Life after Entrecard

I think almost all of you that read my random thoughts, rambling, and various other musings here found me through Entrecard (before it went to !#%@!#%), right?

Can you believe that it was around this time last year that I left that site? Sure, I still have my little drop card and everything, but I have been back since I made the decision to leave and, honestly,I think my blog is better for it.

simply put, when I was on EC, it seemed like a chore to have to get on there and drop on everyone's site who had dropped on mine. Without having to do that, I've been able to cultivate more of a close knit blogging "family" of faithful readers.

Sure, my traffic is way down, but I'm much more intersted in those that come here and actually read what I have to say (even if it doesn't make any sense), than empty viewers who come, look for the card, click it, and move along.

When I was on EC, I used to have a top droppers post. Can't do that anymore...well, I suppose I could if I actually went back and saw who actually still uses that thing to drop. However, I do want to thank all of you that comment on a regular basis. (I need to comment on your blogs more often, I know)

Announcements

Well, it's been a long couple of weeks, but things should be returning to normal around here soon enough. If you will recall, I said that my laptop keyboard was shorted out, but the computer itself worked fine. This is true, and yesterday the new keyboard came in. Unfortunately, it will be Sunday before I can get to break it in. Rehearsal went long yesterday, far away game tonight (we're not supposed to get back until 2 or 3 in the morning), then tomorrow is alumni band reunion at my college, so I'll be gone all day for that, as well. Still, it will be great to get back to blogging on a regular basis, especially since I'm about out of the ones I had all qued up.

Second, I have said that I will be rebooting my eye candy posts. I'm not totally changing anything, just starting over. So, anyone is fair game again. As always, requests/suggestions are always welcome.

Finally, back in May, as some of you may recall, I took my leave of Entrecard until the NFL season started back. I said that a decision whether to stay or go would be made then. Well, I've thought about it, and I will not be leaving, but I won't be staying either. Basically, I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing. If someone wants to advertise, I won't deny, unless I think there's an issue with their blog, but don't expect me to reciprocate.

My reasoning for this is this...during my time off from EC, my traffic has been down, but that's about it. The same people that commented before are the same that still commented. (A big thanks to them, btw). Eventually, I probably will say the heck with it and delete my account, but for now, I'm just going to let things stay where they are.

Back to my commenters, I really need to get on the ball and get back to commenting on your blogs. I'm sch a slacker!

Well, this concludes my announcements for today. Hope you all have a pleasant weekend!

Update and the future

As my loyal readers will know, last week was not a highlight for me. I want to thank you all for your support, though. Yes, I may not know any of you in person, but your kind words helped me through a rough patch.

To update the situation, we are working things out. Things aren't back to normal, yet, but given time, I believe they will be. It's just going to take some time.

Now, I've made a decision about what to do with this blog and Entrecard. If you'll recall a few weeks back, I said that I was going to leave EC for the summer and did not know what the fate of this blog was going to be.

Well, here's the verdict. I'm still leaving EC for the summer. You'll still be able to drop if you like, but I won't reciprocate until after Labor Day, if I make the decision to ultimately keep it after my "vacation" from dropping.

I'm not going to stop anyone from advertising here just because I'm leaving, so feel free to buy up all the space you want. I'm sure it'll be pretty cheap in a couple of weeks.

Now, what is going to happen with my blog? Nothing. I will still be blogging on a regular basis, complete with my weekly features "Eye Candy", "Musical Monday", "Quote of the Week", and "Retro Commercial Friday".

Once again, I want to thank you all for your support during my trying time last week. I only wish I could return the favor if any of you ever get in a similar spot (let's hope not, though).

Decision

As my faithful readers are more than aware, I have been toying around with the idea of leaving Entrecard. Well, this week, I've noticed a lot of my normal droppers/dropees stating that they will be leaving because of viruses, worms, and such that they have picked up during the course of dropping.

For this reason, I will be following them. However, I am not going to leave the site altogether...yet. At the end of the month, I'm planning on going on a hiatus for the summer.

I'm still working out what my plans are for this blog, but I wanted to give you all a heads up.

