In the spirit of mentioning top droppers for Entrecard, I have decided to do one post per month giving props to my fellow entrecard users who have consistantly dropped on me.
Here is a list of the top 20 bloggers who dropped on my Entrecard Site for the Month of September.

Thank you very much to everyone on the list, enjoy your linkback.
Great registry hacks
BMWF1Blog
Kutsara at Tinidor
IndoContest
chorva!
Here to Ask Why
Random Thoughts
Steven Video
info ebazaar blogging corner
Waycool Modz

-Dragon Blogger

I just learned something about wordpress that I didn’t know, many of you probably knew this feature but I just learned it tonight.  Did you know you can edit the date of your post and set it to the future, like tomorrow or next week.  When you publish your blog post with a future date, it won’t display and actually be available to your readers until that date.

This is the perfect way to write a whole bunch of posts and pre-date them if you will be on vacation, so that your blog updates with new posts every day without you having to do a darn thing while you are on vacation.  Of course you can’t write about current events for that day, but for a poetry blog, or philosophy or personal blog, you can create posts just so your blog doesn’t have a few days missing posts.

This was a really neat feature in my opinion.

You just click edit on the right of creating a new post, and change the date for any future date.

See Screenshot:

Now before you chafe me with “we knew that, how did you not know that?” Remember, I have only been blogging for about 37 days with wordpress, so I am still new and learning it.

So, I will turn this question into a Spark Contest.
How many of you bloggers alter your post date, to either past or future to either, what are some of the reasons for altering your post date? What benefits do you look for? (Besides trying to age your blog for pay sites).

-Dragon Blogger

Now that it is the last day of the month I will repost my goals I had set for Sep ‘08 and list my stats, earned money among other information.

• First here were my goals for September:

<1500 average weekly IZEARank
<1.5 million Alexa Rank average
50+ average visits per day
20 RSS Subscribers
10 backlinks from google

I have exceeded every one of these goals except the RSS Subscribers. At one point I was up to 12 subscribers, but that has dropped down to 7. I lost some subscribers due to me posting some paid content, and I talked about that in a previous post. It is hard to find a balance between providing good content and making some money from your blog as well. I try to keep 10% paid content, with 90% quality original content.

• Here are my specifics for the month:

My Weekly IzeaRank is 708
Here is snapshot

Alexa rank average is 626,765 this month:
Here is snapshot:

My average # of visits is 101 per day according to Google Analytics and 89 per day according to SocialSpark.
Here is snapshot of Google Analytics:

Backlinks I am referring to are only from blogsearch link: searches.
I have 10 links to http://dragonblogger.com
I have 26 links to http://www.dragonblogger.com
For a total of 36 backlinks for the month.

Link Popularity Check shows that i have 5,750 links on the web total, which is around 2,000 more than at the beginning of the month, I am closing fast on DamienRiley.com but still a long way away from postcardsfromthefunnyfarm’s 14,902 links.

Snapshot of LPC

I didn’t project or set a goal for income for my September as it was my blogs first month, but I did make some money from this blog and will report it below:

Google Adsense = $7.83
Social Spark = $6.00
PayU2Blog = $62.50

For a total of $76.33 for my blogs first month of operation.

So that is my blog’s performance for the month of September 2008, I am going to set some new goals for October and post them tomorrow.

I have considered numerous times over the past year on getting some sort of personal protection device for my wife. These include either some type of Mace pepper spray or a Taser. The reasons for this are completely logical, my wife for her business has to work to the late hours of the evening, and she often leaves her business and walks to her car alone after 10pm at night. Also for our production company we often visits venue’s and rock bands at clubs and bars until 2am, and leave these places to encounter drunks and rowdy sorts in the parking lots. I had a choice to get a weapons permit and carry it, but I don’t want to be responsible for killing someone honestly, so I think a Taser is the most logical choice.

I browsed PlanetMace.com’s website and found what would be the ideal personal protection device: The M18 Advanced Taser. This device shoots probes up to 15 feet that can penetrate and work right through any type of clothing including body vests and bullet proof vests. It comes with 2 cartridges and a carrying strap. Walking around with this device I would feel confident that my wife would be able to properly incapacitate her attacker, then use her cell phone to call for assistance or get to her car and drive away.

