Entrecard Sponsored Ads - An Alternative

Entrecard have announced they're reserving 15% of members' ad space to run sponsored ads. With the paid ads debacle fresh in user's minds, this decision has been widely condemned.

Here's an alternative suggestion:

Don't take 15% of user's ad space on a daily basis. Instead, after six standard Entrecard ads are purchased on a blog, queue a sponsored ad in exactly the same way. A sponsored ad will then run every seventh day for 24 hours. (14.29%, close enough?)

Benefits:

• Standard Entrecard advertisers won't lose 15% of their ad time.
• Sponsored ads can be cancelled like a normal ad. Depending on how popular a blog is, the blogger will have up to 12 days to cancel an ad before it runs.
• Bloggers get paid in credits for running sponsored ads.

Here's another suggestion to monetize Entrecard. Place sponsored ads on the Entrecard blog, dashboard, profile pages and forum. How can Entrecard expect users to run sponsored ads when they're not displaying ads on their own site?

What's your opinion on this latest move by Entrecard?

Declutter Your Blog

Recently I took a close look at a selection of 50 blogs. The length of the sidebar varied from 2 to 16 pages, averaging 6. How much adds value and how much is unnecessary clutter?

Here's a summary of what I found in the sidebars:

Advertising:

• CMF Ads (on 36 blogs)
• Entrecard (34)
• Adsense (20)
• Adgitise (17)
• ads for friends (15)
• Project Wonderful (14)
• affiliate links (13)
• Amazon (7)
• Kiva (6)

Advertising provides bloggers with a bit of pocket money, but do we really need to include every ad network going? The more ads you have, the lower the CTR and the worse the value for your advertisers. There's a point beyond which more ads won't increase your blog's income.

Try removing under-performing ads to see if the CTR increases on the more valuable ads.

Content Related:

• post archive (39)
• search (26)
• about (23)
• labels, categories (19)
• recent posts (17)
• Twitter updates (12)
• important posts (10)
• top commenters (9)
• recent comments (9)
• poll (8)
• Flickr widget (6)

Most of the above add value for your readers, but it's worth considering each one for a moment. Do you really need a post archive as well as a list of recent posts? Do you need a search box in your sidebar if it's in the Blogger navbar? Do your Twitter updates simply mirror your blog posts?

If it's not adding value for you readers, get rid of it.

Community:

• Blogroll (40)
• badges (28)
• Google Followers (25)
• Feedjit widget (9)
• Alexa widget (7)
• BlogCatalog (6)
• MyBlogLog (6)
• Slogbites widget (5)

Does it make a statement about your personality or show who your friends are? Does it send any traffic to your blog? Does it add value for you, your readers or your advertisers? If not, you know what to do ;-)

If you decide to declutter your blog, I'd be interested to know what you get rid of. How much can you reduce your sidebar?

How Derren Brown Predicted the Lottery Results

On Wednesday Derren Brown performed an illusion where he predicted the National Lottery results on live TV. Here's the secret of Derren's lottery prediction.

Derren had 6 balls with a photo-sensitive coating. The balls were always visible on screen. Immediately after the lottery was drawn, a laser was used to imprint the numbers on Derren's balls. Simple!

Photos From My Kite Camera at Witham Park, Mini DVR

A few weeks ago I bought a MP10 Mini Digital Pocket Video Recorder for a couple of projects. The camera is tiny, approx 7x2x1cm and records a video at 640x480, 30fps to a MicroSD card.

The projects I'm planning are close up wildlife photos and aerial photography. For the wildlife photos I intend to leave the camera running next to wild fruit bushes in the hope of catching pictures of squirrels or birds.

Aerial photography will be by attaching the thumb camera to a stunt kite! I'm hoping to fly the camera above local historical sites, e.g. the ruins of Bolingbroke Castle. Today I had a test run above Witham Country Park.

I'm a little disappointed by the quality of the results. What do you think?

Making Money With Photos, August Update

For the last year I've been trying to make money with photos on my wildlife photography blog. So far I haven't reached my goal of becoming a blogging millionaire!

Over the past few months I've continued to comment on 4-5 blogs and drop about 50 Entrecards on a daily basis. I've also reinvested the credits earned from CMF Ads into advertising and joined a number of new directories.

I've made one or two changes to the blog to get rid clutter, including the removal of the three Adsense link units.

Here are the statistics (earnings now in UK pounds):

Month	Visitors	Earnings
Feb 2009	3900	£1.92
Mar 2009	3200	£0.52
Apr 2009	2600	£1.69
May 2009	3500	£2.34
Jun 2009	7400	£5.98
Jul 2009	14400	£4.74
Aug 2009	10300	£2.01

It looks like I'm on target to be a blogging millionaire by December 27009! :-)

The Zombie Chicken Award: Origin and Nominations

Karen at Outlandish Observations recently presented the Zombie Chicken Award to English Wilderness, my nature photography blog. Thanks for considering me for such a cool award.

Here's what the Zombie Chicken Award is all about:

The blogger who receives this award believes in the Tao of the zombie chicken - excellence, grace and persistence in all situations, even in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. These amazing bloggers regularly produce content so remarkable that their readers would brave a raving pack of zombie chickens just to be able to read their words. As a recipient of this world-renowned award, you now have the task of passing it on to at least 5 other worthy bloggers. Do not risk the wrath of the zombie chickens by choosing unwisely or not choosing at all...

I don't want to incur the wrath of the zombie chickens, so here are the five six blogs English Wilderness is nominating for the Zombie Chicken Award:

• The Everyday Adventurer: Ratty takes us on a daily ramble along nature trails and through wild places. One of the few blogs I read every day.
• A Postcard a Day: Sheila takes her readers on a journey around the world in postcards. I love to see how places looked years ago in the old pictures.
• TechTinkering: Lawrence specialises in retro computing, programming and classic games. Never fails to provide something interesting to think about.
• Bill the Lizard: Bill's blog investigates programming and mathematical curiosities, challenging us to solve some intriguing puzzles along the way.
• The Virtual Dime Museum: Lidian explores quirky, interesting scraps of history, specialising in the Victorian era. Always entertaining.
• Beloved Eleanor: Alison posts a compelling mix of history, books and movies.

Origins of the Zombie Chicken Award

I thought it would be interesting to track back the Zombie Chicken Award to where it first began. I followed the links from blog to blog before reaching a dead end. On another blog I found a new lead, one which would eventually lead me to two blogs, Presenting Lenore and Alea's Pop Culture Junkie.

On 22 March, Alea presented the award to Lenore, and Lenore presented the award to Alea. Highly suspicious! Lenore later confirmed I'd discovered the origin of the zombie chicken and the artwork was created by her husband Daniel. The original artwork is on Daniel's Daily Drawings. Thanks guys for creating such a cool award. :-)