I know I’ve mentioned Entrecard in the past, and I’m a big fan if you haven’t figured that out yet. One of the coolest things on the site is the ability to “sell” a service to another EC user for credits, and I’ve chosen to sell full website reviews for 150ec.

My first “buyer” is The Ace Report.

• Upon first loading of the site, I noticed that it’s got a pretty heavy image-based design (rounded corners, the date box on posts) but still loads fairly swiftly. At the least, it loads in good order, so the important stuff shows up first (like content!) and that’s a definite plus. The site is VERY blue… lots of blue everywhere.



• Speaking of that date box - it’s pretty un-necessary, given that the date of the post is already in text under the title of each post. While I realize it’s “pretty”, it’s something that most readers don’t need to know, especially not twice. I’m not suggesting that dates on posts aren’t necessary, but rather reducing the image files needed could reduce page load times and get a little more blue-ness off the site.
• The “meta” area under the post titles is pretty large. I’d suggest moving it to the bottom of each post (or at least moving the category and tag lists down there). What you’re doing at this point is giving people too much to read that’s not your main content. I also feel you’re possibly using too many categories for each post. There’s no need to categorize with “NFL” and “NFL Players” and “NFL Contract Issues“. It looks a little search-engine-spammy this way, and also can confuse readers looking to read about the NFL in general. Do they click on “NFL”? What will they miss by clicking on “NFL Players” and not “NFL”? That kind of thing.
• The fact that there are photos in nearly every post is great, and the fact that credit is being given makes me smile. But realize that just because you give credit, that doesn’t mean using the image is okay, especially when it comes to using photos from flickr and they happen to be photos of sports celebrities. It’s unlikely that the people posting the photos in their flickr stream have full use rights (as it’s unlikely they’re all professional celebrity photographers or all media photographers) and you could be getting yourself into trouble. Claiming “ignorance” to usage rights won’t hold up legally either. It’s best to source photos yourself, either by contacting the player’s agency or publicist and requesting media kits, or by using stock photos with full credit if required by the copyright holder.
• I realize that the site is fairly new, but the Blogroll bothers me a little on this site. It’s a WordPress site, which by default gives a WordPress based Blogroll. However this isn’t meant to be permanent, and the folks at WordPress fully expect you to remove those links and put more relevant, related ones in your Blogroll. I’m pretty sure that sports-minded readers aren’t going to much care about the WordPress Development Blog, rather they might be interested in other sports-related sites that the owner of the blog reads himself.
• Let’s talk monetization and ads. There are about as many AdSense ads on this site as allowed by Google, short a video or product referral link type. We’re seeing a 460×68 ad at the top of the first three posts on the home page, the link-type ads (long bar of text links), a widget first thing on the sidebar to sell products via WidgetBucks, a donation button… even in a section that’s titled “Help Us Out”. This makes it seem that the site owner is desperate for money, and trying to make sure that anyone and everyone who comes to the site is forced to see all the ways they can help him make that money before he provides them with useful, interesting content. The truth of the matter is that when you bombard your readers with ads like this, they do one of two things: They become blinded by them and decide your site isn’t worth staying on and they leave, or they become blinded by them and don’t bother clicking on any of them because they’re so busy searching for the content. While I realize that everyone’s got the goal of making money off their blogs, the best way to do it is to be subtle. Don’t “ask” for help, and don’t have it so that at any scroll-point on the page, there is more than one call for money. Why put the WidgetBucks code at the very top of your sidebar, when things like recent posts (which is currently in the… footer?), categories and RSS subscription buttons would help your readers out, which would in turn help your reader count, which would in turn make you more money? That said, I’ve never liked general donation buttons. No one “needs” you to write your blog, so why ask for a donation for doing it? Sure, if you wrote WordPress plugins, fulfilling a genuine need, or were saving up for some (genuine) cause, then yes, by all means ask for donations. But just for having a blog and writing on it? Nah. Not worth a donation.
• One of my biggest pet peeves? A default About page. “This is an example of a WordPress page, you could edit this to put information about yourself or your site so readers know where you are coming from.” That means, edit the page to put information about yourself or your site on it. Like the default Blogroll, it’s there as a placeholder, and needs changing. Give readers a photo of you so they can associate a face with a blog. Give people a way to pitch stories to you, either by email or contact form. Tell your readers who you are, why you’re writing the blog, what your goals are (as long as they’re not purely monetization related - because if they are, give up now).

All in all, I know the site’s new, and I know that there’s a lot of learning curve that needs to be met when you’re starting with a new site. Test things, see how they’re going for you, and if it’s not blowing you away, change it. But the bottom line is not to bombard your new audience with ads or beggings for money, start by putting the majority of your energy in writing good content, utilizing social media networks, and get yourself known, but only after cleaning up a little.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Megan Meier hanged herself after being hoaxed and harassed on the popular social network site MySpace. (wiki article) But this wasn’t your typical teen vs. teen angst type thing. The mother of the girl who had been Megan’s best friend up until that point has been charged for having a significant role in her death, because SHE (not the daughter) reportedly created a fake MySpace account pretending to be a boy who liked Megan, and then later turned it around and she wrote the cruel words, “the world would be a better place without you,” that may have pushed Megan over the edge and it resulted in her taking her own life.

