Done Dropping

This shot is from the farm with a sign my Dad made. I thought it was funny and appropriate for this post. I'm sad to say that I'm done with Entrecard dropping. The network administrator has informed me that there has been suspicious activity from my computer which is causing problems with the network. He told me the times that it had happened and they all corresponded to my lunch hour or after work when I would do my EC drops.

I've been growing disgruntled with EC for awhile but had continued to participate albeit much less often than in the past. But clearly the system is so corrupt and buggy that I can't risk my home computer either. I'm going to leave the button up for the time being since I don't think it's hurting anything and if it brings a little traffic in that's fine too.

I will now have to really think about how I want to keep this little blog going. I will be following the blogs that I regularly dropped on and using Google Friend Connect to do my blog hopping from now on. Hopefully I can find other less risky ways to connect with bloggers. Perhaps this might be just the thing I need to get me out of my blogging rut I've been in.

Blogging is Hard.

Anyone who is reading this is probably well aware that maintaining a blog is not easy. Anyone can post randomness once a month and call it a blog but to actually be consistent is really hard. Add to that the need to interact and be a part of the community and you practically have a full time job on your hands. The Embrace Your Narrative Key Chain comes with book and pen charms and silver split ring and is from fellow blogger Risky Beads. She maintains not just one but two handmade blogs including the Handmade Highway.

I honestly feel I've been a bit derelict in my duties the past 6-9 months. I've gone through the motions and posted at least 2 or 3 times a week and checked in with my blog buddies at least once a week but the passion was gone. This week I decided to try to recapture again what it is I have always loved about blogging. Mainly it is about being a part of a community.

I have the EC community and then the larger crafting community. I have seen Entrecard get overrun with spammers and won't even open up my drops inbox anymore for fear of what half naked pictures and other annoyances will be there. I've developed my Favorites list there of blogs I like in the system and who drop back regularly on me. You can find the list here and if you are in EC and would like to be added to my favorites that I drop on at least 3 times a week just let me know in the comments.

I also decided to make a commitment to be more a part of the wider blog community. I don't leave as many comments as I know I should and I hope to get over that lurking impulse. I went through the blogs I follow and cleaned up the list. I unfollowed anyone who hadn't posted in the past few months. This reaffirmed how hard blogging is as there were many abandoned blogs on my list. I have it down to a healthy 140 blogs. You can see the list on my profile here if you like. Now that all the dead weight is gone I can actually use my Reading List as it was intended to be used.

I also added some new blogs to My blog List on the right column. This blog roll is prime real estate as the more links to your blog the higher your google page rank. I'm still proud of my Google Page Rank 3 which took me 2 years to achieve. If you have a creative blog, not necessarily crafty but it doesn't hurt, you post at least once a week and would like to exchange links on our blog list you can also let me know in my comments.

I wanted to highlight a few of my new featured bloggers and recommend that you check them out. Some of the blogs on my list are well established with many followers like Makeunder My Life, and a few are just really well written blogs that have yet to be discovered like Cara Makes. Cara has a real way with words and is also very creative to boot.

I absolutely adore hipchic designs natural aesthetic and she really inspires me to try my hand at something new.

Additions Style has a very inspirational blog for the creative types. She has a modern design aesthetic which is refreshing to the eyes.

I also added Moonangelnay, who is a fellow longtime EC member. I have always respected her work and her commitment to blogging.

So I am going to make a commitment to return blog comments in a much more consistent way and to really try to be a supportive member of this wonderful community. I've gotten so much support myself through the past 3 years both personally and creatively and I really am grateful that there are people that still check in on me regularly.

300th Post!

This is my 300th post. The second 200 came much quicker than the first and the third even quicker. I have gotten into a blogging routine that I am comfortable with. I post on average 5 times a week, usually taking off on the weekends. I have stuck with Entrecard but I don't obsess over it anymore. I drop on those blogs that I like and don't stress about reaching any magical number. My blogging routine is definitely going to be interrupted in the next few weeks and turned on its head (I know I'm reaching, I just thought the shot of Kate went with the post for some reason). It's going to be hard to do much dropping while I'm off work so I apologize now.

