to get the rounded corner box to be in the right spot. What do you think of my new twitter background? Do you think a consistent look is valuable for personal branding?

I initially read about changing your twitter background here at tw3nty3ight’s blog.

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osCommerce: How to Limit a Products Quantity in Cart

I have a magazine site and to make life easier I wanted to only allow customers to order 2 years for their subscription. I found a contribution that added in admin support and lets you vary the amount per product. I just did not need that level of control. I want to limit you to two years, no matter what product. Here’s what I did to do this in the osCommerce shopping cart.

First, find this code in shopping_cart.php:

if (STOCK_CHECK == 'true') {
$stock_check = tep_check_stock($products[$i]['id'], $products[$i]['quantity']);
if (tep_not_null($stock_check)) {
$any_out_of_stock = 1;

$products_name .= $stock_check;
}
}


After that code add this code in:


if ($products[$i]['quantity'] > 2) {
$products_name .= " - Too many years ordered, Maximum of 2 Years";
$products[$i]['quantity'] = "2";
$cart->remove($products[$i]['id']); // remove this new item from the cart session
$cart->add_cart($products[$i]['id'],2,$products[$i]['attributes']); // update the qty
}


As you can see I have hard coded two years and also the text that is displayed. To change the amount simply change the three occurrences of 2 in my sample code.

I hope this is of help to others who do not need the per-item quantity control. Feel free to add a comment.

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Top 5 Reasons Why a Blog Fails

Why do blogs fail? Technically it’s the blogger that fails as the blog really has no say in the matter.

• Site owners are new to blogging and do not understand how blogs work
• Bloggers think they can get rich (or make money period) quickly
• Blog does not get posted to regularly
• Blogger only posts about products or services in which they make money to promote and does not offer any material of substance.
• Blogger chooses to blog about a topic they are not familiar with in hopes of #2 above.

Note: the link above is not currently active. I am working on a site that will showcase “stray blogs”. If you know of a stray please contact me and I will consider the blog for inclusion. A stray in my mind is a blog with erratic post intervals and the last post must be at least a month old.

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