That was nice

So, I took a couple of days this weekend to totally break off from EC, and *GASP* it wasn't the end of the world!!!

Seriously, it was nice to actually have a break from dropping. I actually got to bed at a decent time and actually read blogs without feeling pressured to hurry up and move on to the next one. Of course, when I got back to dropping Sunday night, my price had dropped and there were a ton of new blogs in my inbox, but that's ok.

I may take more breaks in the future, especially with the holidays coming up, but I'll give you some warning before I leave.

Give me a break

Every now and then, there comes a time when yo need a break from things. for me, though, this comes in the form of a 48 hr break from EC.

No worries, though, I'll be back dropping Monday, and on the meantime will be working on catching up on my blogs.

Hope you all have a good weekend!

Top Droppers for October

Time changes tonight, so we get an extra hour of sleep, so before I get ready to go hit the sack, I figured I give credit where credit is due and honor my top droppers for the month of October.

PJ's Prose
Everyday Living
Winesworld's Blog
The Modern Historian
Laane on the World
body health information
share free tutorial
The Junk Drawer
Funky Town Disco Music
The Way I See It

A special thanks goes out to all these people and everyone else who comes by and reads my inane rambling! You all are very much appreciated!

EC is pimping themselves out

The few of us left that still use Entrecard have no doubt noticed the so-called "paid ads" that they are using now. I have my own set of issues with these things which I have and will discuss ad nauseum at various points in time, but for this post let me just say that these things are like preaching to the choir.

If you think about it, why would you advertise on blogs that already use your service. Especially, if most of us don't want them there anyway. I understand that non-users may see them and be intrigued, but chances are, these same people actually read blogs, and have read our bitching and have already been dissuaded.

It could be just me, but I just think if they're going to force this on the few that didn't join the mass exodus off the site, then they should go all out with the paid ads, and not use us to pimp themselves. I don't want that to happen, but it seems a bit counterproductive, y'know? What do you think?

Rumors about my demise have been greatly exaggerated

As many of you that are/were users of Entrecard know, October 5th marked the reurn of paid ads, this time without the permission of the blog owner. As I've been doing my usual blog surfing and such, I've noticed that many of the blogs that I normally read and drop on have left the service or are getting ready to do so.

There have even been some that have contacted me about the belief that I will be following suit. I have not noticed any paid ads on my blog, yet. Having said that I will be watching the behavior of EC over the next month. They're on thin ice with me, and its getting thinner.

Like many of you, when I joined the site, it was to meet other bloggers, get some traffic to the site, read other blogs, etc. As time has passed, its become more of a chore to drop, and with all the "changes for the better" they've been implementing, it just isn't fun to be an EC member anymore.

The only reason I'm sticking around is becuse of the hard work I put into EC, but make no mistake, it may not be that long before I say the hell with it and leave the service for bigger and better things (which I am currently searching for, if anyone has suggestions). When/if that happenes, I'll give everyone notice in advance. Until then, I hope everyone has a good week/day/morning/night...whatever it is when you're read this.

Change for the worst?

I've read on quite a few blogs in the past couple of weeks about how Entrecard is about to reinstate the paid ad system, this time with the blog owner not able to reject them. Many of you are made as hell about this.

As you can tell by my sidebar over there, I'm right there with you on the whole paid ads suck thing. As I've said before, and will continue to say as long as I use this service (which may not be much longer)....regardless of how money hungry the EC folks are, it is the real people like you and I that keep it going. They can have all the paid ads in the world, but if no one sees/clicks on them, or they don't have any blogs to put them on, then they cease to exist.

You would think with all the outrage over these things the last time, they would have learned, but apparently not. I don't know when these things are set to start, and really don't know much about this whole situation other than what I've read in a couple of blogs, but you can rest assured that I'll be right here fighting them tooth and nail! Who's with me?

Photobucket and Netflix issues as well as some EC stuff

I have 2 photobucket accounts. 1 for my own personal use and the other i use exclusively for blog pictures. I knew that I was getting on up there in space and whatnot, but i never thought the day would come where I would be 99% full. So, I figured a way to continue with my pics, and that is start another account. For some reason, you can only have one account per e-mail address, though. Long story short, I'm in the process of moving a couple of albums to my new photbucket acct. It's quite tedious, but i was doing them one by one when I first started, as opposed to bulk uploading. hopefully, I'll finish this weekend, and can free the space.

