What makes entrecard so addictive?

"A dedicated dropper with a hint of addiction..."

I am guessing that Entrecard is a portmanteau of "entrepreneur" and "business card." Though the whole idea of turning us into "click monkeys" to generate traffic to our respective websites and blogs has been done before, what makes Entrecard unique? Entrecard was preceeded by other traffic generating sites such as Traffic G and linkreferral.

Yes, the whole business card idea... so damn simple, we are all asking ourselves, "why didn't I think of that?" To be sure, whenever we ask ourselves that very question, you already know it was a "Post-it note moment." Of course, people are already accustomed to and habituated to handing out business cards. Why not allow them to do this on the web?

Entrecard only includes blog sites. This was another simple, yet key idea which helps Entrecard maintain a sense of community. Basically, though we are still 'click monkeys,' we now are part of somewhat of a social networking site as well!

Entrecard Psychology... okay this deserves more than one bullet point. In one word, it is based on the principle of positive reinforcement. However, it takes this concept to another level. Unlike other sites, where I click on your site, write a review, and move up in the listings so that I will likely get more traffic... Now, I drop my entrecard on your site and you not only know exactly who gave you traffic and an in turn an Entrecard credit (immediate reinforcement), you now feel compelled to return the favor. Do you ever feel guilty when someone drops a card on your site and you haven't completed the circle by dropping back on their respective blog?

The postive reinforcement of Entrecard dropping is two-fold, not only do I get a credit for dropping my card, but additionally there is a pretty good chance that the person will see my card and return the favor thus giving me another credit (intermittent reinforcement). Additionally, not only are we reinforced by getting Entrecard credits, but we also increase website traffic to our respective blogs.

So now what we have is basically a token-economy. Hm, now we are talking about a system used in behavior modification in which tokens are accumulated and spent on a reinforcer (ads to get more traffic or selling for $$$). Now, this leaves us with a social networking/traffic generating site based on the principles of operant conditioning.

Summary... Entrecard employs the principle of positive reinforcement (which is actually stronger than negative reinforcement), integrates the intermittent positive reinforcement of people returning EC drops, and uses a token-economy to fuel this card dropping behavior.

How BIG will Entrecard get? For now, it's difficult to predict, but given that virtually anyone can create a blog tomorrow and instantly start to generate the type of daily traffic that once took someone with reasonable blogging accumen months to generate, the future's looking pretty bright for the folks over at Entrecard.

Cuil--dead on arrival?

Recently, I read about the new search engine, Cuil, on a related post by an entrecard blogger. Despite having a presumably massive PR campaign, I found it odd that I learned about this search engine from an entrecard blog. Where have I been the past month?

To be certain, Cuil has a daunting task much in the same way than many have already likened to the battle of David vs. Goliath. In fact, it even has a pretty good story behind it with the fact that it was designed by former Google employees. Heck, I even liked the idea that they tried to think outside of the box and design an algorithm that is not based on popularity. To those whose sites are unpopular, this idea seemed like the very paradigm shift that we've all been hoping for. At the very least, I hoped that it would be somewhat refreshing to see something other than a Wikipedia post ranking number one.

To my great disappointment and dismay, I recently tried Cuil and found the search results to be, shall we say, "a joke?" Okay let's think about their search results from strictly a 'visual' perspective.

3 columns with results all at different eye levels, some results with pictures, some without...? You're kidding me right? Unfortunately, though unique, the search results page doesn't seem to look neither cohesive or very functional. Let's just say that the search results page looks very disorganized and scattered. Not to mention that I find the search results page to be very distracting....

Okay, now let's think about the actual search results that you get from a Cuil search. From my incredibly small sample size of searches on products and companies, I found that neither the corresponding domain name, product, or company shows up at all with the search result.

Here's my example... Your company name is called Boondoggle Inc. (arbitrary example). Your company website is (3w) boondoggle dot com, and your product is called Boondoggle. Now you would think that if you're a relatively established company, that your company site, matching domain, and product would all rank fairly well on a search engine for the search term, "boondoggle." On Google, this is the case more often than not. On Cuil, you often find a random collection of results for anybody that uses the word "boondoggle."

