SEO, Traffic

Here it is, this is something I've seen other bloggers do and it really seems to work. I'm going to give away 2000EC to the winner of my first Entrecard contest.

Here's what you need to do. Its very simple. Write a minimum 150 word post on your blog about my contest, or my site, or anything to do with my themes etc, you need to link to my site and one of my posts in your post body. So that's two links all up, one to my home page, and another to one of my posts, it can be any post. Your post needs to be permanent, but the incentive is that I'll link to you as well.

The prizes go like this. First prize is 2000EC, second prize is 1000EC, 3rd prize is 500EC and the contest expires 20th May. So basically its a short contest, the winners will get their credits on the 20th or 21st. I'll basically put all contestants names into a hat and my other half will pull three names out.

Simple contest, no unnecessary rules, no vote rigging, no extra chances etc, just write a post, comment here so I know you've entered the contest and may the luckiest person win.

It seems to be the vogue in Entrecard circles to list your top ten droppers, which spreads a little love and gives them a reason to continue visiting and maybe even make a comment or two.

So, without further ado, here are my top droppers for April ranked from most drops to least. My top three get a short blurb, the remaining seven a mention.

1. Modern Glam. Not only is Modern Glam my top dropper, she gets a special mention for having made some really nice relevant comments. She's also active at BlogCatalog so we bump into each other quite a lot. You should check out her jewelry store while you're here.
2. nofaceberg, aka Danny, a New Yorker who writes some stuff, yeah I know hardly a great review but when you read his site you'll agree with me, can be very funny.
3. MamaFlo's Place, a retired and recent convert to the non-smoking world (228 days and 1 hour as I write this). This lady does a bit of travelling and posts piccies of places she's been.
4. CK Marketing
5. Pixelated Thoughts
6. Search Engine Panel
7. Karlonia.com
8. Dot Com Mogul
9. Wooden Fish
10. Reenashwina

Next month I'm going to switch this up a bit and rank droppers by both the number of drops and the number of comments and give each an equal weighting so it will be interesting to see how many of April's droppers stay in the top ten.

While dropping in on a few bloggers this morning I came across a new social community that looks interesting, but probably not for the reasons you might imagine. Go join 3gb community www.3gb.biz is the website, to see why.

Social communities are the great rage at the moment, and I think over the next few years they'll completely take over from blogs, especially if the members have the ability to share their own thoughts in the same way as a blog with all the bells and whistles that come from being part of a community.

But the 3gb community is really interesting for two reasons, the first, and most important I think, is the radio station it has built in which allows members to listen to complete albums of their favorite stars. I'm not sure if members can upload their own albums or if 3gb have some kind of license to broadcast the music but its a really nifty idea, way better than other communities such as MySpace or Ning. Read More

I've been seeing this Entrecard thing all over the place and finally decided to give it a whirl, I'm user 10,101, Woohoo!. Other Entrecard users probably realise I'm new to the service since I don't have my own 125x125 ad yet, I'll get round to it, just not yet.

So, if you're also an Entrecard user feel free to make a drop, and I'm really keen to hear about your experiences using Entrecard from an SEO point of view. Have you noticed an increase in traffic or backlinks from using it?

Finally, yes I know this is a really short post, I'd like to thank Jillian for recommending Entrecard, feel free to visit her blog and make a drop as well. Ooh, I just had a thought. The first 5 people to comment on this post get a free mention in my next post.