This Blog Is Gonna Get Ugly & I Need Your Help On It
Yes. I mean it. I love this blog, and that is why, I am making a conscious effort to make it ugly. I just stumbled across this post on Blogger2Blogger where Viraj describes this blog as missionary. Thanks Viraj. I couldn’t have thought of a better description.
Which brings me to the point… to run a mission, one needs funds. That is why you see all the ugly ads on the sidebar. Most of them are affiliate links and honestly, so far they haven’t helped us out that much. I will not remove all the affiliate ads, but their sizes are gonna get smaller. Project Wonderful stays as it is.
So, how is the site gonna get uglier? For one month, I will give away four 125×125 ad spots on my sidebar, for FREE. No catch, no money, no Entrecredits. Unlike your Entrecard widgets that stays for a day, your ad will get month-long visibility on this blog.
We are not the most visited blog on Entrecard by any stretch of imagination, but over the last two weeks, we have seen our Technorati rank go up by three times to what it was earlier. Same goes for our Alexa ranking.
I suspect Entrecard has got to play a role in this jump. So, as a big thank you to all Entrecarders, I will open these ad slots for free for a whole month.
How does this help our mission? Well, I will monitor the performances of these ads for a month, and then fix a price for each slot based on its performance.
Are you game for some free ad? If so, leave a comment on this post, and a message for me on Entrecard.
I only have one pre-requisite for this give away… You HAVE TO BE AN ENTRECARDER.
And before I finish… I really think you guys should try out the Crazy Egg heat maps to monitor the ads on your blogs. Don’t worry… this is not an affiliate link.

This post has 11 comments
February 7th, 2008
sure, I’m game! I have both ShopDogDiaries and DogzNCatz.com, so I’ll let you pick.
Heidi
February 7th, 2008
I love both your blogs, but I think DogzNCatz is a little more adorable. BTW, I did not know it was yours. Anyway, can you please send me the details of your ad so that I can put it up? Just send me a message on Entrecard.
February 7th, 2008
me
me
me
Pick me
February 7th, 2008
Oh! We’d love some ad space
We love animals
February 8th, 2008
OK. Sue, you’re picked
and Erica, you’re in too. The fourth slot goes to the Android Guy. I hope these ads bring you some traffic.
February 8th, 2008
I’m ready to make this thing as ugly as possible. Let’s go!
February 9th, 2008
Oh! I guess I’m too late! Well the best of luck to you, I love the idea
February 9th, 2008
@menopauseprincess…
I am glad you like the idea. And if I continue to give these slots away for free, for some more months, I will remember to ask you first.
February 11th, 2008
Hey,
Thanks for the mention – you’re doing a great job with Paws Awhile and I wish you all the best with it.
Your blog is pretty unique and we’d love to have a member like you on our forum (Blogger To Blogger) to share your experiences, and hopefully you’ll enjoy posting there and learn a bit from other members too!
Cheers!
February 13th, 2008
Viraj, thank you. I would definitely sign up to become a member of the forum.
April 9th, 2008
Alexa.com is a subsidiary of Amazon.com. It is a website which provides information on traffic levels for websites. The Alexa rank is measured according to the amount of users who’ve visited a website with the Alexa toolbar installed. Alexa toolbar is an application developed by Alexa Internet. Its primary use is to measure website statistics. This toolbar collects as well as gives some valuable information. Once you install it, the Alexa toolbar monitors all your surfing and collects information about what domains you visit. They use this data to rank web sites. The traffic rank they assign to websites is based on 3 months of aggregated historical traffic data from millions of other users and is a combined measure of page views and users. Webmasters, advertisers and ad networks use your blog’s Alexa rank as a gauge to determine the worth of a link on your website. If you depend on link or site selling as a form of monetization you’ll definitely want to increase your Alexa rank, because it’ll increase your bargaining power when it comes to ad pricing.