This weekly wrap-up post asks one crucial question for all you micro-bloggers — Is there a wrong way to use Twitter, Plurk, Pownce, and all the others? Can you actually alienate yourself from the masses? I have no hard and fast evidence. I know on Twitter there’s a collective of individuals I’m following who “would appreciate you going easy on the spam”. But there are others who quite frequently post links to their own blogs with the intro “Some spam:”.

Micro-blogging works great to network, find answers, build an online brand, and to keep in touch with many people at once. It doesn’t seem to work well when you don’t take the time to introduce yourself to those who follow you, or at least try to interact.

I must admit, I’m often times overwhelmed by Twitter. I’m following many of the top bloggers in the industry, from Mashable to Robert Scoble. These guys are all famous in their own right and quite successful. At times, I feel like what I have to contribute would be inane, so I shut up. Other times I try too hard.  I am who I am though, and my followers understand that. It’s not like they want to me to have all the answers, to be constantly funny, or anything. Most of them don’t even know me. Why not just be myself?

So the wrong way to use Twitter and other Micro-blogging services seems to be when we try to hard and overwhelm our followers. If I just be myself and try to interact with individuals, then 99% of the time I’ll experience a positive result. If I stay in the shadows and let the tweets fly by, then I’m only going to be a small pixelated square on someone’s friends list.

How Not To Start Micro-blogging

There is one other way to start out wrong. It’s poor form to simply start following a thousand people. I’ve seen at least two Twitter users add me this weekend who have less than ten followers, but they’re following over 500 people. That’s crazy! Stop it!

Twitter does have a follow limit of 2,000. Can you imagine 2,000 people in a room? I wouldn’t want to be holding a mic telling those 2,000 people about a great offer on dog food. Stay away from spam. Be yourself.

Other’s Explosions

This week I’ve read a lot of great articles on the web. It’s hard to keep track of everything, but I did want to push some link love to a few of my favorites.

Jamie at Blog2Life.net introduced a stat tracking service called Crazy Egg. The stats track clicks on your site and can show you how traffic responds to certain areas of your blog. I’m going to give the service a try to see where you’re all clicking. I’m watching!

It’s Write Now discussed how to create your own WordPress template, which can be highly valuable to many bloggers out there. A good series with clear instructions.

Write to Done wrote a post entitled Why You Must Blow Your Trumpet. A great article on how we need to take credit and push our own limits of ourselves.

That’s all for this week. I’ll be writing new Micro-blogging Olympics over the next few days. Stay tuned as I go for gold!

Weekly Implosion: Is there a Wrong Way to Use Micro-blogging Sites? from Jason Boom

I received the emailed announcement this morning, as all Entrecard members did, that the new toolbar has been released. Is this Sitehoppin? I went to the Entrecard post and read about the new toolbar. It sounded cool. I have a lot of toolbars installed in Firefox and wasn’t too thrilled to add another, but it’s Entrecard, so I made an exception.

The toolbar installed flawlessly, but only works in Firefox 2 and 3 (sorry, IE, Opera, Flock, and other browser fans). I now have the option to view new sites, with the ability to open ten or more at a time, buy ads directly from the site I’m visiting, ad sites to my favorites, brows different categories of blogs, give tips, recommendations, and much more all from my browser. Why did Buzz My Blog appear when I hit the play button with Newest selected? Oh, because I clicked newest blog under my favorites category. Needless to say it took a few minutes to get used to, but it gives me quick access to my profile, and even quicker access to blogs.

You can one click advertise from the toolbar. This means when you visit a site you’ll see the price of an ad listed to the far right in the toolbar. One click of this button and the advert goes into the queue. I tried it on a cheap site. So if I accidentally click the button, I then have to go to my ad queue and cancel the ad. I’m not sure how I feel about this. A second click to confirm might be nice. What do you think?

Verdict? I think it’s great. It might actually get me dropping regularly again. Was the announcement worth the wait? I think so, but who am I? (Sezwho?)

