Entrecard, A Blogger’s Best Friend

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Hats off to Entrecard! Graham Langdon and his team have consistently refused to sit on their laurels, always taking on board feedback from service users, and continually implementing improvements. Entrecard is evolving into a major blogging network and online community.

A few days ago, came the announcement of a new partnership between Entrecard and SezWho, the popular and well-established blog commenting platform.

Reward Rebel enjoys a pretty satisfactory level of commenting, and yet there’s already been a noticeable increase since SezWho became part of the Entrecard equation.

Evidently bloggers value comments - and Entrecard Credits - very highly! And so, as part of Reward Rebel’s forthcoming first birthday celebrations, I’m going to backtrack over the comments here, and rate as many as time permits.

In fact, talk about excellent timing! I had already started to showcase my favourite posts to Entrecard visitors, and you’re invited to participate in Reward Rebel’s birthday bash by taking a moment while you’re here to rate any post or comment that you’ve enjoyed. After all, what goes around, comes around, and your turn will come!

Since its inception, Entrecard has helped launch many blogs, and has been a good friend to Reward Rebel. Bringing SezWho onboard will undoubtedly provide the icing on the cake.

Happy blogging, and enjoy your internet marketing adventure.

Reward Rebel

Popularity: 4% [?]

Entrecard And SezWho Launch Partnership

If you haven’t already, go to the Entrecard blog now, and read the article about Entrecard’s new partnership with SezWho.

Although I’ve not previously engaged with any commenting platforms, I’ll install SezWho on Reward Rebel and monitor developments.

This sounds like a new arm of the Entrecard venture that has massive potential to further assist bloggers in their own internet marketing adventure!

Reward Rebel

Popularity: 8% [?]

Shape Up Your Domain Name!

Internet marketing is an extremely broad topic, including too many specialties for anyone to really be an expert in everything. I make no claims to be an expert in anything, however, I’d like to share a few key points with you about domain name composition and structure.

1. The letters and words of your domain name should form a shape, because the eye recognises the shape first, and then identifies the word and meaning.

Letters that sit on, above and through the line create the shape of the words.

The above example is just a block of letters, it doesn’t have a defined shape for the eye to recognise.

However, here’s an excellent example, rewardrebel.com uses letters that sit both on and above the line, forming a spikey shape that’s easy for the eye to recognise and retain.

2. Avoid running the same letters together, as in the first example above - ourownnames – the two n’s running together, makes it difficult for the eye to differentiate the words.

3. Don’t assume that a group of words that makes sense to you, will make the same sense to someone else. When I worked in the hospice/cancer sector, one day a new online publication titled canceri (Cancer I) was launched, and my colleague Ceri asked, “why have they called it Can Ceri?“! Everyone’s perspective has a subjective individuality!

4. Include keywords in your domain name, as this helps improve your website’s ranking by the search engines.

Search engines determine a website’s page rank, in part, by where the keywords appear in the site’s structure. This is why it’s essential that your website has a site map, and you can download Google [XML] Sitemap Generator Plugin here

Enjoy your internet marketing adventure.

Reward Rebel

Popularity: 17% [?]

Top Ten Entrecard Droppers During June

We are at the half way point in 2008 and it’s that time of the month to give a loud and far-reaching shout out to Reward Rebel’s top ten Entrecard droppers for June.

On The Bricks
The Path to the Pegasus Letter
Regretful Morning
Amy Lilley Designs
Technically Easy
Aerten Art
Absolutely Mom’s [aka Nessa’s Place]
Marriage and Beyond
Happy Family Matters
Turnip of Power

View Reward Rebel’s top Entrecard droppers for May

Your patronage during the past month has been even more greatly appreciated than usual, and I wish you happy blogging and successful internet marketing.

Reward Rebel

Popularity: 22% [?]

The Party’s Over

Euro 2008 is over for another four years, and Glastonbury Festival has vanished beneath a mountain of trash and discarded sub-standard tents. It’s wonderful that this year’s patrons didn’t have to endure rain and mud, especially as my beloved sister — who’s a 60-year old grandmother — was there working hard, and partying even harder!

