Last week I made a post about people who use Entrecard precariously and place their widgets above the fold. I do not agree with this strategy and claimed that it takes up valuable space that could be used to monetize your website. Divablogger took the bait and issued a nicely written response to my argument. The following post is my retort.

Let’s start with the first comment that got my attention:

“placing it somewhere more accessible makes it convenient for people to drop their cards”

I agree completely with you. This statement is actually helping me to prove my point. You see, although I do like Entrecard for its potential to generate a fair amount of traffic to a website, the advertisements on the widgets are still free and cost $0 in real world money. So why would you sacrifice space on your website where you could be making real money in order to promote somebody else’s site who is just using you for your widget? Don’t you feel so….used? You are willingly giving up the potential to sell ad space on your site and make money online for a silly Entrecard point. I’m no economist but I would call this “negative equity”. You are not gaining anything valuable by giving away prime real estate on your blog nor are you being properly compensated for it. If ever in doubt, just repeat this mantra: “What Would John Chow Do?”.

You also stated the following:

“Being in directories (which are strongly promoted by the creators) is like being a part of the daily life of entrecarders who use these directories and are too lazy to create their own.”

I’m not entirely sure what you meant by that statement. Firstly, of course directories will be promoted by their creators! I promote all kinds of things that I make; this started in kindergarten when I made my first hand print on paint then had my parents hang it on their refrigerator. It’s just plain simple to understand. Secondly, although Entrecard is a fantastic avenue to reach a wide readership and gain an audience, I don’t necessarily want to be in a directory of lazy people. “Dress for success”, as they say. I would rather have proactive Entrecarders and Bloggers like my sponsor JasonBoom that participate and support my site. He is obviously working hard at promoting his brand and blog and is not a “lazy” blogger. If you take away all of the lazy bloggers, I believe that the web would be filled with content that is of much higher in quality than what is available today.

I guess we could go around and around in this argument. You believe that placing your Entrecard widget, which gives away a free link and takes away space for paid advertisers “above the fold” is the smarter and better thing to do. I believe that placing the free link widget that still brings me traffic “below the fold”, thus saving more prominent spaces for paid advertisers is the smarter thing to do. The point I was trying to make is a financial one, where as you were making a point about quantity of traffic. In the end it is just a question of “quality versus quantity”. I would much rather have 1000 daily visitors who found my site through other quality “non-lazy” blogger’s websites. These visitors would probably read multiple posts and pages per visit, leave comments, become advertisers, and even help me out by clicking and following my affiliate links. It seems to me that you, on the other hand, would be satisfied with 1000 daily visitors who get to your site, click the widget and leave. I’m in this for the quality, but if that’s the kind of visitor that you want going to your site, then I hope your strategy works out for you. To me, it’s a no-brainer.

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How are you currently making money online? Are you doing well what you do “just because” or do you have a plan of action? Do you keep an active watch on your stats as well as trends in your niche? If you’re like I was, you probably had all of your eggs in one basked at one point or another, and you may still have only one plan to make money online. After the performance of my main website started to decline, I had to go into panic mode for a little while and try to figure out what I could do in order to start making some cash online. The plan is still coming together but instead of just 1 site up and going, I have a total of 6. These sites are a combination of affiliate sites and eBay stores. Their performance has not yet reached close to their potential and I am working on figuring out what it would take to make these sites shine.

If you’ve ever had an income stream online, you’ve probably thought to yourself at one point or another that you really should have more than one way to make money, just in case something would happen to your site. These are 5 reasons to do it now:

1. Trends Change

It should be no surprise to learn that we live in a fickle, materialistic society. People want the latest and greatest things at a moment’s notice, especially when it comes to technology. If you have a website that revolves around technology, you’d better be prepared to act quickly and serve those people who may no longer be interested in your product line.

The same goes with many other niches; health, fashion, automotive, etc. If you are sitting still in an ever changing business environment, a new trend will come up and your site will be left in the dust.

2. Competition Changes

Remember the old way we used to obtain music? Going to the store, shopping the aisles, finding the right genre, looking at shrink wrapped packages (On a side note, why do they have to make CD’s so hard to open? I wonder if a music exec has ever had to open one. I doubt it, else they’d realize how dumb that packaging is.), opening up the CD and popping it in to our CD players or portable Discman’s.

