Retro Yakking

Since it’s kind of an unofficial EntreCard butt-kissing day, I thought I’d share with you some of my thoughts on this relatively new blog publicity tool. A couple of months ago I suggested an EntreCard beginner’s strategy over at my other blog, but since I’m not really updating that these days I thought I’d post a follow-up here instead.

Relative success

Entrecard has brought me 3900 unique hits in January and 3700 so far in February. Well, it has been a shorter month - a few more days and no doubt that figure would have easily surpassed the January total.

This is due, in part, to my increased use of the advertising function in February. Since the end of December, I concentrated on dropping on other blogs to collect as many credits as possible with which to advertise, without really knowing exactly what I was going to do with them.

I came to the conclusion that an EntreCard credits contest would be a bit out of place on this blog, and I’m not really a fan of entering competitions in general: there is a low probability that any prosperity at all will result, and I’d rather be writing informative blog posts.

The strategy

So, when I came across a suggested advertising strategy at Turnip of Power, I thought I would put those credits to good use.

The beauty of this method, however, meant that I didn’t actually need to have many credits to spare to get started with it: credits earned from dropping 300 cards a day in addition to another 100 or so received from drops back would most likely have been sufficient. This makes it ideal for any level of user, even if you can’t always manage the 300 a day max.

I will not completely repeat the details of strategy in this post (you can read Turnip’s whole post here), but it basically involves making effective use of the 2EC blogs in combination with a few other advertising tips I’ve picked up along the way via experience:

• Don’t be afraid to buy the 2EC advertising slots. You may think these are useless, but if you buy up, say, forty (Cost: 80EC, not even a third of a day’s dropping), I’ll bet this will earn you at least fifteen reciprocal drops from blog owners and maybe a few advertising hits here and there if you’re lucky.
• Skim through the low cost blogs in the directory, ordering the cards by most popular. Look for and buy ones that have a high popularity rating compared to their price. For 4EC, 25+; 8 EC, 50+; 16EC, 100+; 32, 250+.
• And of course, regularly check for the newest blogs. EntreCard check and accept submissions in batches, meaning you may get about six or nine new blogs appearing within about 20 minutes of each other. If you can, snap these up at a cost of 2, 4 or 8EC - they’re more than worth the price if you can catch them cheap.

It’s worth repeating that the popularity rating given on the top right corner of the cards only represents how much coverage that blog is getting within the EntreCard network, when the actual popularity could be much higher, or even minimal outside EntreCard.

Statistics

As EntreCard members are prone to repeating, it’s all a numbers game. The graph above shows that, although the numbers fluctuate, there has been a gradual increase in advert clicks over the course of the month.

A nice side effect is that you get a few extra drops back, too. Since I began advertising extensively, I have found that the average number of drops on my blog per day has increased by a couple of hundred. This means an extra 200 points per day to spend on advertising, give away in blog contests, or whatever you like.

Wake up, Gordon! It’s time for another huge thank you to everyone who has dropped on Retro Yakking in the month of February. And that means all of you, not just the top droppers! Expect to receive your congratulatory letter through the post within five working days.*

*Retro Yakking cannot be held responsible for unmailed letters due to laziness on Harry Yack’s part. Aw crud, I was gonna blame Royal Mail… well, it’ll do. Time to go to the pub!

Top droppers

Ten of the biggest droppers on Retro Yakking this month:

• Mind Relaxing Ideas - 31
• Dunia soer - 31
• Rocket Scientist - 31
• my review - 31
• BetterSpines - 31
• Septagon Studios Inc News Blog - 31
• SkipRatt The Mountain Bike Enthusiast - 31
• Is a mans world - 31
• MakesYouLaugh - 30
• AddYours® - 30

Bonus! Top click-through blogs

This table lists the sites who provided the most clicks over the last 30 days via adverts I ran on their widget.

• Recombobulated - 93
• SEO and Internet marketing blog. - 48
• Everyday Life - 48
• HRM Advice - 29
• World Travel - 28
• Politicus US - 25
• Ode to Adrienne - 24
• Sedruola Maruska’s Yarn Obsession - 21
• The Stiletto Philosopher - 18
• Jigsaws Lair - 18

A quick reminder

Are you a British EntreCarder? Do you have a blog relating to British culture or anything to do with the UK in general? Join the British blogger droplist today for Brit blogging.

In days gone by, the travelling man had to navigate the Earth by his own devices, pinpointing his rough location by the position of the sun in the sky, often taking wild guesses that would lead to his death.

How far the human race has advanced since then: man no longer has to fear being eaten by a sea monster or wild elephant thanks to the technical magic of satellite mapping. The essential problem of getting from A to B remains, however, as most of the time even GPS systems have no bloomin’ idea what they’re harping on about.

So, instead of being killed by wild Barbarian hordes, man simply finds himself in Aberdeen when he wanted to go to Clacton. Stupid technology.