Is this useful for business or individuals? Not really. Secondly, the lack of PR, backlinks, or popularity for sites, means that anyone who writes a single page optimized for a certain keyword, can rank number one in a search result?

1. I've read on other site reviews of Cuil, that it doesn't index names that are in the URL???
2. I've read that Cuil seems to rank old long-forgotten posts or blogs quite high.
3. Not ranking posts based on popularity??? Popularity ranking helps to filter out irrelevant posts (aka SPAM).
   

If we take a step back and think about search engines. Google really is that good! Of course, this is not my humble opinion alone. After years of trying to compete with Google, Yahoo has capitulated on some level by running Google ads on their searches. Even the mighty Bill Gates (Goliath vs Goliath) has failed in his attempts to beat Google at Google's game.

Okay, so now we have a new player named Cuil... It has the originally of trying to rethink both the way that search results are displayed as well as the way that its algorithm ranks search terms. Page rank, backlinks... all apparently out the window? Well, without giving the final verdict on Cuil, I think that it will definitely need a lot of work. On a positive note, Cuil actually makes Google far more 'loveable.' Through Cuil and only Cuil, we can actually appreciate the order that Google brings us on a daily basis for our search engine queries. In short, compared to Cuil, Google is looking better than ever.

More Youtube moments

Youtube is clearly the most-effective way to waste your time. I bring you another fine youtube moment:

Antivirus 2008 XP VIRUS WARNING!

Hi my fellow entrecard bloggers... A number of my recent entrecard advert requests have been declined. Oddly, these declines have been politely accompanied by an inbox message from several bloggers who've informed me that they are declining ads because their computer's recently been infected with a virus.

To clarify, they're reporting that the virus is actually called, "Antivirus 2008 XP." Apparently, it's a fake virus removal program that's devastating the web. Since the program must be manually downloaded and installed avoiding infection with this virus is really simple, JUST DON'T DOWNLOAD IT!

According to the Norton AntiVirus website, the program reports false or exaggerated system security threats on your computer. The user is then prompted to pay for a full license to remove these threats.

If you're computer has already been infected with this virus, make sure that you use a reliable program to remove it before it does futher damage.

-Greg

Andy Rooney

Growing up, I always enjoyed watching Andy Rooney. In fact, it was probably the only reason that I used to watch 60 minutes. In many ways, I always felt that he probably had one of the best jobs of all time. Not only did he get his 15 minutes of fame served on a regular basis, but he actually got paid presumably pretty a pretty decent wage to offer a controversial diatribe about some seemingly random topic.

You tube moments

Okay, I am going to include this youtube clip with the proviso that this one is, in fact, just over a minute and a half of your life that you will never get back.

Will you find this clip funny? Probably not. Will you regret watching it? I am guessing you will. Will you be one of the over 150,000 people who lost 91 seconds of their life watching it? Yes.

In today's society, what isn't a youtube moment? Many of us own little digital camcorders and love to record and catalog moments of our lives. Now, with youtube we can share these senseless moments with everyone around the world.

We all want our fifteen minutes of Fame, which is a phrase coined by Andy Warhol as we all are abundantly aware. With youtube, this fame is accessible to everyone.

talking with sealions?

World's fastest car?

The Bugatti Veyron

Okay, I will be the first to admit, that in my humble opinion, this has to be one of the sickest looking automobiles ever created... It's also the fastest car ever made with top recorded speed of 253 mph! Price? Yes, another record with the base price starting at $1.7 million dollars.

Yup, the Bugatti Veyron looks absolutely beautiful and is incredibly fast. In fact, this clip describes the Bugatti Veyron as a "Concord moment." One one level, it represents an unheard of accomplishment in automotive technology. Yet, from another perspective, one might question the judgement of VW in spending hundreds of millions of dollars developing a car that achieves 5.82 mpg in city driving which I might add, is another milestone in the automotive world. With crude oil priced at over $120 dollars per barrel, quite simply, what were they thinking?

I am all for questioning conventional thinking, but creating the world's worst fuel effecient car in the face of the highest oil prices on record, is quite seeminly absurd to me.

How to be a successful blogger

I created this blog on dark and stormy night with one goal in mind--to achieve success! Since I've failed miserably on monetizing my other blogs, I decided that I had to re-evaluate my goals and objectives. By changing my goal to NOT making money with this blog, I was able to become an instant success!