I comment when I can and intend on spending more time on the blogs I enjoy whether they are entrecard or not in the coming year. I'm through dropping on blogs completely out of my realm or ones that haven't updated in over a month. It's affected my visitor numbers somewhat but I'd rather have 100 quality visitors a day than 250 when more than half are spending mere seconds with me.

I'm troubled by something I discovered on my Webmaster Tools from Google recently. It said that I'm in the 97% of download time and it takes an average of 20 seconds for my site to load. This is terrible. I removed a bunch of unnecessary widgets and links that it said were slowing things down but it still is dragging. I tried to run a site check last night with the new Page Speed Checker but it wouldn't install for me for some reason at home. I'll try it again later and hopefully find some more things that I can fix to speed things up. I really like my blog template that I spent money on from my graphic designer but if it is slowing my blog down that dramatically I will have to find a solution in the new year.

I've been debating about whether I should keep this blog solely for business and knitting and using Lenox Pics for personal and photography. I've been thinking about doing a form of the 365 shots in a year and reserved the blogspot name for myself. I think keeping two blogs going would be too much time and energy but I don't want this blog to get too broad. I've never been a true knitting blog and consider my cohorts to be other crafters rather knitting or otherwise. I've gotten more personal here in the past 6 months than I had originally intended but that is how things evolved for me. For those of you with two blogs do you think it is worth it or should I just focus my energy here?

Thanks for sticking with me. Hopefully I can keep coming up with something worth saying for the next 300 posts.

Thoughts on Entrecard and Top Droppers

So I haven't recognized my top EC droppers in quite awhile so I wanted to give props to those in the community that have stuck it out through all the craziness. Thanks for continuing to drop in on my blog daily and I'd love for you to check out the others on the list. They are some great bloggers and creative minds every one of them. I just chose the Bumble Bee Wristcuff for this post because the colors reminded me of EC's yellowish and black logo.

DigiVickie's Word Art digital scrapbooking, tutorials, inspiration and free word art designs
A Rose By Name The beadweaving process, jewelry, art, ideas.
Winesworld's blog a friendly wine guide for amateurs, by amateurs
BadGalSays We give you Roots and Truth 24/7
The Beadings and Buttons of Randomcreative I have always enjoyed making random creative projects using all different colors and materials.
Recycled Frockery Recycled Fashion and How to Do It Your Way
My gypsygoods Life, creative moments, saving money, nature, eco-friendly tips
The Sweet Life Every little thing that make life sweet.
anns snap edit scrap mixed bag of my digital photography, photo editing, digi scrap designs, freebies and rambling about life
Mother by Design Encouragement from a Christian perspective for mothers of all ages

So all of us in the community are well aware of all the turmoil in Entrecard over the past 6 months. I watched as some of my favorites have decided to abandon ship and I certainly don't judge anyone for their decisions about who they affiliate their blog with. I personally have been taking a wait and see stand throughout all the changes and rechanges in management and policies.

I too was thoroughly annoyed when they decided to add paid ads to our widgets even if it is just 15% of the time. But has anyone else noticed that the only ads that have been put up have been for Entrecard and over the past week even those have disappeared. It seems to me that it may have once again been a big todo over nothing. I read on someone's blog that they thought they no one would want to do paid advertising since they would be looked down upon by everyone in the community and it might actually hurt their business rather than help.

There was also an offer for us to pay them a yearly/monthly fee to have our ad box remain with only approved ads. I'm really glad I didn't take them up on this offer as that appears to have been more of an attempt to turn it into a paid service. Which got me thinking about whether I would pay to use EC like they do at Adigitize. I just don't think I would despite all the great benefits it has brought to my blog. It's kind of like that Kraft magazine that has always been free and is now charging $7 for a years subscription. I've always gotten some of my favorite, easy to make recipes out of it but when I had to decide whether I was going to pay for it I thought not unless they really up their game.