Wednesday has become family movie night in this house. What I mean by that is that usually I pick a fairly shirt family/animated film from my Netflix list and watch it. Well, this week I got Happily N'Ever After, but it was so scratched up and damaged that it wouldn't even get past the previews. I immediately filed a complaint, and should get a replacement tomorrow. all the trouble I've gone through for this thing better be worth it, but I have a feeling it's gonna suck.

Whoever is running EC now has already started with the lies. I got an e-mail the other day saying that they had a few new features. I forgot hat they were, but I do recall them saying that they had deleted all the blogs with no widget. This is so not true! I know this for a fact, because there are about 3 or 4 on my favorites list that have no widget, not to mention on my EC profile, my movie blog still shows up (but I think it just the widget). *SIGH* I hope this isn't a sign of things to come with...ZipRunner, is it?

Time for a little EC rant

Ok, well, I'm really gonna rant, but, like most of us, I am concerned about the mysterious new owners. I'm taking the "wait and see" attitude and hoping ZipRunner doesn't screw anything up, make us pay, or totally change the way things are run, but in the back of my mind I'm still wondering what really is going to happen. Let's face it, you know you are, too, but they can't do much worse than Graham has done in the last few months, can they?

While I'm on the EC topic, maybe I'm the only one that has noticed this, but I've seen that the blogs I advertise on are getting little to no clicks. It used to be that they'd get between 10-200, depending on the blog and stuff. Now, the highest number I've gotten has been like 7. I'm not sure if that has anything to do with paid ads getting in the way since I tend to stay away from those that have paid ads, but you never can tell, y'know?

Oh, Entrecard, how you have fallen! Maybe the new owners will do something about all this. We can hope, right?

Dropping down the dropping

If you normal readers will recall, last month I decided to cut back on my dropping because I got so busy, then last week I just totally cut it out altogether while I *GASP* actually did work. I did do a couple of 300 days this weekend, though, but did not have the same enjoyment I had before I cut back on my dropping.

So, I've decided to keep the basic dropping that I was doing. What is that, you may ask? Well, I will only be dropping on blogs that I truly enjoy reading. After all, isn't that reasons we all look at each other's blogs anyway, to READ them? I will occasionally take the time and do a 300 drop day here and there, but not on a regular basis anymore. This also works for me since I don't want to spend my vacation hunched over in front of the computer.

Issues persist

I'm sure that I'm not the only that noticed Entrecard acting all funky yesterday with the stats and everything. Checked my e-mail this morning and there was thing from Graham that said one of the major servers went down.

I'm sorry, but for what is a very popular and heavily trafficked site, you'd think they'd have better equipment or something in place to prevent these things from happening, but I guess that would just make too much sense, now wouldn't it?

So, on top of the paid ad fiasco (I still get one or two requests now and then, but they seem to have left m alone since I put that little widget thingy up), and the overall EC experience has just been getting worse by the day.

Am I alone in wondering why I still even bother?

Frustration with Entrecard

Guess what, this is another post about Entrecard. Big shocker, right? Seems to be all most of us blog about these days.

I've noticed that just about everyone has posted something about EC's paid ads. Almost every blog I regularly read has gone the no paid ads route. I'm sure there are many that I don't read that have gone the same route. One would think that this, coupled with the constant complaints on the message boards/forum would be enough to cause a blip on Graham's scope, yet nothing seems to be done.

As time is going on, I'm leaning more and more towards leaving EC, but i know that would lead to a massive decrease in traffic, so I'm trying to to stick it out through the summer. I also hope that some changes will be made.

I have my own ideas for changes. The first is one that we all have, and that is a double widget. It seems that EC is hell-bent on showing these paid ads, even if it means the alienation of those of us that use credits for our advertising, so why not compromise and create a double widget?

The next idea I have is that the only site that show paid ads are those that are advertising sites. I've noticed on the login page that there is a separate EC login page for these blogs, so why not let them advertise on each other and leave the rest of us alone. This goes for credit ads, too, unless you specifically approve the use of paid ads.