Achieving goals can be a very rewarding experience, even when the goals are of dubious value...

Here are my goals and success record:

1. PR Zero = success!
2. Profit from blog, Zero dollars = success!
3. Subscribed readers, Zero = success!
4. Backlinks, zero = success!
5. A few readers per day who can be cognizant of my success = success! (Thnx to entrecard)


-Greg

Top 10 ways to NOT make money with your blog

Okay, much like Thomas Edison who invented the lightbulb, we all have to learn from our mistakes. Here's my top ten ways to NOT make money blogging:

1. Don't have an opinion. Let's face it, people read blogs to here a viewpoint or opinion on an issue, not to read an objective news feed.

2. Don't host your blog on your own domain. Well, wordpress dot com is a great free blog hosting service, but if you haven't learned already, there's absolutely no way to monetize a wordpres dot com blog. Solution? Like the old adage says, "you have to spend money to make money." If you're serious about making money, register a domain name, use a wordpress dot org platform, download a free template, and you're off to the races... Sure you can monetize a blogger blog, but why spend all of the time creating backlinks, traffic, and readership to a domain that you don't own?

3. Don't use feedburner. Yup, though it can be hard to monetize feeds, the number of feedburner subscribers determines the value of your blog to advertisers.

4. Write about how to make money if your not. This goes without saying... John Chow used to digg a post then follow it up with a digg on how much money that post made him.

5. Blog about blogging! If you want to try to compete with seomoz, problogger dot net, or John Chow, you're facing some incredibly stiff competition who already has several years head start on you. Just try something else...

6. Don't use digg! Apparently, John Chow got his first traffic boost from digging articles. However, getting people to digg your posts is quite a challenge lately.

7. Don't promote your blog with a TV news story or newspaper article about your blog! Nothing can compete with the traffic spike you will get from conventional marketing. True, it's not easy to get a TV segment or newspaper about your blog, but if you're lucky enough, then go for it.

8. Don't write frequently with original content! Yup, you have to take blogging very seriously and dedicate quite a bit of time to develop regular readers and subscribers.

9. Don't build backlinks! Yup, PR requires backlinks and PR is $$$. Once you have a PR of 6, now your talking...

10. Take my advice! Yup, I have a proven track record of not making money blogging. In the grand scheme of things, you're probably better off not taking my advice.

Comments...

Okay, I sagely added a recent comments box and feed. If you notice, it's currently empty and this is just plain embarrassing, not too mention it's just not right... Share some random thoughts or ideas. Don't be afraid to be the first to write a comment on this site.

My entrecard ad price has rocketed up to 256 credits in less than one day. I am really quite surprised by this. Aren't you? I am sure there's actually some really good blogs out there that are selling for much less.

How did this happen? I really don't know and I can't say for sure. It might have something to do with the fact that I drop lots of cards which is really the simplest way to generate entrecard traffic. Yes, dropping your card is probably more effective than even advertising on some really expensive entrecard sites. Hey, I also have a bad habit of chain dropping which some people seem to like. We all like to have people click on the EC adverts on our site, right?

My ad also seems to look like the admaster, "advertise everywhere ad" which also can't hurt too much. Maybe, I am leveraging the popularity of his ad, but whose to say for sure?

-Greg

Make money online?

Making money online... How many ads, get rich quick schemes, websites, and blogs are out there trying to make money online or advertising how to do so? Is it still actually possible to make money online?

To answer this question, I turned to John Chow's free E-book for answers. According to John Chow, he cite's the statistic that 99% of blogs will not actually make money online. In spite of these odds against, there's no shortage of people hoping to cash in on the internet with yet another blog.

Why do 99% of people fail?

I've put some thought into this and the answer is pretty simple. Making money blogging is really not very easy. To make a successful money making blog, you really need to carve out an original niche--there's not many left, blog every day, and work to develop page rank, alexa traffic, and subscribed readers. This means that it requires time, effort, persistence, and probably a little luck which are all contrary to getting rich quick and easy...

Let's look at creating a new niche. Many bloggers decide to write about a topic that's already saturated (like how to blog) or a topic for which they have little passion or expertise. If you're going to write a blog about how to make money online, you're out of luck unless you can show your readers that you're actually successful in doing this. Strangely, this puts you in a chicken and egg situation, since you can't actually be making money blogging when your first start out, right?

