You can also rent space (currently one day at a time) on sites displaying the Entrecard widget. You do this by using credits that you accumulate from either displaying cards on your own site, by clicks on your cards, or by dropping (leaving) your card at other sites. It sounds complicated, but it isn’t – trust me!

Credits can also be exchanged for real world goodies, but I haven’t earned enough credits yet, and the current list of goodies is very short.

Why all the fuss? Entrecard seems to be the next big thing in traffic generating ideas, and plays on the relatively new and fast becoming popular 125 x 125 sized adverts you see on such sites as ProBlogger.

The only problem I can see is that the card is actually 127 x 148 when Entrecard tags on the little “Drop yours” button and border. So it wouldn’t fit very well if you had a couple of rows of 125 x 125 adverts.

Anyway, some stats. I only signed up late last night, but my card seems to have brought in just over 50 new unique users in less than 24 hours. Whether they will return again or not remains to be seen, but the cards do seem to be working, and I guess it will boost my visits, readership and hopefully profits for a while.

Update: I’ve stopped using Entrecard and have no idea if it is really of any use these days. It kind of spiralled off into its own world and I found the content of most of the cards a little bit spammy!

A typically Squeeze Page tries to entice its “target” audience with marketing and copywriting techniques such as headlines, bullet points, teaser copy, deadlines and testimonials. All of which are generally so well researched that they can take the author days and several attempts to perfect.

But something that I just can’t fathom out, is why such a well written bit of marketing tends to have to look so aesthetically unpleasing to the eye. I have found myself on several occasion just giving up trying to read such a page as the design is so appalling.

The classic example generally has a blue or grey background with either a white of light yellow text area. The text for some god-awful reason seem to usually be Courier – can anybody tell me Why? And with alleged meaningful words and phrases picked out in a collection of insipid Red, Yellow or Blue bold text makes the whole thing unbearable.

Maybe this is why the work? Maybe people just sign up because their brains want to get away from horror as quickly as possible. But maybe, and here is a crazy idea, maybe they could work even better if they looked aesthetically pleasing. Just imagine combining that beautifully crafted bit of copy with some design?

Surly that is what advertising is all about? Cleverly crafted words and pictures fussed within a beautifully constructed layout? Drawing in the audience and making them want to participate because they are enjoying themselves.

I’m in the process of writing such a page at the moment. And in the process of doing so I have been thinking long and hard about whether I should use the classic squeeze page layout or try for something a bit more up market.

My conclusion is that I may try both designs alongside each other and compare their performance. The only problem with having two sites with the same (duplicate) content is that it could effect page ranking and search results. So I am thinking of implementing a script that would change the theme every other visitor. One visitor would see the classic design, the next would see the modern one. I would then monitor the success rate of each over a period of time and see which returns higher sales. Assuming one will work better than the other, I would stop using the least productive theme to maximise on profits.

I am obviously forgetting one import point here – the Product itself. I could have the best looking website in the world, but nobody is going to want to buy what I am selling unless it is something they really want. And this is why the standard squeeze page probably works they way it looks at the moment.

But if I had something to sell that people wanted, would I be able to sell more with a better looking design? That is what I am hoping I will find out, and when I have some facts and figures I will make my findings public.

One last thing though, I’m sure other people have already tried this – have you? If so I would be interested to know thoughts, suggestions and findings.

Making money needs a special kind of dedication and commitment which keeps you going, even when things look bad. There is also a fine line between knowing when to keep going or when to quit a bad idea. I think I failed all of the above and as a result I have wasted a lot of my time running around after foolhardy ideas, and not dedicating myself to the things that were working.

I am now going to wipe the slate clean and give it another go. The knowledge I have learned over the last four months will be used to hopefully help me get things right. I have learned the hard way as they say, and I think it has taught me to respect the knowledge of others and that you do not necessarily need to come up with a new winning formula. In fact, the last four months have blatantly made it clear to me that there is plenty of room out there to actually copy somebody else’s really good idea and make it work for yourself. All you need to do is put your own spin on it.

So that is what I am planning to do. It’s not lazy, not stealing (especially if you pay for somebody else’s knowledge) and it is definitely not cheating. It is however, hard work and requires that special commitment — qualities I think I now have and understand!

I normally check them first thing in the morning as part of my, what has happened while I’ve been sleeping routine (more on my daily routine soon), and then I usually check them again before I go to bed. This way I can get a good feel of the effects I am having on new and returning traffic to my sites form using different types of advert campaign’s and social networking tools/websites (i.e Bla.st, Twitter, StumbleUpon etc.,)

But as the volume of new (unique) visitors goes up, which is great, I have been finding I spend more and more of my time analysing my stats than writing new content, which is not so great – detrimental to the cause in fact!

I guess a way around this is to try and find the information I want in a more efficient way. Currently I tend to find my built in hosted AwStats cross referenced with Googles Analytics gives me the most accurate figures, but this can be time consuming. So I’m wondering if there is a better way or an additional traffic monitoring service that is quicker and more accurate? Thus saving me time!

So, does anybody have any suggestions? What do yo use for site traffic monitoring? And how many hours a day do you spend checking your stats?

I’ve managed to escape having my account suspended on Tumbr, but that’s probably because I haven’t been using it for an TDC activities, in fact I’ve hardly used it at all…

So is it time for a switcheroo? No not at all — I’m still following and ultimately still taking part in the Thirty Day Challenge, as I have learnt some interesting tips, tricks and techniques — but I think it is good to keep your options open — especially when it come to trying to make money online.

That is why I am going to play catch up on the 31 Days to Building a better blog. When I say catch up what I really mean is I’m going to read everything as it has technically ended. If you not sure who Darren Rowse is, then head over to ProBlogger and check out the mountain of valuable information on making money from your blog — you should have already been reading it if you want to make money online anyway!

And if you are questioning the TDC, my advise is to stick with it as you will probable learn something out of it in the long run.

Update: I am in no way advocating The Thirty Day Challenge. I kind of lost interest with it anyway, partly because I really didn’t like the way it was originally being run. My advice if you are trying to make a living out of blogging is to do your research, look at everything, even the things that seem a bit dodgy – if you are worried, use a false name and a throw-away email address.

What is Bla.st? Put simply it’s an alternative form of online advertising that anybody can use. You can promote almost anything and pay as little (only pay if you want to) or as much as you like. The more you do pay means the higher up the page your advert(s) will go and the more likely it is to appear on other peoples websites, yes, they have a publishers program in the form of a widget (great for Wordpress sites) which doubles as a kind of referral program where you can earn credits for your own cards as well as 50% of the sale on any paid ads taken out by the referral.

Bla.st is extremely easy to use and has the added bonus of being free, and with hundreds of categories to choose from, you can target your advert to a specific market. If there isn’t already a category for the market you want, you can create one, but this means you will probably be the only advert in that category for a while, which could be good or bad depending on the way you look at it!

Traffic from my ads haven’t been that fantastic so far, but I have noticed that as Bla.st has grown, there has been an increase in visitors, so I am optimistic it will continue to be a valuable source of extra traffic over time.

Summary: If you are looking for an alternative way to advertise your product then I think Bla.st is a good idea, it’s not the only free option, but it does allow you to design and redesign your own ads as many times as you like, and if you place cards on your own website, you could earn credits to promote your own cards to the top slot, and maybe a few extra dollars along the way!

Update: I’m no longer using Bla.st, but it still looks like an interesting way to attract additional traffic to your website.