Granted, the way EC is going these days, I doubt they'll use either notion and will wonder why everyone is leaving their site. They have this whole paid ads fiasco to look back on as the answer to that question. Such a shame, this site was actually worth something when I first joined, now it is quickly deteriorating. Don't you all agree?

Spring break is over

Well, I've been back at work for going on half a week now. I enjoyed my spring break. Trust me, I needed the week off. On top of getting some much needed relaxation, I got some work done on both this and my other blogs, and actually had a few days of 300 drops.

Unfortunately, as before break, I'm going to be going full speed until school is out. Mixed with my ever growing frustration with EC and those God-forsaken paid ads. I just wanted to give you all a heads up. Thanks for reading!

Silenced!!!!

My fellow Entrecarders, let us all take a moment to remember those today.com bloggers (i won't list them all for fear I'll forget and offend someone) who were fired, for lack of a better term, for speaking out about the policy differential between the two sites. I don't know all the details, but I support each and every one of these bloggers in their future endeavors.

This says it all

For the few paid ads that are currently running, I don't mean to be rude, and will allow your ads to finish out the week. After which, if you want to keep running ads on here, then you'll have to do so the old fashioned way with EC credits. Thanks!

Not sure

Today I actually took the time to drop 300 cards. It's been a while since I've had the time to be able to do that, so I figured take advantage of it today. Well, much to my chagrin, as I'm going through my drops, I'm coming across many of the same cards over and over again.

Let me be clear, there is nothing wrong with the repeat droppers. As a matter of fact, I'm ever so grateful for them, even moreso to those that read and comment, but last time I dropped 300, I may have made it to the top of the 6th page before I hit the big 3-0-0, an today I was halfway down page 13!

Oh well, as long as people are stll dropping, reading, and commenting, I'm happy.

My two cents on paid ads

It seems like everyone has complaints about this new paid ad system that Entrecard is forcing down our throats. Well, I'm no different. I realize that it is a necessary evil and all, but to me, it just seems as if it takes out the human aspect of advertising.

Didn't we all join to gain readers? Do you really want to pay someone to read your blog? I know I don't. No offense to those that have paid for ads, but in my book, priority should go to those that use their hard earned credits to advertise on my site.

I forgot whose blog it was that I was reading last night, but someone suggested they just make a whole different widget for the paid ads. That makes sense to me. Unfortunately, Entrecard won't even delete cards that have accounts deleted from their site, so how can we even think they'll do something that would actually make sense like this?

On top of all this, my dashboard is cluttered with paid ads, yet I haven't received any normal ads lately. Not to mention the ads that I have bought aren't getting seen because of these paid ads.

They say the ratio is 50/50, but think about it...if you go to a site that has at least 5 paid ads running and then the 1 normal ad, chances are you'll see the paid ad, and on top of that, unless you're willing to sit there and keep refreshing through the ads on a given blog, you probably won't get to the normal ad. To make thins worse, you can't even tell which ones are paid and which ones aren't.

I really wish the powers that be at entrecard would come up with something better than this. As I said before, I understand they need to make money, but some of us joined with the intent of everything being free, and don't want to be subject to this Nazi-esque regime of paid ads. Perhaps they should do the most logical thing, have those that pay for ads be the ones that show paid ads and leave the rest of us be.

So, here's my decision about ads and entrecard in general...those that have paid ads running I will let you run your course, if you have been a faithful dropper in the past...other than that paid ads will NOT be run on my blog. So, for everyone else, don't be afraid to buy up some ad space. As far as I'm concerned, the blogger to blogger contact with no monetary involvement is better. This system doesn't sit well with me. As I've mentioned in an earlier post, I have been growing ever more frustrated with entrecard and have thought of leaving more than once, this is seriously about to push me over the edge, but I want to see if they can right the ship.

While I'm thinking about it, has anyone else noticed that since they've started with the paid ad system, the site has been down almost daily? Isn't the whole purpose of this thing to make money for upgrades and such? Apparently it's not working!

Sometimes I wonder why I even bother!