I think this is setting a precedent that should’ve been set a long time ago, personally. In this case, it’s really about the loss of the life of a teenager, which is probably the most extreme end result in cyber-bullying. However, we’ve seen bloggers shut down their sites, move to another state, or completely go offline because of other adults. And until now, no one’s been held responsible for this kind of behavior.

The problem in this case? The mother was never charged in regards to the death (neither were her daughter or her daughter’s friend who has now felt the need to take on the responsibility for this to the point of attempting suicide herself), but MySpace has filed charges against her for violating the sites Terms of Service.

I get it all the time on one of my personal blogs. People who feel like they can use the so-called anonymity of the internet to say things to me they don’t have the guts to say to my face. The truth of the matter is that if I wanted to, I could take the IP addresses they left behind and find out who they are. Fortunately for me, I haven’t been harassed to the point where I’m in fear for my life, but I’ve traced IP addresses back to junior high and high schools, which really gets me. Why are these kids so hell-bent on being hurtful to strangers, much less to people they once considered friends? And in this case, WHY would an adult, a mother, perpetuate this kind of behavior?

Parents are supposed to be responsible for their kids’ actions. Not be acting like children themselves, and surely not harassing children. It’s kind of frightening if you ask me. I hope this woman gets some kind of jail time to be honest. She should be put away for as many years as Megan lived.

What do you think?

Popularity: 16% [?]

There are so many ways for people to make money on the internet it’s just not funny. Sure, it takes more than tossing up a dropship store and waiting for the bucks to roll in - You need a balance of creativity, originality, and hard work to make it happen, but it seems that some of the most ingenious are moms these days. From mommy bloggers to motherly inventors, mommy-preneurs are out there staking a claim to all the internet has to offer.

Moms Invent Social Network for Tweens
www.FashionFantasyGame.com Defines “The Chat of a New Generation”

New York, New York, May 8, 2008 /PR Newswire/Social networks are big business but are shy on value to Moms who care about the safety and productive engagement of their tweens.

That’s not the case at www.fashionfantasygame.com, a social network and virtual world created by R. Lilly Tuckerwear, Inc., where members run their own virtual businesses. These tweens chat about their designs and stores and are seriously focused on being financially successful.

In the Fashion Fantasy Game tweens earn currency (Fashion Buckz) by selling their clothing and designs, and through contests and salaries while they use their earnings to design, produce and advertise. “How’s Biz!” is the most frequently asked question in this dress-up game.

Some members report that teachers are now incorporating the game in their curriculum. “We are thrilled to see the girls actively competing in a skill-based game that takes concentration, effort and imagination,” says Nancy Ganz, who created this dress-up game for her daughter and her friends, “and they love talking about the game and the contests!”

The Fashion Fantasy Game is a fashion game for girls, where players talk to each other about growing their businesses and “virtually” solve the issues confronted in a real-life economy. The Help section provides detailed explanations of complicated business concepts while the Glossary exposes players to essential fashion terms.

This social network is bringing a value to end-users that parental gatekeepers appreciate. Mom/Entrepreneurs created Fashion Fantasy Game.com because they wanted to engage the imagination of tweens in a productive activity that feeds a positive self-image. “This is a social network that we are proud to show off to other Moms,” states partner Nancy Jackson Hodin.

The growth of registered tween players for www.FashionFantasyGame.com is now at around 10,000 per week. These tweens are part of the 66% of US Internet users who generally spend time in social networks on a monthly basis. The popularity of this game is due in part to its focus on girls who, according to a Pew Internet & American Life Project, are more likely than boys to be blogging and creating social network sites.

About R. Lilly Tuckerwear, Inc.
R. Lilly Tuckerwear.com and The Fashion Fantasy Game.com are safe and secure virtual worlds and social networks geared to tweens, focused on peer-to-peer communications, confidence building and learning.

Popularity: 20% [?]

This list isn’t in any particular order, but it’s something I’ve wanted to post about for a long time. I hate Blogger/Blogspot for a whole bunch of reasons, but since that just sounds like an exaggeration when I’m talking to clients, I want to list out all the reasons why. These were collected from around the internet, as well as my own head.