Week in Review

I’m back. I can’t believe I’ve been away this long. I took a vacation from blogging it seems. No reason, just working and getting things done in other areas. I missed this blog though, and all the readers. I can’t imagine selling. Can you? I think I’ve grown too attached to everything, the hours of piddling with the template, the logo, the branding, the thousands of EC drops to promote, the Project Wonderful ads, the comments, articles, all of it! So I’m back and in full effect. I’ll hopefully be doing a podcast soon too.

If you’re new to my site, I like to write about topics that can help bloggers, either to smile or to write on their blogs. I also post reviews of blogs, in my Powder Keg Review series. I’m going to do a review once a week for the month of August. If you want to be considered for the review, please leave a comment. It’s free. I’ll choose a different blog each week. No strings attached.

Explosions from around the Blogosphere

Aside from the awesome Entrecard announcement, there’s been of interesting things going on this week.

The Big Bald Blog continued his Advertising of Yesteryear series with an installment looking at Honda’s 1965 advertising campaign and their earlier You meet the nicest people on a Honda ad campaign. It’s a good read.

Dosh Dosh talked about the key to viral marketing being emotional engagement in a new article. On a side note, I just saw his new site design. Very simple and nice.

Other things happened during the week, like the Problogger site being banned from StumbleUpon. Did you write a fantastic post this week? I’ll be linking to quality writing and entertaining bits every Sunday, so feel free to drop a link in the comments or through Twitter.

Weekly Implosion: The New EntreBar (Toolbar) from Jason Boom

I have a lot of enthusiasm for the Internet. The sheer volume of things I can learn really sparks my interest. This is why I do all my work behind a computer, forsaking my eyes and back for an opportunity to learn and invest in website development and blogging. Is there a better way to live?

I’ve been dropping Entrecards this week, trying to softly launch a new website I started. I’m going to showcase the site later on this week, but I’m a little nervous. Here’s why. I thought of the site idea last February. The premise was to help bloggers gauge what’s wrong with their site. [site's trademark secrets removed] Alas, I’m too much of a newb with PHP and MySql to make the site work without spending thousands of dollars I don’t have. I went the more economical route.

I changed the idea, for now. The site is a Yahoo! Answers type site. It’s specifically setup for bloggers. You can ask questions, answer other peoples questions and earn points for doing it. The site is very infantile right now, but it is ready to use. To bootstrap its use, I’m offering 50 EC credits to the users who write the first 50 questions on the site. There’s a limit of five questions a day.

Visit RSS Cop.com – The Blogging Answer’s Site

So my question to you, readers. Do you like the site? What could be improved? Do you think you would use the site? Is it a waste of time? Let me know what you think in the comments section.

Weekly Implosion: My Latest Site from Jason Boom

It’s Memorial Day weekend. One of my favorite weekends in the whole year. Not simply because I have an extra day off from the office, but for its outdoor appeal. The weekend represents the start of summer, baseball, and the Indy 500.

I’m excited about blogging too. This week saw my resurgence, or my return from hibernation. I provided everyone with a look at a great upcoming blog and also discussed my Pagerank of 4. I have also seen my subscriber numbers increase from my previous highs. At one point this week, I crested the 100 subscriber mark.

Going Round the Track

I’ve had a minor dilemna recently. I seem to want to write about what I’ve already written. I come up with ideas and think, well I did that with this or that article. The experience has caused me to start writing three blog posts and then stop. It seems my ideas have come full circle. So I’ve decided to buckle up for the ride to see where my topics take me. Why not put a new spin on an old idea, right?

Upcoming Explosions

One of the three posts I’ve started will be called Blogging and Stand Up Comedy. Stay tuned for that this week. We’ll also get you all a chance to win some bucks for May, even though it’s late. I’ll post the contest tomorrow.