Here is picture of the M18 Advanced:

I myself would walk around and carry it, I would recommend anyone having one. My mother used to ride the subways in New York to work at very early morning hours and late afternoons, this was before Mayor Giuliani took office when New York was a much more dangerous place. I would have wished Taser’s existed back in the early 90’s so that she could carry one. I knew a friend who was robbed in NY for his walkman back in 1992, and had he had one back then he might have avoided such an incident.

You never can be too careful, Mace Spray is useful for close range, but I would prefer a Taser personally, one that fires probes, or even a close range one. That shock can penetrate clothing as well, and if someone comes up on you, you are better able to defend yourself with a personal range device than a ranged weapon.

Think about it, if you find yourself or your family spends some time after hours, why not have a personal security device just for piece of mind.

-Dragon Blogger

This episode was fantastic and left fans wanting more as Heroes does in each and every episode. The hour went by so fast I was hungry for a 2nd hour (The Season Premier Double Episode spoiled us). My Sequence of Events are a bit off, but here is the best I can recall. After the five minute recap which they do in every show to keep people informed on what was missed the show dove right into the scene where Angela Petrelli is standing over Sylar and recants that she is Sylars biological mother. Sylar is unsure what to make of this, but Angela tricks another company employee named Bridget who has the power when touching an object to see everyone who has ever come in contact with the object previously. This is a great tracking and hunting ability, and Sylar quickly steals this ability from the woman once Angela leaves the room.

We cut away to see Tracy sitting at her apartment freezing rose petals and quite confused as to who she is and how she has the ability that she does. Later in the episode Nathan visits her and still thinks she is Nikki, Tracy learns that Nikki lived in New Orleans and takes a flight down there to see Nikki in a casket. Remember Nikki [correction] Nikki was killed by the house explosion in the last episode of 2nd season not by the Shanti virus. Micah thinks Tracy looks so much like his mother, you think that Tracy is another personality, but after Micah hacks into records from all over the country, they both learn that Nikki and Tracy were born at the same hospital on the same day and at the same time. This confirms that Nikki and Tracy are two separate individuals it looks like twins or clones is a possible explanation at this point.

Peter is still trapped inside the body of the convict Jesse Murphy who escaped from Level 5, and all the inmates decide to rob a bank. They just enter the bank and unleash their powers on the inside. One man exhibits his ability to manipulate metal by shutting the banks blinds, the other with blue flames covers the room making everyone sprawl on the floor. Peter doesn’t play the disguise of the convict well enough and some of the convicts are starting to suspect him at this point.

Back at Company HQ, Angela who was expecting Mr. Bennett’s return introduces him to his new partner Sylar. Naturally HRG is disgusted to be paired with the person who attacked his daughter, even when Sylar says “She can’t be killed” he reluctantly agrees only to prevent Sylar from being unleashed into the world uncontained.

Hiro and Ando arrive at the theater they tracked Daphne too, only to find that when Daphne arrives neither Hiro nor his Nemesis are able to use their powers. The Haitian walks into the room with a briefcase and Hiro recognizes him from the future and that he has the ability to stop other people from using their powers. One funny scene just prior to the Haitian walking in is when Daphne says she doesn’t need to use her powers to defeat Hiro and Ando and calles him “Pikachu”

Claire decides to not go to school abandoning her effort to be normal, but after a disagreement between her Birth mother and her mother, Claire is instructed to go to school. Meredith Gordon meets Claire outside and decides to take Claire to play hooky from school. It would appear at first that Meredith has good intentions to help Claire learn to fight.

We cut back at the bank to see the magneto type villain has opened the vault and the police are lining up outside. Knox reveals he has called the police because he wants Mr. Bennett the man who put them away to show up so he can have payback. Why are villains so dumb, they have strength in numbers, and had they not isolated themselves into a bank vault, they would have had better odds. Knox senses fear in others, and somehow draws upon it to gain strength. He punches a fist sized whole through the Telekinetic guy killing him after being challenged. This reminds me of the old Japanese Anime flick “Fist of the North Star” where fists, fingers would pierce and rupture people.