• People who blog on Blogger/Blogspot have the (default) option of requiring a reader to have a blogger/blogspot blog in order to leave a comment. It’s surprising how many people actually enforce this - and I’ve found several well-written blogs that I can’t comment on, simply because I refuse to set up a blog I’ll never use just to do so.
• They use “nofollow” by default, so you can’t even allow your regular readers/commenters to get a link back from you as a Blogger/Blogspot blog owner. Of course, this is all because of the next reason:
• TONS of spam. It’s mainly because Blogger/Blogspot is a free service, and spammers are cheap bastards.
• Unstable servers. The site appears to go down a lot, for bloggers and readers alike.
• Images automatically insert themselves at the top of the post, messing up layouts of content, and have to be re-aligned and re-published to fix.
• Their CAPTCHA service is ridiculous. All the letters and numbers are swirled and compressed together, and it almost never works the first time, even if you can make out the word.
• Blogger is owned by Google. Not that I have anything against Google (really), but Google owns a lot of online sites and services that they just haven’t either done anything with since purchase, or they’ve let slide into oblivion since purchase. I think they’ve had great intentions, but just dropped them for bigger and better things.
• Feeds don’t update regularly, and when they do, you never know if you’ll get full feeds or if it’ll revert to default partial feeds.
• It’s free. Yes, there are tons of great free services online, but for less than $4 a month, you can get a fully hosted, fully supported blog of your own using WordPress. No ugly bar at the top, no limits to your layout or design, tons of FREE plugins and FREE themes and FREE everything else you need except the $4 a month hosting. If you’re serious about your blogging, cough up the $4 a month already and you’ll eventually make it back with a little monetization, I promise. I have one blog I barely update that makes me about $300 a year still. It’s worth the $48 a year, isn’t it? (If you’re that hardup and want a free blog, at least use WordPress.com instead of Blogger.) But still, there’s nothing like having 100% customization rights on your own self-hosted blog - and NO free service allows for that. NONE OF THEM.
• According to the Blogger Status page, the image/photo uploading feature is having problems they can’t seem to get a grip on. Isn’t that nice?
• “Flagging” can be abused. Let’s say you write something pretty harsh, and enough people get up behind each other to flag you for “inappropriate content” of some kind. I know, I know… it’s supposed to be analyzed by humans, but what if they don’t like what you had to say? I don’t like the idea of being victim to having my site censored by strangers, do you? (Of course, WordPress.com has been known to shut sites down too, but they’re a little more particular and exact about why (ie. stealing someone else’s content, promoting porn, hate-speech, etc.) and I suppose if you’ve got nothing to fear, that would be fine. But since Blogger is more well known, more spammers use it, and more flags go up, more moderators get blinded by all the stuff, and “oops!” your blog gets banished.)
• Blind assumption that using Blogger helps in the search engines (since it’s owned by one) makes Blogger patriots defiant about switching. This simply isn’t true, folks. Get over it. Do a search in Google for “mommy blog” (extremely popular type of blog) and you get ONE Blogger blog in the top 10 (number 7 in fact, near the BOTTOM). The others are all self-hosted WordPress or self-hosted Movable Type.

Contrary to what you might read, you don’t need to be a geek to use a self-hosted blog. Most of them have very simple step-by-step installation guides (WordPress has a “Famous 5 minute installation”) and there’s lots of support on the forums for people who aren’t coders or tech-savvy. Getting a self-hosted blog can be even more simple, depending on your hosting company. GoDaddy offers it for free, with one click.

If you’re still using Blogger (or any other free blog service), I’m sure you love it and are having a wonderful time with it, but it’s time to “grow up” if you’re looking to make any real progress or money from blogging. Plain. And. Simple.

Popularity: 40% [?]

I’ve found an ad network called Clickbooth CPA Network, and have signed up as a publisher. I figured I’d write up a review of the whole process as it happens, so that you can see my experience and determine if it’s a network you’d like to get into for your site or blog.

From the Clickbooth website:

Formed in September 2002, Clickbooth has developed an affordable, profitable, scalable and technologically-advanced organization over the years. Our team includes experts in the fields of advertising, publishing, technology and design.

The first step was to go to the Clickbooth site and sign up as a publisher. It’s a very simple setup, beginning with your name, address, etc. and then moving on to a verification tool that I thought was pretty neat. You enter your phone number, and the system calls you and gives you a verification PIN code which you must then enter on the site. The site follows along with the phone call so it’s very simple to do.

Next step was to enter your website/s. Here’s where I ran into something a little odd, but basically you can enter as many sites as you want (I started with three), but you can only choose one category. The problem here is that all three of the sites I entered have different topics. I don’t like the fact that you can’t select the category for each site. But I entered all three sites and chose the category for the first one, and then in the comments section made a not about that, stating what the topics were for the other two sites. Not sure if it’ll mean much, but I made the effort.

Now comes the waiting period. I get a confirmation message that one of their reviewers will get back to me within 72 hours. Not sure if it’ll be a phone call or an email, but we’ll see what happens, and I’ll finish this post then.

Update 5/1/08: It is now 5 days after I did the signup, and nothing heard back from them yet. I have only to say that this is a huge disappointment for me. I was really looking forward to being able to do this review for you all before posting, but I feel that this is an important piece of information for anyone who might be interested… It’s going to take longer than the 72 hours they tell you. Clearly a lot longer.

Should I hear back from them, I’ll be happy to update this post further at that time.

Popularity: 52% [?]