I’m looking for guest post opportunities as well. I need to up my traffic numbers. If you want to know how to lose traffic, just simply leave blogging for five weeks. The results won’t be what you want. I have a lot of work to do to get back where I was. Consistency is the key. I’ll keep you all updated on my progress. Until next time…

Weekly Implosion: Indy 500 Edition from Jason Boom

This week saw the most significant change in the Entrecard community to date. They altered the ad rate formula from counting drops as part of the equation to only counting demand for your ad space. The new systems seems to have kicked up a lot of dust.  Once all that settles, it appears to be a far superior method for calculating cost.

In a comment on the Entrecard forums, Phirate (the programmer behind Entrecard) states this:

The new system is simply better overall. You can still work hard and get your ad price to increase, but now the work you do on your blog counts just as much as the work you do on Entrecard – the value reflects not just the number of drops you’re likely to get, but the buyers assessment of how much your blog can help them as well. [Source: Entrecard Forums]

I would have to agree. When this whole change was implemented, I had 8 ads in my queue and my price was 512 ECs. Since the change I have had two people purchase ads on my site and today my price hovers at 128 ECs. When I look at Problogger’s ad space, I see his cost at 8,192 ECs. I see this as fair. At one point, my ad space cost more than Probloggers. This concern caused John Cow to stop Entrecard and irked other bloggers as well. Why not do it this way?

How Does it Work?

The new ad systems works well, giving users a way to earn currency and an actual marketplace dictated by peers. The economy will beat down smaller site’s ad prices and bolster ad costs on popular blogs. The new ad pricing post on Entrecard details the changes in a better way than I could.

To calculate your price at any given moment, just start at 2 credits, and double it for everyone waiting for an ad on your site. For example, if you have 5 people approved and stacked in the “On your widget” column of the dashboard, and 5 people waiting for approval, you would calculate 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2, or 2 to the power of 10, which eqauls 1024 credits. And then in 24 hours, when an ad has completed running, their price would go down to 512. If no one bought an ad that day, tomorrow it would go down to 256. And then if someone bought an ad for 256, the price would go back up to 512. [Source: Entrecard Blog Post]

I know this change turned a lot of people off to Entrecard. It’s still the great service it was before, but now it’s based in reality. I’m not going to pay a premium price for an ad spot simply because the owner of the site spent an hour each day dropping cards. That shouldn’t even factor into the equation. I for one am glad it’s been changed.

It was a shock at first. I must admit seeing ad prices into the stratosphere really tipped me off to the change. Now that it’s here — what do you think? Do you like it? Have you dropped Entrecard?

Weekly Explosions

It’s been another hectic week. I did manage to post twice this week. I am truly engaged by the amount of money blogs are selling for these days. The John Cow site sold the other day for 50K. He accomplished that in a meer 9 months or so. It was a truly unique site though. I tipped my hat to the sale earlier this week.

The other post focused on death and what should be done with our online lives. I think a lot of times we talk about our reputation online for career purposes, but we often times leave out the part about after we die. I don’t know much about what happens after death, but I’m fairly certain I can’t take Twitter with me. There has to be some way to help our loved ones out in that troubling times. It’s why I wrote the post. I’ll start talking about flowers and sunshine again soon. Promise.

Other’s Explosions

For those who know Arnold, his site ChalkisCheap has gone down forever. He hosted the recipro-drops community. We dropped on each other’s sites daily. His site was hacked and he decided he didn’t want to bring it back up again. I was sorry to see him go.

Yimto keyed me in on a new RSS day. The idea is to write about, tweet, and otherwise barrage your readers with information about RSS on May 1st — the official RSS day. Dailyblogtips.com came up with the idea and they’re asking everyone to help them get the word out. So here I am telling you. It’s like Arbor day without the trees.

Weekly Implosion: Entrecard Ad Rate Changes from Jason Boom

Before I jump into the statistics and the beaucoup dollars I made during March, I would like to address the frequency with which I post. As many of you know, I have a full time job, but I also have my own business that I run in the evenings from my home. I’m a freelance writer. The past month has seen my freelance writing jobs more than double. I suppose everyone wanted some explosive content!

