The Entrecarder

Last November I attended a class (put on by our local college's extension division) entitled Intermediate Internet Marketing. I was interested to see what constituted intermediate versus beginning material and it was a free class, so I figured I couldn't lose too much by attending. While no expert myself, I ended up fielding many questions on topics that I knew as much about as did the instructor. Blogging was covered, but only in passing, and that in the context of supporting your other marketing activities, both off and online.

In my last post I suggested that bloggers weren't typical people and to follow up that statement I will further suggest that bloggers aren't typical internet marketers, if in fact they are attempting to monetize their blogs in the first place. Prior to signing up for Entrecard I have had blogs on at least 10 different places, like niche sites related to weight-loss, myspace, the local newspaper's website, etc. That is typical (in my never quite humble opinion) of the VAST majority of the blogosphere. The percentage of pro-money bloggers versus no-money bloggers is much higher in the Entrecard community than one might find in any other place I can think of. (How's that for covering my ignorance?)

Not surprisingly, some of the largest categories in the Entrecard community are Make Money Online (398) and Internet Marketing (197). Many of the blogs listed in other categories are attempting to make money online via internet marketing, too, but have chosen to place themselves in a category more suited to their content. With it's big "Profit!" on its main page, Entrecard is promoting itself as a tool to build your traffic and make money with your blog. And I'm here to say that it works! Long Live Entrecard! Of course, I haven't actually made money with my blog in the way that Graham likely envisioned the typical Entrecarder would. I've made money harvesting and selling ECs, not as a result of pay-per-review or affiliate ads, although I think I made a buck from a short-lived Scratchback widget and I won a cool coffee mug from Ken at YouCanLearnSeries.com.

What struck me most when I first joined the community was the presence of the Johns and other big name bloggers, although I wasn't familiar enough with the A list to know who they were. Most of the blogs were better than mine (not too hard) and these folks were serious about their blogging, whether for money or not. My broad business background and general online experiences told me that while there are millions of bloggers, the pro-money bloggers are a relatively small pond, especially when compared to the ocean of Internet Marketers. And as it has turned out, there are only a few big fish that are actually active in this small pond, which I'm ok with as I'm just a very small fish myself.

I have been around long enough to have visited sites where people get paid a penny per comment, and some industrious folks can earn upwards of $3 a day for their 4+ hours online. Well, bully for them, but that pond is too small for me. Even some of the better known blogger communities boast of their top people earning $200 a month for their 80 posts or something like that. Sheesh. Don't these people have a life? Oh yeah, I'm one of them. Forget that degree in Accounting and the 25 years in the business world, right now I'm scrambling for pennies a day from Project Wonderful? Reality check!

We all pick the pond that we are most comfortable in and Entrecard is a wonderful place to be, whether you are tunnel-visioned on Your Blog, Your Business or Please Don't Think I'm Trying to Make Money with My Feel Good Blog. There's room for all sorts of bloggers here in this small pond, although I'm seriously questioning what the hell I'm doing here! I think it was a time and place thing. I came in at just the right time to make some good money ($600+) from selling ECs and now I'm trying to figure out how much interest I have in staying involved. I probably wouldn't have written these last two posts if I wasn't ticked off by the assertive ignorance of Pat and Beth, with their respective posts on the main Entrecard blog. Why should I care about them boneheads and their clear lack of perspective beyond their little view on the world? Small fish, small pond.

As a joke I suggested that I would sell a one page ebook about how to make money from Entrecard. I've now covered much of what I was going to put in the ebook and if someone is really interested in making more money from selling ECs than the average Entrecarder does from affiliate ads, then wade through my posts and see how I did it.

As for me, I'm looking for a bigger pond.