Alterity Button Jewelry had a series of really thoughtful posts about her decision making about staying with or leaving EC. Here is the original post with 30 responses all from other concerned members of the community if you missed it. She put some real time into quantifying whether the time she puts into EC is worth it. I also really enjoyed her follow up post here where she really captured my own thoughts about what I have gotten out of EC and why I decided to stick with it. Here is the crux of it which I am posting with her permission:

"When you sign up for EC, you are basically a nobody in the blogging world. Not because no one likes you, but because no one knows you are there. So, you get on EC and start dropping like crazy. You buy some ads and the next thing you know, people are dropping on your blog. Even better, people are beginning to follow you and subscribe to your RSS feed. So, you keep on dropping and dropping. Eventually, you become disenchanted with EC and contemplate leaving. You may decide to stay, but not drop quite so much. Whatever you choose, what is the one valuable thing you didn't have before EC? Followers and subscribers. Wow...that's pretty big. Especially considering that the only one reading your blog before you joined EC was yourself! Mull on that for a while."

So I have been continuing to drop but not with the same energy I did in the beginning. If I get over 100 drops on my lunch hour I'm happy with that. I'm dropping on the blogs I enjoy for one reason or another and not feeling like I have to reciprocate every drop just because. My numbers have gone done some but I'm not really concerned. I want the people that visit my blog to do so because they want to not because I'm just another drop through.

If you have any insight into the whole EC turmoil please share as I'm always interested to hear others opinions.

Entrecard Debacle

I, like many, am really fed up with the whole Entrecard debacle. If you aren't an entrecard blogger feel free to ignore my venting post. I was in a total wait and see mode with all of the paid ad changes recently. I rejected all of the annoying Blog for Money and sexy model ads and went ahead and approved the fellow crafters and regular blog ads, but it's all left a bad taste in my mouth. I've decided to just accept credit ads for a week and see if that makes me feel better about the system or not. I'm not planning on pulling my widget but I want to see what not accepting paid ads does to my ranking. I know that they need to generate some cash to keep the system going but it seems as thought there are many other ways to do it. Allowing us to use a double widget is one suggestion I've seen, and how about putting big dollar ads up on the pages we all check everyday on the entrecard site.

What I loved about the Entrecard system was the simplicity of it. You generated credits by visiting blogs and having other blogs visit you. You spend those credits on advertising on other blogs. I loved blog surfing my fellow craft and other interesting blogs through widgets. They have completely ruined much of this system with all of their changes. How many people really care about getting cash for their credits? I could care less honestly, that is not what I earned them for. But I like everyone else have started hording my credits and not spending them on advertising since all this started. For me it was because I just didn't understand what was happening and it seemed like we were no longer getting our credits worth with the paid ads taking 50% or more of the clicks we bought.

I have not been getting nearly as many paid ad requests the past few days since I started rejecting all but the blogs I knew. I hope everyone understands when I go back and reject your paid ads for now. I may change my mind, which is completely my prerogative.

The Happy Bluebird Scarf always makes me smile. It's still for sale in my shop if you click on the picture above.

Top March Droppers

With so much craziness going on with Entrecard the last month I thought I would take a moment to thank all of my fellow dropping addicts. I was worried that I was going to lose some of you if they had gone through with the plan to charge us for rejecting an ad. I'm glad they changed their mind and most of you have decided to stick with it. I will say that my entrecard stats have been wonky ever since the blog update. I just reinstalled the widget and I hope that does the trick. It's been saying that I have had 0 click throughs from my widget all week. This is clearly not the case and I'm wondering if it's something wrong with my widget or what. Don' t try to say that last sentence fast...

Thanks to all my droppers in March and here are the top 10:

Dropper # of drops Youniquely Chic 31 My gypsygoods 31 A Rose By Name 30 Alteredevents 30 Silver Sachet 29 The Beadings and Buttons of Randomcreative 29 The Frugal Housewife 29 Three Fates Design - Beaded Jewelry 29 DJ Tammy Squels 28 Confessions of a Psychotic Housewife 27

So Thankful

I just wanted to take a few minutes to thank my peeps for continuing to drop in on me in the month of February. I have been working hard to return the favor as much as possible. The fun spring thank you cards are from bdoodlez on etsy. She has some great card sets that will come in handy all year long.