So because I’ve been working at night more often, I’ve let the blog slide. Tim from The Money Kings asked in a comment why I’m not posting as often. I still have ideas, but have got to put the bacon in the fridge. I will be continuing this blog until infinity and beyond. You can expect two to three posts a week, including the weekly implosion, like this one.

So without further ado, I give you the March report.

March Traffic and Goals

March saw a great amount of traffic.

5,214 Visits
7,324 Pageviews

My goals for March were as follows:

1. Receive 200+ unique visits a day.
2. Increase my page views to over 10,000.
3. Increase time spent on site to average over 2 minutes. 
4. Network with other bloggers.
5. Guest post at least once.
6. Comment often on other blogs in my niche.
7. Raise exposure through Entrecard.
8. Increase RSS subscription numbers by 20.

I was right around 170 average visits a day. My biggest day was March 7th with 437 visits. The big pull for that day was my post entitled How to Write Well, Not Good. I made it to three quarters of the pageview goal. I’m not too disappointed about that, since I have a lot of content on my main page. My time spent on site average actually dropped. This could be due to not posting as frequently as well as Entrecard users dropping and flying. When I post, I usually see this number increase. Especially if I do a podcast, which I need to do again.

I continued to network with other bloggers, namely on Twitter. I even had the benefit of tweeting Problogger my best post title from March, which earned me a link off his blog. The Creating Stop Signs for Site Traffic post is listed at number nine, if you’re interested in looking.

I did do a guest post for Ben Barden.com early in the month. He asked me to write about BlogCatalog, which I think I did well enough.

I don’t think I did well enough with commenting. I was too busy to read a lot of blogs. I also had the flu this month, which did enable me to comment on neighboring blogs. It was either that or watch the Price is Right. I opted to read blogs.

I’ve continued to participate in Entrecard, although I think less than before. I drop maybe 75 – 100 cards a day.

The final measure of any blog’s worth — the RSS subscription numbers. I set a goal to go from 60 subscribers at the end of February to 80 subscribers by the end of March. I met my goal. I have 84 subscribers as of today.

Goals for April

1. Receive 200+ unique visits a day.
2. Increase my page views to over 10,000.
3. Increase time spent on site to average over 2 minutes. 
4. Network with other bloggers.
5. Guest post at least once.
6. Comment often on other blogs in my niche.
7. Raise exposure through Twitter and Entrecard.
8. Increase RSS subscription numbers to 100!

I took it easy on myself. Small steps on the journey. I hope to break 100 subscribers in April. It’ll happen!

Thanks to My Readers

I just want to take a minute to thank my readers. Stand up. Yes, you. Stand up and give yourself a hand. You’ve been wonderful. I couldn’t have done any of my goals for March without you.  

Ad Facts

I did make my first ad sale on the site. The sponsor On the Dot Designs should be visited by everyone. You can see their animated .gif in the sidebar. I should also mention I sold the ad through the Digital Folders network, so it does pay to join a blog network. I did nothing other than enjoy the benefits of the service.

Upcoming Explosions

I have one morbid topic in mind, which I’m debating whether or not to write. I’ve never seen any post topic discuss this. I’m going to keep the topic secret for obvious reasons, and hope that I can come to the right decision. The topic is only morbid, not the content. I’m not slagging anyone or anything like that. It may just not be enjoyable to read. More will be revealed.

I’m writing a new Powder Keg review as well. Can you believe its been so long since the last? I had the stop sign series which took me out of my rthym with the series. I’ll get back into it.

So March was great, but April should be fantastic!

Weekly Implosion: March in Review from Jason Boom

In my few months at Jason Boom dot com, I’ve seen more and more sites put on the auction block. One in particular this week, Blogging Experiment, went on the market and quickly sold. I understand people’s lives change, but should we sell our blogs?

I don’t think it’s a moral dilemma. It’s really not. It’s a personal choice. A blog belongs to the owner, not to the readers. And, if you look at your blog like a business, then you should treat it like one when considering buyouts. However, in some ways, it feels like a betrayal.

I can always unsubscribe, right?