GPS Gold

Five places you may well be directed to by your Google GPS.

1. Somewhere, Cornwall, UK. Made famous by the question “are you going Somewhere for your holidays this year?”

2. Somewhere Else, Fife, UK. If Somewhere isn’t good enough, why not go Somewhere Else?

3. Nowhere, Cheshire, UK. You may say: “surely this is somewhere?” Well, we’ve already been there and it sucks.

4. Gordon Bennett, Kent, UK. Aha, so that’s where he lives…

5. And finally, My House, Tamil Nadu, India. It isn’t really my house, so Google gets it wrong again! Incidentally, why would you publicise your house location like that?

So there we have it

Google GPS is good at finding places you don’t want to go. Take it from me, you’re better off using public transport.

And so, before you know it, another month of fishy gags, weak sarcasm and comma splicing draws to a close.

But February on Retro Yakking shall go out with a bang rather than a whimper as I present to you an obligatory and oh-so-original list of funny and bizarre searches that brought visitors to this very place. It is proof, to me at least, that among the thousands of you that pass by each month, a number are just as crazy as I am. Yehee!

Ladies and gentlemen, I welcome you to this edition of Ask the Yak. Each question you see here is derived from a search term used to reach Retro Yakking in the past couple of months.

So who’s up first?

• Prove people with alien hand syndrome is not crazy - I can’t, unfortunately. Contrary to popular belief, I am a small-time bandwidth thief, not a doctor.
• How are funny facts educational? Short answer - they aren’t. If you want educational, I suggest you try Illogicopedia. Is this supposed to be some sort of sarcastic jibe?
• What happens if I melt pennies to recover the copper? Well, the cops come round and bust you immediately, such is Big Brother’s reach these days. It’s also illegal, dontcha know.
• Can you refuse a 1p coin? You can, but I recommend taking it then throwing it back at the supermarket till worker. It’s much more fun.
• Interesting facts about post it notes? You can stick ‘em to things and write on them, I suppose. Most of the time they are orange but they can come in a variety of flavours, including purple.
• How to destroy a hard drive vinegar? Er, use kitchen towels. Lots of them. And a bloomin’ huge mallet.
• Is my golf club damaged? If you hit people over the head with it then yes, it most likely is damaged.

DVD Bonus material - more weird searches

• Alien disclosure bookmakers - the bookies have disclosed the fact that aliens are out there! Maybe.
• The fun side of Bill Gates - I’ll bet this search returned minimal results.
• Wikipedia squirrel living speach - still can’t quite decipher this one. Answers on a postcard to the usual address!
• Enter search keywords here…

Do you have a question you’d like the Yak to answer?

Write it on the back of a cornflakes packet and email it to: hindleyite at blueyonder dot co dot uk, or simply drop me a comment.

Oooh, look! Once more, it’s time for a shout out to all my readers in Internetland. As you know, the Yak values you all more than Tesco Value Lemonade, Uncle Joe’s Mint Balls and lobbies put together (all in one pan). Subsequently, I would like to reward you all with an imaginary Nutri Grain: flavour of your choice!

Thanks to you, the humble reader, Retro Yakking is beginning to cause ripples in the fabric of the web, touching four corners of the earth with its informative and not-at-all infantile news reports and features. As a result, this very blog has been the subject of attention at a few other websites you may or may not know about.

Get on with it, you smelly northern halfwit

Methinks this is an apt point at which to unveil another set of Retro Yakking Tesco Value Diet Lemonade Award (gasp!) winners.

• Exaggeration is a useful skill to learn when attempting to achieve anything in the creative business. In general, people are drawn to over-the-top comments that draw discussion rather than subtle, dry humour similar to that peddled by a certain yak. One thing’s for certain, Larry at the aptly named Exaggerator blog can never be deemed guilty of erring on the subtle. In recent times, I have been enjoying his thorough examination of spam emails and growing collection of lolcat images.
• Collecting funny and interesting stuff from the Internet is the precise function the weblog was created for. G. Samuel Blog will be pleased to see his invention being put to good use by Melissan, proprietor of what I would call a proper blog in Why Be Normal. A mixture of personal thoughts, rants, and images you may find noteworthy, this site is an effective extension of Melissan’s character. Good show.
• Continuing along a similar theme, Matt Stratton’s Good Old Rock has the same kind of feel about it, but with a more technical edge. The blog is not only a reflection of your life, but a way to live it also - this really comes across in Matt’s blog, which is both helpful and informative in equal measure. There’s even the odd quirky post about unicorns thrown in here and there…
• When I am old, I want to spend all my time sat on the front doorstep shouting at passing vehicles. No surprise, then, that I like Crotchety Old Man, which I recommend if only for the wonderfully competitive caption competitions. In some ways, I’m a lot like a grumpy old man before my time, complaining about anything and everything.