Dropper # of drops Guilty Pleasures 30 Youniquely Chic 30 A Rose By Name 30 More Than Sew So 30 My gypsygoods 30 Alteredevents 30 The Ad Master 29 Unique You 29 Computer Aid 28 Dogmaw Glass 28

I am so thankful to have developed some great blogger friendships which is the theme of the sweet award that P and J Crafts has sent my way. She is a local blogger and crafter that makes the most unique rag quilt purses like this butterflies and flowers one, which would be perfect for spring. This is what the "Let's Be Friends" Award represents: These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in self-aggrandizement. Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers. Deliver this award to eight bloggers who must choose eight more and include this cleverly-written text into the body of their award. I'm sure some of this bloggers will be nominated more than once since they so perfectly represent the awards meaning. Here are the friends I'd like to award, it was very hard to keep it to 8: My Art and the Mom in Me nfall2rt designstudio Be Jeweled By Candi TILT Creations Custom blog Designs Split Rock Ranch Bonhomie Jewelry Feel Chic Ramblings

100th Post and New Shop Designs

Let me start off by saying that this is my 100th post. I just like to acknowledge the milestones. I never thought I'd get into this blogging thing as much as I have but I'm excited and ready to go for another 100 this year. I think it is appropriate to be making some updates on my shop look now. Anyone that knows me knows that I hate change. I have been at my current job for over 4 years and to me it is still the "new job." My husband and I are definitely creatures of habit which is one of the things that makes us so compatible. But a few times a year I like to spice things up with my look and will get my hair highlighted or something along those lines.

I had a graphic designer make my banner and avatar for me last year and I was very happy with it. But I had gotten a wild hair that I wanted some change recently but couldn't track her down. She had changed her shop name and is now going by New Shop Design on Etsy. I didn't really want anything dramatic done to my banner since I was still happy with the look but I wanted a few new pictures added including one of my wire bracelets to be more reflective of my current work. I also wanted some new avatars as options. I had her add my shop name to the one I was currently using and make me one with a bracelet that I'll use in the warmer months. I had her make a new button that I can use on entrecard and project wonderful that is infinitely more clickable than the one before. I am loving how it came out and it will hopefully make my ad campaigns more successful. And she made me a twitter background that is a reflection of my shop and will tie my twitter page back to my overall look. I know consistency is important in building a presence on-line and I'm hoping this will help me to be more recognizable. I'm debating about what I'm going to do about my 1000 Markets shop and tying it in, but that's a whole other post.

Her prices are very reasonable and for the cost of a trim I feel like a brand new woman. It's great to know how to reach her again so I can have her make updates for me whenever I get the inspiration. She is so patient with me and my needs. I'm not good at describing what it is I want but I'm really good at telling her what I don't like, so she usually ends up having to make a number of revisions with no complaints I might add. If your looking for a new look you should totally check out her shop, she has a package that will give your all the tools you need to get started.

Top Droppers

Today is top dropper day so let me take a moment to say thanks to all my entrecard buddies. Of all the promotional tools I have discovered the last 6 months entrecard is by far my favorite, and it is because of you guys. I love all my droppers, even the ones who just drive in and out. To those of you who stick around and leave a comment once and awhile I hope to return the favor as much as possible. I hope you will take a few minutes to check out these awesome blogs and if they aren't on your regular dropping route then they really should be:


My gypsygoods: Life, creative moments, saving money, nature, eco-friendly tips. Supporting the handmade community

Alteredevents: My Unique Altered Accessories Costume Fantasy Shop Blog for special events. *Supporting the Handmade Community one click at a time.

Silver Sachet: A wonderful online shop that sells fine quality .925 Sterling Silver jewelry. Rings, earrings, bracelets, chains, necklaces, bangles, and more.

jealousydesign: unique Swedish jewelry and design elements

More Than Sew So: Crafts, hobbies, this, that and everything in between.

time2cre8: beadweaving, art, stationery, and all kinds of things!