How much of our blogging identity creates the blog? Can we shuffle in new owners and still capture the essence of a blog? I think it would change, maybe not drastically but it would change. How many can say they bought a house and left it exactly as the previous owners? You may hang new curtains, paint the walls, repair minor defects, or even change the floor plan. It’s rare to find a home you want to stay exactly the same. For this reason, I doubt a new owner would simply keep everything the same. At the very least, their writing will not line up with the original blog owner’s style. Worst case scenario: they over-monetize the site and reduce traffic. But they did pay for that right.

I’m not saying its wrong to sell your blog. I’m just wondering about the ethics behind it. Is this a business? Should I do a public offering and sell stock in Jason Boom dot com?

[poll=3]

March Contest Ending Soon!

We’ll be holding an April contest, but be sure you’ve entered into the March one first. It’s simple to enter. You can even write a comment on this post to gain an entry.

Other’s Explosive Content

I ran across this post through a link on Twitter. Loic Le Meur talks how decentralized he feels with all the social media sites. It’s something I’ve thought about as well.

Here’s a good Entrecard post. I saw a link to this through the Entrecard forums. It’s a good, quality read.

Gorilla Sushi posted an interesting study of Entrecard. He studied the Art category and drew correlations between the cost of an ad to the amount of traffic through Alexa. It’s a fascinating read.

Weekly Implosion: Sell Your Blog from Jason Boom

This week saw two new articles: Creating Stop Signs for Site Traffic and Keep Your Mouth Shut. They both brought in a lot of traffic, and created some exciting conversations among readers. I enjoyed reading and hearing everyone’s opinion on the Keep Your Mouth Shut article.

From the discussion, it’s safe to say most believe a blog should not veer too far off course. It could lead to ostracizing our readers. However, some feel it may be too stringent a rule. A rule that’s better left to those with large subscription rates and established blogs. I don’t think the topics dead by any means. I’m sure to revisit this topic from a different angle soon.

Others Writing about Jason Boom

I did receive some nice reviews this week. In particular, a blog entitled Small Fish Big Money did a write-up about my site. I’ll be returning the favor in the coming week, so be sure to look for a new Powder Keg Review.

My site also appeared in the Entrecard blog this week. The writer, Bruce Hollingdrake, wrote about my site in regards to his idea of simplicity and balance. I was grateful to have made the cut.

Upcoming Explosions

Now that my throat has cleared of any viral blockage, I’m fairly certain I’ll get a new podcast up this week. I also will be revisiting the stop signs series to include two new sites. I enjoyed doing the first installment, and believe its a valuable perspective for any site owner to read.

The site will also have another Powder Keg Review and maybe one other post in the coming week. I would love to hear what you want to read about, so if you have post ideas or any other comments regarding blogging and writing please let me know in the comments.

Other’s Explosions

Gyutae Park was accused of vote rigging on Sphinn this week. He’s been offering multiple ways to enter his huge contest, and a recent way was to sphinn an article of his. The article received hall of fame status on the site, but was pulled by an editor.

Si Philps is doing a podcast easter egg contest. You could win a Flickr pro account or one year web hosting. It’s worth a shot, right?

Jeff at Buzzmyblog did another installment of his Ask a Pro series. This one received remarks by Zac Johnson, Maki (DoshDosh), Shoemoney, and Darren Rowse. It’s a good read for sure.

Weekly Implosion: Usability and Topic Discussion from Jason Boom

For those who don’t know, today marks the end of the college basketball regular season, and the beginning of the tournament of all tournaments — the NCAA tourney. I’m hyped to say the least.

As many of you know, this week I’ve been down with the flu. I’m feeling better and hoping to get back up to form with more posts this coming week. I did post a few entries this week, and saw some success from them.

I now have 78 subscribers via RSS and my daily uniques have stayed steady.

Early in the week, I published my first guest post on BenBarden.com. I wrote it to give new users to BlogCatalog an idea of how to use the service. I really like some of the new features on the BlogCatalog site. I may go into more detail about those here. I think they’re relavent to many of my readers.

