Jude’s Eclectic Resources

Seems to be a lot of speculation and criticism about EC lately and how it can be fixed and everyone has an opinion. You can read anywhere about the right and wrong way to drop and as far as I’m concerned there is no right or wrong way so long as it works for you. Arguments about getting rid of the inbox or keeping it, I personally like the inbox because I can at least see who left me their card.

I haven’t been advertising much lately, but I have been clicking on other peoples to find new blogs easily when the card makes me curious. I have run into a lot of great blogs out there which I never would have seen without this program as I’m sure holds true for most bloggers. I really do need to start a bookmark folder for the blogs I like encase something changes and people leave that I like.

We all have our own agenda for using the services of EC and I personally think most of the traffic is quality and I appreciate everyone that stops by whether you read or not or even comment at least you made an effort and maybe at some point something will catch your eye the same as myself when I visit other blogs and yours. I like reading about different things on how to make money, looking at peoples art and crafts, politics, and just glimpses of other peoples life.

Many people have their own ideas about how other people should blog and what they put on their blog and I have noticed that there are many blog snobs out there. I personally think if you’re doing what you enjoy then it really doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. There should be certain blogging courtesies like no auto music and a few other things, but if I don’t like it I can choose not to go back.

Of course people want other people to be interested in what they have to say and get very upset when they aren’t. Not everyone in this program likes to socialize, but there are many that do because it’s a necessity if you want to make your blog popular and stand out. I can’t say that my blog is a great one or even a good one, but it’s mine so I can do as I please and so can you, so happy blogging and enjoy. 

Simon from OIOpublisher has been working on a problem I’m having with people trying to use ec credits to purchase an ad spot. He solved one of the problems that he says was connected with my host which is Bluehost, but apparently there is another one and he is now collaborating with Entrecard because he’s not sure if the problem lies with them or OIO. I am wondering if anyone else is having the same problem as myself?

I have the latest version installed which is the 2.04 and I guess everything else is working, but I’m not sure yet. I was going to install it on my other sites, but I will wait awhile to see how this pans out. As a rule I usually try things instead of waiting to see how it’s going to work for others, but maybe I should start the waiting game myself until something has been proven. I have a long list of programs that haven’t worked for me over the years.

Simon has been very quick to respond to the problem I am having with this plugin and I really appreciate the fast support. He has fixed the problem where it only shows paying cash to PayPal and it now shows ec credit purchasing also. The problem now seems to be at the Entrecard end and Simon says there may be a fix today or tomorrow so that’s indeed very fast support and good news for those that wait for the bugs to be worked out.

On another note I really love vacations, but it’s so hard to play catch up when you get home. I still haven’t unpacked and I will probably just take out what I need as I need it until my bag is empty, lazy huh? It’s getting very chilly in my neck of the woods and I was tempted to turn the heat on today, but refrained because it’s suppose to be nice this weekend. I’m quit sure I will be dragging out the Winter clothes soon. Have a Great evening.

Well, I did 2 things last night and one was tracking down a new Wordpress Theme and the other was to purchase the OIOpublisher. I’m not sure yet if I like this theme, but it’ll do till I work on the other 3 that I found. I installed a testing blog that I use to mess around with the different themes and when they look ok I bring them here, but invariably because I have different things going on with this blog I always have to change something. I’m quite sure unless you visit me regularly you wont notice a thing and if you are a regular visitor I apologise if you feel lost.

I bought the plugin because I wanted to easily be able to add some sort of different advertising and this makes it very easy because it’s set so anyone can upload their 125×125 banner and pay through PayPal or use Entrecard credits to purchase a spot for a month. The really good part is that I can use this plugin on all of my blogs and I can easily change how I want it to appear. There are many different ways you can use it and different types of modules for earning money and you can even set it to no-follow if you’re concerned about Google, but for now I am only doing the side banners.

I’m not very technical as my friends already know, but I stubbornly refuse to give up and I managed to install it on all 3 of my blogs, but this is the only one that I managed to get set up partially. Now all I have to do is wait for them to review my blog and give me the API to insert. I certainly wish I had studied IT or something computer related when I went back to school. People that can write code can make a fortune, I certainly hope one of the Grandkids is going to be geeky so they can help me when I get really ancient.

As you can well imagine the members of Entrecard have mixed emotions about the things that are going on there right now and many are losing trust and feel like Entrecard is going down. I personally think that they are trying hard to survive and by purchasing the plugin through their partnership with OIOpublisher I think this will help them turn around and make it stronger for everyone. So I guess in a way we are pulling together to bail them out or at least I feel like I’m trying to help them survive. If the plugin doesn’t prove profitable that will just be one more thing to add to my list.

I refuse to read a blog that is filled with paid posts, where every other one is an advertisement regardless if the person writing it is relating to the post from experience or not. Don’t get me wrong I do paid posting myself, but there will never be one right after the other and I get so sick of seeing debt consolidating posts or anything about credit cards.

I honestly think well over half of the bloggers that use Entrecard are paid posters so of course they don’t read blogs that are all ads unless some one is cheating. I have only found one blatant cheater since I’ve been dropping and couldn’t believe my eyes. I’m sure if a paid post catches a bloggers eye they may leave a comment, but not many paid posters will leave a comment on a paid post.

There are a lot of good bloggers out there that make extra money doing paid posting and those are not the blogs I am refering to. The majority are very poorly written blogs and you can’t even understand what they are talking about. If I went through the list of blogs and eliminated those then there would be no one to drop on. I can certainly understand when people think we are sell outs when those bad blogs are the only ones they see.

From what I understand the Izea team are doing a sweep of blogs and eliminating a lot of splogs so maybe that will help the bad image that paid posters have recieved at least I hope so. I personally like doing the opps that I run across that are helpful to other bloggers and it doesn’t hurt that they pay me a couple dollars for my words, in fact it also gives me something to blog about at times.

I have ran across many useful services that I might never have known about before thanks to Izea and Social Sparks. I have seen some bloggers recently posting about being turned down from using Izeas services so I guess they are now being a little more critical of the blogs that use their services and personally I think that’s a good thing.

At Christmas Cards Direct you can order any type of holiday business cards to send to associates, clients and your employees and it’s a very good way to advertise your business and spread good will especially during those hectic times when people are stressing over so many things, you can give someone a smile and keep your business in their mind. I always love when they send me those calendars and it never bothers me that their advertisement is on there.

Business Christmas Cards would be an excellent way to show your clients that you care. I know most big businesses do send out holiday greetings, but the smaller businesses sometimes deem this as too expensive and simply don’t allow money for this type of thing in their budget, but they should and you can customize the look and feel and add your company logo. Most people set up their Christmas cards so everyone can see them and enjoy them so make sure yours will be among them.