The scene then cuts to Africa where Matt Parkman is walking with the man who can paint the future in similar fashion to Isaac Mendez. Matt learns that the African Man has been painting him since he was a boy. Every major event of Matt’s life is laid out on painted rock wall and surface and Matt sees a painting of himself holding a baby with a woman. He asks about why this hasn’t happened yet, and the African Man explains that the future is changed and that future wont happen. The man then goes into a painting trance for his next vision, one thing to note is the man uses his headphones and the Heroes Theme Song plays to enable him to enter is trance. Matt tries to interrupt him but only angers him as his eyes become pure white as did Isaac’s.

Cut back to the Theater where Hiro and Ando have tracked The Haitian to a silent movie playing. They sit in the back discussing what to do, when Daphne arrives and talks quite friendly to Ando. Ando has always had a weakness for the ladies, he got into trouble numerous times in the first season with Nikki and the Vegas Showgirl and alas Ando is following in his own footsteps. Hiro and Ando continue to operate as a team that is fracturing from the distrust and feelings of hardship, it is hard to watch their friendship crumble piece by piece in each episode. Hiro and Ando follow The Haitain to the projection room where The Haitian reveals he is taking the formula back to Angela Petrelli to keep it closer. Hiro and Ando decide to come up with a plan to get the formula.

Claire and Meredith are in a ship cargo container and Meredith tests Claire’s ability to survive, Claire is cocky at first realizing she can’t feel pain and can’t die, but Meredith uses a water-board like tactic to near suffocate Claire. This causes instincts for survival to kick in, and these survival instincts cause Claire to panic and fall apart, revealing what we already knew. She is still very much emotionally scarred by Sylars attack and she wants to be a Hero to try and get even with Sylar.

HRG and Sylar arrive on the bank scene to where Noah instructs Sylar to stay back and he will handle the situation. Sylar becomes quite persuasive with the police officers getting them to all fall back. Silver Tongue ability is what Mr. Bennett calls it, and still instructs Sylar to stand back.

Meanwhile inside the bank Peter is discovered as not being Jesse and is confronted and assaulted by the remaining inmates. He still professes his noble nature to not let them hurt anyone and they mock him for it. We see hostages being released and HRG is tied to a chair being punched by Knox. Jesse is standing back trying to instruct Knox not to do this and when Flint starts to attack Peter, Peter blasts a sonic attack from his mouth. This is the same type of ability that The Mailman Echo de Mille’s has from the Heroes Webisodes. His sonic blast incapacitates Flint and he releases another one against Knox, but HRG is hit a bit. Just as the blast hits the two, time freezes and the special effect of the time stop never ceases to amaze me about the show.

Future Peter arrives and literally pushes “present Peter” out of Jesse’s body. I think this is some weird example of the Phase ability, but not sure how this is accomplished. Future Peter explains to present Peter that the world is in danger, and he needs to do something. He time jumps himself and Peter into the future, but we don’t see the two of them again this episode.

Meanwhile HRG thinks Peter is still in Jesse’s body and thanks him for his help only to be kicked. Knox and Jesse are about to finish off HRG when Sylar arrives behind them. Using his telekinesis he stops Knox and does a Darth Vader style choke on Jesse. Just as Flint is about to blast Sylar off guard, HRG Shoots him and disables him without killing him. Just as HRG is hauling Flint off to prison and leaves the bank, Sylar shuts the door and it looks like he is about to attack Knox and Jesse. Knox manages to escape, but Jesse is held up against the plate glass door, and Sylar is about to sever his skull cap and unlock his power. HRG tries to explain to Sylar he can fight the urge to kill and take the powers, he does not have to do this, Sylar explains that he can’t help himself and the show cuts away from the scene as we see some of Jesse’s blood fly against the glass door.