Contests, Contests, and More Contests

We randomly chose Rina, the author of AzrinaAznan.com as our February $100 prize winner. She a blog post about the contest, landing her 25 easy contest entries (entries 852-876) and the winning entry was 875. You still have time to enter the March contest for your chance to win $100. You can subscribe, comment, and post on your blog about the contest to enter.

It seems to be a week full of amazing contests. Winning the Web is hosting the Craziest Internet Marketing Contest with prizes well over $9,000 and growing everyday! You can win some seriously awesome prizes. Go check it out…

If you’re looking for another contest to enter, then you can head on over to Feed Flare, where you’ll find some downright awesome prizes. Really Simple Syndication (RSS) subscription, posting about the contest, and verifying your entry is all it takes to enter. They’re giving away $500 as the top prize. Now that’s a prize! I’m even offering a small banner ad as a prize. Be sure to check it out for your chance to win.

Other’s Explosions

I don’t have much for this week, but I think for any Selection Sunday post we need a tourney. BloggerNoob’s blogger tourney entertains and delights. Everyone should take a peak to see who’s dancing.

Weekly Implosion: Selection Sunday Edition from Jason Boom

This week has showed me the power of social media sites like StumbleUpon. Sure I knew my site could receive tremendous exposure through stumbling, but I didn’t realize how quickly it could happen, and just how quickly it could dissipate. My recent article Ten Reasons to Write Well Not Good received a lot of exposure on StumbleUpon in a short amount of time. It was like one of those summer rains — soaking the site, then soon the sun was back out drying up the traffic.

I’m not complaining about StumbleUpon traffic. I received quality stats during that flash flood. My bouncerate was extremely low. I’m happy with the overall effect. I want to know how to sustain it. Does StumbleUpon traffic stop by a thumbs down? Does anyone have an article?

Happenings this Week

This week I wrote the previously mentioned article, which received the most hits of the week. I also wrote the two part series on How to Podcast with Audacity and WordPress. I tried to name this article with a more SEO friendly title to see if it brought more organic traffic. So far its brought three visitors, who stayed over ten minutes a piece on the site. I’d say it pays to target your titles with specific keywords.

New Milestone! I’m not a RSS jockey, but I’ve been riding a fairly strong horse upward these past few weeks. I’ve surpassed 70 subscribers. If you haven’t subscribed, now’s your chance. It’s free.

Site Tweaks: I did add an ad above the Spottt widget. I think this ad relates to what a lot of my surfers have interest — making money with their blog. It’s Darren Rowse’s Six Figure Blogging course. You might want to check it out.

I’ve also added a Digg This button to each individual post page, below the article itself. I hope this encourages everyone to Digg their favorite Jason Boom posts from the past and in the future.

Guest Post I have been writing a guest post for a neighboring blog. I’ll update everyone next week when I’ve finished that post. It’s taking longer than expected.

Upcoming Explosions

This week should see the second episode of the Boombox podcast early in the week. I’ll also be writing about site traffic, nurturing killer ideas, and another top ten list. I’ll have a Powder Keg review thrown in there too, for those who enjoy the series.

Other’s Explosions

I’m really enjoying Stephan Miller’s blog of the same name. He discusses his adventures in making money online, his blog, and other ideas for productivity. He has a clear, distinct voice that carries his articles along swiftly. His recent article entitled Spread Your Feed details some finer details of an RSS feed, which I hadn’t even considered. This is why I love his blog. It’s taking things I know, and showing me them from a different angle. Good work, Stephan.

Andrew Pavelski is back this week with a new successful blogging article. His look at John Chow seems like a natural step for this new series. I can’t wait to see what next week brings. Andrew also had extremely well thought out posts during this week. Everyone should be reading his blog.

I also enjoyed The Blog Entrepeneur’s posts this week. His writing has definitely made me want to elevate my own posting style. Just take a look at this rant on Make Money Online blogs or this one about developing blogs that stand apart from the masses.

Weekly Implosion: StumbleUpon like Summer Rain from Jason Boom