A Rose By Name: the beadweaving process, jewelry, art, ideas.

Kitchen Retro: What do strange retro ads, bizarre old recipes, and all manner of retro stuff have in common? They are weird and funny, that's what - come and have a laugh or two at them!

Tialey Vintage Clothing: The happenings of running an online business, information about vintage clothing and handmade items, updates of new items on Tialey Vintage and everyday musings.

The Frugal Housewife: The Frugal Housewife blogs about her family's journey into frugal living.

Entrecard Regulars

I just wanted to give a shout out to all my regular entrecard droppers. I know I'll probably never make anyone's list since I just have a bunch of people that I randomly drop in on. I'm not as consistent on the weekends either but these guys have been my big droppers for December so thanks for stopping by and please check out their very cool and crafty blogs!

Dropper	# of drops
Alteredevents	31
More Than Sew So	29
time2cre8	23
Unique You	23
Shopperista	22
Simply Shiny Artisan Handmade Jewelry	22
Laane on the World	22
Deronda	21
Three Fates Design - Beaded Jewelry	20
Fire and Glass-Sweetwater Designs	19

Entrecard Ads

I haven't been dropping as much this week since my home modem is so much slower than my work one. By not as much that means I've been averaging 100 a day rather than the 300 I usually get during my lunch hour at work. I was explaining the dropping system to someone this week and they said that is sounded too much like work to them. For some reason I find the dropping process soothing and I enjoy checking in daily on so many of the crafty and other blogs I've discovered through entrecard.

I've found that most people get an average of 20 or so clicks by advertising on my blog whereas I seem to get fewer than that on other people's blogs. I am having someone make a new button for me to use on entrecard and possible Project wonderful ads since I know the one I have is not all that clickable. I am really not a graphics person at all and the person I had make my banner for me seems to be out of business. Today was a banner day since I had advertised on Art by Paul Baines and received almost 100 clicks from his blog, the most I've ever gotten from an ad. Top Cat Creations got almost the same number of clicks through to her blog, the most anyone's ever gotten from my widget. I try to advertise on at least 15 widgets a week. Here is the widgets I've got the most bang for my entrecard point bucks in the last month:

Widget shown on	# of clicks
Art By Paul Baines	95
Contrariwise Jewelry	61
Thyme2dream	58
Jenny Karlsson Design	43
my beautiful creations	20
Steam Powered Rings	14
Alteredevents	12

Let me know how your entrecard experience compares!

So I recently joined a free blog networking service called entrecard. You may have seen the Blog of the Day button to the side. I'm not a fan of cluttered and ad ridden blogs but something about this service appealed to me. For one thing it's free and no money ever needs to be expended for you to drive traffic to your blog and promote other like minded blogs.

Basically the way it works is you place the widget on your blog and then visit other blogs just like you normally would do, and while there you "drop" your card. It is as simple as clicking on their drop box. Then they come visit you and hopefully check out your blog and maybe even visit your shop.

Since joining I haven't really spent any more time on-line then usual and my traffic has definitely taken off. Some people complain that it is not "real" traffic and that people are just dropping in and then dropping right back out. I'm sure that there is some of that but I can speak for myself in that I do honestly look at the blogs I drop in on and really only look at blogs I would enjoy. I sometimes leave comments and sometimes don't, just like when I am browsing blogs any other way.

I'm also a sucker for any system that involves collecting points. I've discussed shopping with MyPoints.com, I'm an off again on again Weight Watchers user, and now Entrecard. For every blog you drop in on you get a point, whenever someone chooses to advertise on your blog you get points, and whenever you add content to your blog you get points. You use those points to buy time on other bloggers widgets. I really enjoy shopping for blogs to advertise with. I look for new users of entrecard whose price isn't too high and who have a regular readership shown through comments on their blogs. If they are Etsy sellers that is a plus since their readers are probably already going to be familiar with Etsy and hopefully registered shoppers.

I don't know if it will result in any sales but it's fun to know more people are looking at my blog and hopefully getting some enjoyment out of it.