Money, Love, and Change

I hope that everyone out there has a special cause that they are involved with. For us, we give monthly to St. Jude Children’s Hospital. I used to work with a pediatric neurosurgeon, and although the thought of a sick child is heartbreaking, seeing how they are still able to be themselves despite their illness is absolutely miraculous – there aren’t even words to describe some of the adversity these kids are able to overcome (sometimes against all odds).

Although we believe wholeheartedly in St. Jude’s cause, it is difficult for us to become more directly involved with them because of our physical location. At some point in my life, I would like to return to the bench to do some more science, and St. Jude’s tops my list of who I would like to work for. In the meantime, we’ve been trying to get involved with more local charities.

But St. Jude’s is super cool. They called us and asked if we would be willing to take part in their mailing campaign, where we sent out donation requests to close friends and family. Any donations are mailed back to us, and then we mail it back to St. Jude. I think that this is a wonderful way for us to encourage others to give without being too pushy. It also gets us more directly involved with their cause.

What about you? Do you have a charity that isn’t local that you are involved with? What do you do?

I am not sure what to think of the new Entrecard changes.  I really like being able to see how many times a blog has dropped on you in the past 30 days – I am using this information to comprise a drop list for myself.  I used to be a member of the Recipro-drops list, but was surprised to see that some members were hardly dropping any cards at all.  I think that doing a little extra work and getting a consistent list of droppers for my blog will be worth the effort.

I am not sure what to think of the new pricing system.  It does not make a lot of sense to me.  I understand that it will take some time for the numbers to adjust, but using a “power of 2″ system doesn’t seem to leave a lot of room for the the most popular blogs to separate themselves.   Asking someone to pay roughly 8000 credits vs. 16000 credits vs. 32000 credits is a big difference – to me, it will come down to luck.  If you are lucky enough to catch a spot on a popular blog when an advert has just finished up, you will pay a reasonable price.

Personally, I think that dropping cards is a more likely way to gain an audience, as opposed to advertising on a popular site.  This is because most Entrecard traffic comes from other Entrecard members.

I don’t want to beat this to death, but what do you think?  Am I missing something here?

The benefits of Viral Linking:

1. One of the fastest ways to see your Technorati Authority explode!

2. Increase your Google PageRank fast

3. Attract large volume of new traffic to your site

4. Build your community

5. Make new friends!

I have randomly selected 5 of you below to be tagged and I hope that you will similarly publish this post in your blog. Thanks to Stephan Miller who brought me to this. You have to tag 5 other bloggers and just keep adding on to the list. (Do not replace, just keep on adding! Yes let’s hope a long list!) It’s real easy! Tag others and see your Technorati Authority increase exponentially!

And these are the people who already took part on this tag:Blognation, Pinoytek, Reyna, Bluep, Kotsengkuba, Buraot, Iris, Banco De Reyna, Manilenya, Mitch, Melai, Malen, Beng, Sasha, Foolsville, Lloyd Lopez, Hulag, Stephan Miller, Money, Love, and Change

I tagged these bloggers:

• Hey, it’s Jake
• Homeschooling Four
• MoneyBites
• Timothy Adam Designs
• Frugal Shopping with Julie

As a blogger who is just starting out, I know that I need to increase my content and my traffic.  To date, I have not really been focusing on increasing traffic because I would rather spend my time generating quality content.  However, a recent post by Lazy Man influenced me to check out Entrecard, which is a blog networking site.  There is a great interview with Entrecard’s Graham Langdon on ProBlogger, which talks about how Entrecard was created as well as how it works. 

Since placing the widget on my page a couple of days ago, I’ve gotten 11 cards dropped on me, and 8 ads bought.  I would have to say that I am pretty impressed with how easy it is to start making others aware that I exist, and plan on spending some time over the next couple of weeks really trying to develop some traffic to the site using Entrecard.  There don’t seem to be any negatives to Entrecard yet (other than that it is addicting!), and at this point would highly recommend it to anyone just starting out.