I'm so glad you could stop by. This is my personal blog of daily life and my journey through life. You will find a strong emphasis on family and friends as well as finding my ancestors through genealogy. Unlike my other blogs this blog is more of a catch-all so any topic is fair game.
A little over a week ago I removed the entrecard widgets from all of my blogs and posted why I left entrecard on the 16th. The following day after a lot of prodding entrecard removed my cooking blog but refuses to remove my other blogs. In the meantime they spammed my email inbox with 14 messages saying they had removed my cooking blog. Realizing that entrecard was still sending my other blogs traffic even though the widgets had been removed I poked a little fun at them in the entrecard fiasco inviting Graham to enroll in the Behavioural Modification School for Candidates. Despite the humorous component of entrecard refusing to remove my blogs and continuing to send me traffic, many are dying to know what my life is like without entrecard?
I honestly have to say life without entrecard is so much better! I still visit the favourite blogs I discovered through entrecard. Commenting on their blogs allows me to keep in touch and that in itself has made for a much more enjoyable blogging experience. Please keep in mind that I forfeited 17, 463 credits or in perspective approximately 29 days or 145 hours (at 5 hr daily) of faithfully using the entrecard site daily so to Graham who says the credits are free I will tell you right now they are far from free. Earning these credits rob you of time that can be used for promoting your blog in more effective ways than mindless dropping cards. Earning credits also rob you of precious time from your family and friends as well as quality blogging time. Don't forget if you don't have quality content which really does mean quality blogging time then you will not retain traffic regardless of where that traffic comes from! At first I was concerned that I would see a drop in traffic and I would be lying if I said I didn't BUT what I also saw within the first 24 hours of removing the entrecard widgets was a good 10% decrease in bounce rate. Yes, my traffic decreased but those visiting were staying on my blogs longer. Essentially by eliminating the drop and run traffic from entrecard almost immediately resulted in a higher quality of traffic and that was across all five of my blogs. The next thing I noticed was an increase in comments and they were quality comments rather than the fly by thinly veiled spam comments. Finally I noticed something that I didn't think I would notice. I found I was all of a sudden excited about blogging again! I no longer saw that I had to do so many drops to drive traffic to my blogs. I saw that the traffic was going to come if I just kept blogging and that in itself was exciting. In hindsight Graham Langdon founder of entrecard did me a huge favour by inviting me to leave. I fully expect my blogs to have a considerably longer lifespan than entrecard. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that leaving entrecard has made my blogs stronger because the focus is now on blogging where it should be. This will be my last blog post on entrecard.
Entrecard has certainly created a huge fiasco for themselves. Bloggers throughout the blogosphere are either dropping entrecard entirely or taking a wait and see approach. Many are no longer accepting ads or advertising with some saying they will leave the widget on their blogs until entrecard removes them. Now I politely requested the deletion of my entrecard account but entrecard refused to delete all five blogs. That means four of my blogs are continuing to get free traffic from entrecard but entrecard is getting nothing from my blogs. Why? That's because I removed the widgets. I did not want to give them any chance of running inappropriate or offensive content on my blogs. If you are even remotely thinking of leaving entrecard manually remove the widget from your blog before requesting your account deletion. If you do not take this measure Graham will take his sweet time removing your blog from the system leaving your blog open to displaying inappropriate ads. This could cost you in terms of readers and subscribers. It could also cost you in terms of other advertisers pulling their ads due to in appropriate content. Unless you are going to babysit your blog 24/7 get the widget off if you are in this position.
Graham has displayed his immaturity and rudeness over and over again so I would like to invite him to look into the Behaviour Modification School for Candidates. This well respected Canadian training program will quickly change all of your bad habits, Graham. Smooches and thanks for the free traffic :)
I requested the removal of all of my blogs from the entrecard system on March 16 (why here). I received 14 messages from them saying Mom's Cafe Home Cooking had been removed. This was the principle account with all other blogs linked to it. Today I received a message that an advertisement was waiting for approval. How could that be when my account was supposed to be deleted. Searching I found that only my primary blog had been deleted but not the linked blogs. This is priceless!
My Journey http://entrecard.com/details/88967 Garden Gnome Wanderings http://entrecard.com/details/108591 Garden Gnome at Home http://entrecard.com/details/88999 Canadian Perspective http://entrecard.com/details/104909
Now this raises a few questions.Why were these blogs not deleted from entrecard's system as I requested? Could it be they left these blogs on their system to inflate how many blogs are actually in the system to attract paid advertisers? Does Graham not know how to use the delete key? Does he not care that members are still trying to buy adverts on my blogs and without my approval the ads will run in 10 days meaning that member paid for advertising that will not be shown because I have removed the widgets?
Here's what I think.These four blogs were intentionally left in the entrecard system to make it appear to advertisers that there are more blogs in the system then there actually are. This really is a last ditched effort for entrecard that has already been predicted not to work. Several well known bloggers have already written on why this is destined for failure including this well respected blogger. Graham has decided to run paid advertising on the entrecard widget 50% of the time which means objectionable and undesirable content can appear on a member's website causing them to lose readers and possible breaking the TOS of other advertising they may already have on their blog. In short he is seeing member's blogs as his personal advertising space to do with what he pleases. He is losing quite a few bloggers who weathered it through his last fiasco over banning a member for a Twitter comment about his hat. Now some blog hosts such as Today.com will not be able to use the entrecard widget which means a lot more blogs are going to be leaving.
Graham does not understand that entrecard only exists because of bloggers and bloggers can certainly take it down. Bloggers can blog about it and he can't censor as he is so very famous for. He can't even comment on blogs unless the blogger wants him to because he taught us bloggers what censorship was all about, a lesson that won't be forgotten any time soon. Graham does not care about members period and he has made that abundantly clear over and over with his actions on the entrecard forums, his relationship with employees and volunteers behind the scenes, and his moderators on the forum. He's rude, obnoxious and very,very immature. More importantly he is running scared right now because the end for entrecard is right around the corner. I for one am looking forward to entrecard's demise!
I am a wife, mother and grandma who enjoys the many aspects of homemaking. A variety of interests and hobbies combined with travel keep me active. They reflect the importance of family, friends, home and good food.
"I have called this principle, by which
each slight variation, if useful, is preserved,
by the term Natural Selection." —Charles Darwin from "The Origin of Species"