I was utterly horrified to realise that she and I did Glastonbury Festival together back in the Summer of 1977 — the weekend of 7th of the 7th ‘77 to be precise – 31 years ago…. Aaaarrrrggghhhh!!!!! Frackin’ freak out!

Of course, the great thing back then (before Glasto met corporate hospitality) was that you could get in for free by climbing over the barrier, or by strolling through any weakened areas in the fencing (weakened by kicking it wearing big boots and also pulling very hard).

I caught Joan Armatrading’s performance on the telly, and Joan’s classics just melt the heart, don’t they? Love and Affection, Willow, Tall in the Saddle…. they are all so exquisitely beautiful, and always make me feel all gooey and soft-centered.

So I’m now looking forward to this coming weekend, as it’s the British Formula One Racing Grand Prix at Silverstone, though sadly I’m too strapped for greenbacks to attend — but soon, I’ll be cheering at every GP of the entire season – all around the globe, oh yeah!

During my recent break from blogging, I got into watching some TV again, but Battlestar Galactica is taking a nap before engaging warp drive for the second half of the season, so what the frack am I supposed to do with myself in the meantime? Oh yeah…. work.

Reward Rebel

Popularity: 22% [?]

Entrecard Russian Roulette

No doubt I’m shooting myself in the foot here, but during my absence from posting to Reward Rebel blog, I sporadically logged into Entrecard, and there was always a queue of advertisers waiting for approval to display their little promo box on my site.

Curiously, quite often the advertiser wouldn’t have dropped their card on my site on the day they submitted the request… or at all recently.

Firstly, I’d like to thank those advertisers for their loyalty.

Secondly, however, I have to express my concern about how many of the Entrecard community don’t appear to visit a website prior to submitting an advertising request.

In a sense, it is flattering to my blog that a repeat advertiser trusts the content-to-date to be enough, but if there hasn’t been any new content for weeks, why does anyone wish to advertise on a site that’s dormant?

Hey, I’m not biting the hand that feeds me…. er, I suppose I am, but that’s not the point. I’m inclined to infer from the lack of a card being dropped that the advertiser just couldn’t be assed!

Perhaps I’m going about this the wrong way…. “Hey, amigo, WAKE UP!”.

Why aren’t you checking out the websites where you advertise?

It doesn’t matter how many times I’ve advertised on a website, I check it out before submitting a further request. You shouldn’t take anything for granted.

This isn’t the first time I’ve noticed blogs that haven’t posted for months still continue to advertise on Entrecard… as though this is somehow the same thing as maintaining an online business.

Recently, I had to reject an ad request from a website that hadn’t posted fresh content since March! The disquieting aspect was that it was a website dealing with financial markets and their changeability. How can I justify displaying an ad encouraging my readership to visit a site that doesn’t offer anything new for three months… a quarter of a year!

Don’t be complacent, don’t be loyal for the sake of it. If you aren’t involved in internet marketing per se, and participate in Entrecard for the social aspects, you are fortunate that none of what I’ve said here really applies to you, because you have a different agenda.

But if you’re involved in internet marketing and/or blogging to be making money with an online business, it’s all the more important.

You need to constantly monitor where and with whom you advertise, because the internet changes so fast, you may get left behind!

I wish you enjoyable blogging and successful internet marketing!

Reward Rebel

Popularity: 26% [?]

The Twerpy Lil Things That Niggle!

I have a lot of tasks to get done on this site – there have been problems with the form on the Contact Page, and I had to take it down, and other nuisance difficulties have plagued RR for too long.

The problems of blogging do wear me down… the niggly lil twerpy things that just won’t go right, and when you’ve exhausted your ‘call a friend’ options, it gets even more frustrating!

So be warned… watch your ‘Inbox’, as you may receive a communication from me asking for your assistance!

Reward Rebel

Popularity: 24% [?]