The truth is that many of us bloggers, myself included, simply lack the creativity to create a new blogging niche in today's saturated blog environment. It already feels like everything's already been done... Hm wait, I have a great idea, why don't I take funny pictures of cats or dogs and put some nonsensical, grammatically incorrect blurbs underneath which I will call lol-speak? Isn't this a great idea? Well, yes it actually WAS. The blog was created two years ago called icanhascheezburger and it sells ad space for more money than any of us can ever dream of.


Here's my next blogging idea. I think I will call it, "one red paper clip." What I am going to do is create a blog about my flipping items. I will start with one red paper clip and trade it for something. Then I will keep trading items until I have a scene in a movie and a house. This should be really good... Oops, welcome to last year. This has already been done too, so what now?

More to come...

Superordinate Psychology

Superordinate goals, in psychology, are achieved by the co-operation and coordination of two or more people or groups. In these cases, individual goals are normally in opposition to each other, but the individuals or groups are now working together. It's a classic zero-sum situation.

In game theory, zero-sum situations are basically when it's impossible for both players to win. Board game examples of zero-sum situations include Go, Chess, and Checkers among others...

With superordinate goals, it's much like two people who are engaged in a game of chess, working together to achieve an alternate goal. Am I starting to sound somewhat pedantic?

Insomnia is a terrible thing to waste...

Yup, just some late night platitudes from a fellow insomniac. How many of my fellow entrecard bloggers suffer from insomnia? First, there was chloral hydrate. It was made from chlorine (what were they thinking?) and alcohol. I am guessing that this was one of those serendipity moments that occurred when someone accidentally dipped their cocktail in the swimming pool... Yup, just like chocolate and peanut butter. Years later, some malicious sod found out that if you put the chloral hydrate tablet into someones drink, now you have something that will really put someone to sleep. They used to call it a 'Mickey Finn." Now, there's a smorgasbord of sleeping pills currently available on the market.

Why take a sleeping pill when you can surf for entrecard credits and watch Youtube? Okay, now I am telling you to put down that Ambien CR tablet right now and click to watch this classic comedy routine by Russel Peters:

No Country for Old Milkshakes

No Country for Old Milkshakes is a classic, irreverent, satire which I viewed quite a while back on Saturday Night Live. I myself have seen both No Country for Old Men as well as There will be blood.

It really does go without saying that Daniel Day Lewis is clearly one of the most talented actors in recent years. When I think back to some of my favorite actors such as Robert Deniro, Al Pacino, and Nicholas Cage--it really does seem like many of them have almost become parodies of themselves which is quite sad, really.

Well, this is a must watch, so please take the minute out of your life to view this, you definitely won't consider it to be a minute out of your life that you'll never get back!

Page Rank

If you're an astute blogger who is surfing the internet on Firefox with with an Alexa toolbar carefully installed, you will notice that this blog has a PR of Zero and a nearly non-existent Alexa ranking. If you are interested in increasing your page rank (PR), then you will likely want to consider several of these options:

1. You do realize that you need backlinks, right?
2. How do you get backlinks? Well, you can ask or simply hope that people will link to your site or your incredibly insightful posts.
3. To do this, you may wish to consider joining on of several different social networks including, but not limited to: Stumble upon, digg, blogcatalog, or one of the many others available.
4. You can post comments on other peoples sites and carefully leave your backlinks politely tucked away at the end of a brilliant comment--otherwise your comment will be viewed as spam and simply deleted.
5. You can try to register your blog on many of the free blog listings or websites that give free links. Neither one of these options will result in a substantial increase in PR as most of these sites have PR of zero. Basically, you need to get backlinks from related blogs or sites to significantly increase your PR.

***Don't ask me for a backlink, trust me, you don't want one from this blog. To some it may seem somewhat nihilistic, but I am quite happy with my PR of Zero.

About page

What exactly is the Superordinate blog about? Superordinate aspires to be a broad, encompassing blog, covering any and all topics. This particular blog was launched very late at night on a Friday evening on July 25th, 2008. It may appear to be an inauspicious beginning, but you can be sure to expect great things to come...