All of a sudden, out of nowhere, comes iTunes and revolutionizes how we listen to music. Now we can buy individual songs or entire albums with the click of a button. Music executives didn’t believe in iTunes or digital delivery, now they’re crying foul and wondering why they’re not selling any more CD’s.

The same can be applied to your website. Things could be going along just fine, then all of a sudden a new competitor arises. You can do one of two things: Prepare your business to tackle the opponent or sit there like a lame duck and blame others when thinss start to go wrong. I suggest the first option.

3. Google Changes

Google is a business baromter of sorts. They claim that the good stuff shows up first and the bad stuff is not displayed at all. Many web business live and die by the rankings given to them by Google.

If you currently just have one site for one product, then you’d better be prepared for a rocky road ahead. Google’s algorithm changes occasionally and if you are not prepared to take the hit, then you’ll be in trouble when changes head your way.

Google search rankings mean everything to some businesses, and unless you’re really good at obtaining one of the top spots, you’ll have to rely on luck and little else to make money online. Prepare yourself, make good websiteS and have a solid business plan to make you money for the long run

4. Stuff Happens

Another reason to have more than one income plan is that, in all honesty, things happen out there that are beyond your control. For example, if you had a site that was somehow making money selling Enron gear, the day they went out of business you too would have been out of business. If you sell health products and the FDA changes stance on them, you’d better be prepared to take a hit.

5. More is Better

If you’ve manage to stay out of trouble, either through luck or preparation, you should diversify your net portfolio because in all honesty, we’re in this for the money. More income streams = more earning potential. More earning potential = more money in the long run.

Prepare yourself, make GOOD QUALITY websites about your niche products, and stick to your guns. Always grow and learn in order to position yourself ahead of your competitors.

When it comes to launching a new website, there is nothing more frustrating to me than a lack of visitors.  I work hard on content and the creation of the site and to see a site receive little to no traffic feels like a slap to the face.  This site has been one of my better attempts at online marketing but I am nowhere near my goal of 250 visitors per day.

In the past, I have tried several things in order to bring in traffic to my websites and these strategies included, but were not limited to: writing articles for article repositories, placing links on directories, placing ads on Google with Adwords, telling my friends, putting out flyers, announcing the new site on web boards, and using social bookmarking sites like Technorati, Digg, Reddit, and Stumbleupon.

Out of all of those things, one has worked better than most of the other ones combined, and that is the use of social bookmarking websites.  The problem with the other methods (with the exception of Adwords) is that you get visitors who aren’t necessarily interested in your product or website.  They’ll visit your site because they see a catchy title or because they want to support a friend, or frankly, because they’re bored.  Since launching this site, a majority of my visitors have come from either Reddit or StumbleUpon.  These two sources have accounted for nearly 88% of my incoming traffic and have led to a few loyal (I hope) RSS subscribers.  These visitors actually have stayed on the site for a long enough time period to read a couple of articles and in my opinion, that’s a good visitor.

Reddit and StumbleUpon

Reddit and StumbeUpon are social bookmarking websites that drive traffic to a certain website as people vote for them.  The thing about relying on either of those sites is that only posting your site won’t immediately drive traffic to your site.  Sites only receive traffic if they’re voted on by other people and only the “popular” sites get a significant amount of traffic from their use.  I’m not sure exactly what makes a site popular because I’ve seen a lot of bad content reach the top of these two sites, but I think it has something to do with the ability to have others vote for your site for a small fee.  If you visit the forums at digitalpoint, you will be able to find people who are willing to vote for your site in exchange for a small fee.  I have yet to try this out as I think it’s cheating a little bit, but it may be worth a try to get your site over the tipping point once you have somewhat established yourself.  I don’t think that paying for votes is a good thing if your site is brand new, but if you already have a regular number of visitors to your site then gaining some paid momentum could be well worth the cost.

That being said, I will continue to write content that I think is good for my readers and good for my professional development.  I will keep sharing what I try to do online and hopefully we can all learn from my mistakes.  Thanks for visiting my site and vote for it if you like it! Don’t forget to sign up to my RSS feed too!