Advertising Your Blog with Entrecard - The Experiment

If you follow this blog, you know that I like to experiment before I have an opinion of a source. You can check out IndieCEO's experiment with ProjectWonderful advertising to see what I mean. I have been eyeing Entrecard and thought I would give it a good try.

Entrecard is touted as "The Ultimate Networking Tool for Bloggers." It is a way to advertise your blog to gain readers and boost traffic by adding an Entrecard box to your own blog. You can see IndieCEO's Entrecard box to the right of this post. That is where people will "drop" their cards or have their requested/approved advertising show.

Entrecard is like its own little country because it has its own economy system! No cash payments are needed.

You simply earn credits by dropping your card on other blogs. By purchasing advertising with those credits, you can select the blogs where you want your ad to show. There are other opportunities to gain credits listed on the site that you might explore. I was able to earn enough credits when I first signed up to actually advertise on others' blogs right then and there.

There is a system to receive advertising on your own blog. You can either approve each one or choose to have an automatic approval. I prefer to approve each one because the content and look of ads on my blogs are very important to my brand.

Here are the Pros and Cons of Entrecard that I have found:

Pro

• Free advertising that costs no money - just time and thought.
• Fun - there are a variety of categories for artists and crafters to surf through - I have found such interesting blogs
  
• Networking - I have begun to see favorites and tend to comment there and receive comments back
• A way to gain readers
• A way to boost traffic
• A way to gain followers to your blog
• A way to have your blog promos seen, like your shop minis, twitter link, those kinds of things
  

Con

• Most traffic is just that - traffic - and not specifically readers
• Many will "hit and run" by going to your blog, dropping a card to get credits, and zoom out of the blog
• It takes time - whether little or a lot is up to you
• You must participate consistently to gain benefit by spending a little time each day to drop your card
  

Here is my summary of Entrecard:
I do like it, given my expectations. I don't expect tons of readers and commenters. I don't mind the ones who "hit and run" because it boosts traffic numbers. I also have ProjectWonderful ads on my blogs and the increased traffic boosts the bids on the ad boxes.

Those that linger to read and comment are the jewels of the process. You can gain a great networking group long term if you stick with Entrecard and participate. It may take a while but that is what I am going for while I am building traffic. I have also added to my blog "followers" through this method.

If you want to try it, click here for Entrecard!

Are You Rolling The Dice with Your Advertising?

No one wants to waste money, the least of which is business money for a very small business owner. Are you rolling the dice with your advertising dollars? Hit or miss? Whether you advertise online, offline, or both, it is important to plan your markets.

To small online sellers, that means we need to know who our customer is and where they can be found. When that is determined, we must go through the exercise of researching advertising opportunities within that demographic.

Artists and crafters especially can be unaware of this important step. I read in forums all the time about sellers sharing their advertising success and missteps, regardless of product, customer demographic, or price category. If you sell little girls' hair bows and have great success with advertising on several blogs, it is likely that my jewelry is not targeted to that audience. Although sellers have a kind heart and want to share what they know, it is important for you to step back and ask "is this where the customers for my products are?"

Basic marketing is truly not rocket science but requires that we think through our decisions. Here are a couple of out-of-the-box conceptual ideas of where to find customers online or offline for a variety of handmade products to jump-start your thinking for your own products:

• Handmade hats, crochet, knitted, felted-cold climates, cold weather sports gatherings, colleges/universities,
  

• Little girl hair bows-dance schools, pageants, first communion outfits, children's photographers
  

• Home decor pillows-independent interior designers and decorators, model home stagers, home staging consultants
  

• Photography-tourist shops, independent interior designers, home stagers, model home designers
  

• Journals and Diaries-college students, poetry reading groups, English teachers/assistants
  

I hope you get the picture. Brainstorm about who would love and use your product. Then, think out-of-the-box about where they are!

Utilize Help and Information From Your Selling Venues

One of the ways online sellers can benefit from marketing and selling success strategies is through the selling venues that they use. You can find a lot of selling, promotional, and marketing tips in the venue's documentation that is very valuable!

The forums on each of the venues becomes a treasure trove of shared experiences about everything for selling online. Use it! Even if you just read, you will gain such valuable information that you can use. Read, read, read.

Today, I want to introduce the Sellers' Boot camp going on right now at iCraft.ca!

Sellers' Boot camp is a new admin-supported program started by Christine of PillowThrowDecor for sellers on iCraft.ca! Check out the iCraft.ca forum for lots of details on the Sellers' Boot camp program.

Christine not only produces the most elegant pillows for your home, but she is also a sales expert that creates energy that motivates!

She is the one that started the awesome "Odd Sock" category to move merchandise. Check out PillowThrowDecor's "Odd Sock" deals - unbelievable!

The Sellers' Boot camp program goes for 28 days with assignments for each day that will help you fill your promotional "bag of tricks" by the end of the month. The idea is to get into the habit of spending up to 30-45 minutes a day doing things that will help sales.

Retired from another career, Christine states that a part of her professional background is in sales training. She states, "As independent business people it is all about accountability. I do much better when I know there is a team of people marching along with me every day and are as committed as I am to doing assigned activities!

If you are considering trying iCraft.ca as your handmade selling venue, now is the time! Remember, if you use a referral number when you pay your one-time registration fee, you receive six months of shop fees free for an unlimited number of items! Shop fees are very reasonable. In case you need one, GalleriaLinda's referral number is: 1c28439c38!

Must go...off to boot camp!!

The Project Wonderful Online Advertising Experiment

The mystery of online advertising...if you love to surf online blogs and web sites of artisans and crafters, or even the online comic crowd, you have the opportunity to see ads that are distributed through Project Wonderful (PW).

PW, as it is abbreviated, is an online ad auction that is so automated that even those who are not online savvy can use it and is a great way to dip your toe into the online advertising waters. Although there are groups of all kinds using PW, the main groups targeted are online artists, handcrafters, designers, gamers and online web comics.

Project Wonderful itself states, “Project Wonderful reinvents online advertising. We've made click fraud impossible. We give advertisers the power to choose what sites their ads appear on - and publishers the freedom to choose what ads show up on their sites..."

In contrast, if you have ever used the Google Ad Sense program, you know that you cannot request your earned money until your account reaches $100. PW allows withdrawal of funds $10 and above. In addition, Google makes the majority of decisions for you as to what shows on your site, whereby PW allows you, the advertiser or publisher, to have complete control on where your ads are placed or which ads you put on your pages.

In these last few months, I experimented with PW as a clueless, new-to-online-advertising newbie for my GalleriaLinda online shop, as well as recently for the Indie CEO blog. Boy, did I learn a lot from the experience.

I started placing ads on my jewelry blog, GalleriaLindaShowcase, starting January 1, 2009. In about 4 weeks, I had $6 in my account. It grew to about $15 by the end of February. Feeling confident, I decided to use the money to pay for GalleriaLinda advertising instead of withdrawing it.

There are several predetermined sizes of graphic ads you can create, the most popular being the 125x125 pixel size ads. I created my very own GalleriaLinda ad, uploaded it, selected blogs to host my ad, and placed bids. If you want a 125x125 pixel animated ad – you can create one at GifMake.

Things I learned as an advertiser:

• Pay attention to your ad clicks (there are “performance” reports for you to check).
  
• If you go for the free ads, then it is no worry - may as well keep it there. If you are paying, then you make decisions to keep your ad on a specific site or delete the bid based upon the ratio of unique site traffic vs. the number of clicks you get.
  
• It is easy to find places for your ad that have $0 cost and is a great way to try this without spending money. This means that your ad can be placed for no money but your ad may show only off and on, depending upon the bids for those slots. The ad boxes fluctuate in bid pricing all day long!
  
• FREE ad space is allowed only for a two-day time so you will have to manually renew every two days if you wish. If you bid actual money, you can designate the time from a day to unlimited.
  
• It IS possible to get free ad space on a site with significant traffic, but it will be only for a short while. Most free spots are on sites that have minimal traffic.
  
• If you are picky about where your ad is seen, you have control, although it takes time to do a keywords search and handpick those you want.
  
• If you are not so picky about where your ads are seen, you can do a campaign using search terms, and “let ‘er rip.”

Things I learned as a publisher:

• Build it and they do not automatically come! Like anything else online, this takes promotion, traffic numbers, and dedication to make this work well for you.
  
• PW ad campaigns from others will automatically find your ad box if your box description fits the key words and fits the traffic criteria setup by the ad owners.
  
• When setting up your ad box, good key words are critical.
  
• Your web page or blog where your ad box is displayed needs to have traffic in order to attract a flow of ad placements. You must promote your page and update it frequently to bring up those traffic numbers. The more frequent you update, the more traffic you will have that may capture more ad campaigns automatically.
  
• Ways to promote your web pages and blogs can be found in the Indie CEO “Blogging is an Art” series.

To get a good feel for the process, here is a great tutorial on using Project Wonderful posted by TimothyAdamDesigns.

It is FUN to see your very own little ad showing on someone else’s web page!

If you want to learn the process, you can try out PW by placing ads manually by searching for $0 ads and paying attention to traffic counts for learning and understanding. This will help you understand the process. Alternately, you can place an ad box on your site and wait for funds to collect to use for your own ad placement. Or, deposit money right away into a PW account and go for it!

GalleriaLinda's ad boxes where you can place your ads are available at:
GalleriaLindaShowcase blog
IndieCEO blog - see the right side of this article