Claire and Meredith are back home where Meredith is confronted by Sandra Bennet who is Claire’s mother even if not biological. They square off and I completely agree with Sandra’s point of view, Meredith is cruel and cares only for her own agenda. Meanwhile, we know Claire is going to run away and try to hunt villains, she stole her father’s company files and using a sleep away at a cheerleader friends house she leaves and gets in the car.

Tracy arrives at Dr. Zimmerman’s house who is the doctor who birthed Nikki and Tracy. She arrives at the door where at first the Doctor calls her by another name, but then realizes she is the one from Los Angeles. Tracy asks how he knows her, and Dr. Zimmerman reveals that he created her. I can’t help but compare this scene to the movie “Twins” with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito when they confront the doctor who engineered them.

Back in Africa, Matt after seeing a painting of him carrying a wounded or dead girl decides that he wants to change the future. The African Vision man decides to help him and after having him eat some unknown substance, he tries to help Matt go into a vision trance. Only after putting his headset on Matt’s head does Matt go into a trance where we start to see the world around him change. Though we don’t know what his visions are yet in this episode. I wonder if the Vision Man can allow others to see visions of the future as well, this could be where his power differs from Isaac Mendez.

Back at Level 5 we see Flint being locked up and its somewhat eluded to that Sylar did not kill Jesse after all by what he says to his mother. I was thrown, I was 90% sure that Sylar was going to do it. Sylar tells his mother that “She was wrong about him” and she says “We’ll See”, she has to be the most morally bankrupt character on the show. I have never seen a character more cold, evil, pessimistic and black hearted than Angela Petrelli. Literally chilling to watch and listen to talk to her own sons the way she does.

HRG talks to the Haitian where he reveals that he is only working with Sylar to learn his weakness so he can kill him.

The preview for the next episode look just as fantastic, with Sylar showing some odd light hearted and good natured behaviors, glimpses of the future, among others. I will post a preview tomorrow of next week’s episode.

This is my review of the episode, like I said it didn’t disappoint and I am hooked on this show like a fish on a line.

-Dragon Blogger

I own a Boston Terrier for the last 7 years and we have gone through many many pet accessories over the years. We typically shop at the big stores like Petco, PetSmart, Walmart you know the usual pet chains. But when shopping for dog supplies there is a website where you can find cheaper products and prices than most of the local chain stores.

Jefferspet.com, I only learned about it from this opportunity, but once I actually clicked on the link and explored the site I found some things I liked right away.

One of these is the category listing to the left of the page, so you can easily find what type of product you are looking for. But the best thing is the $0.99 and $2.00 items. I clicked and saw a wide array of products that fall in the 99 cents and $2.00 range. I was surprised, this alone is a good deal if you are looking for dog treats or toys.

Snapshot of Site:

This site isn’t just for dogs, you can buy cat products, ferret products, birds and even wild animals (They Sell Marmoset products if you can believe that).

So before you go out and spend $30 - $50 dollars in a local store on pet accessories, just browse the site and see if you can get a better deal online. The one thing I did notice is they don’t have dog food, only accessories and treats.

-Dragon Blogger

I have received numerous requests via email on how I have gotten my blog to under 1000 IzeaRank in only its first 35 days of existance.  I have to say that one of the biggest tools that I use to achieve this is Entrecard.  First of all, I want to say that though my visitors to my site are high, I have a high bounce rate of 84%, which means that if I were to stop using these social networks, I would lose 70% of my traffic within 3 or 4 days.  I don’t have sustainable traffic yet, it takes about 1-2 hours of upkeep per day to keep this much traffic coming into my blog at this point.  I still strive for blog sustainability and I only believe this will happen with time and high quality posts about topics readers want to read about.

Here is an overview of Entrecard.

First you have an entrecard account, I recommend an account for each and every one of your blogs, but you can link them all together (more on that a little later).

You create a 125×125 pixel ad for your blog, make sure you have your blog’s name or URL inside the 125×125 ad.  Having a picture with no blog name or URL makes it hard for people to know who you are or what your blog URL is.  You want this to stick in their mind even after they see and recognize your entrecard picture.

Once you create an account you will go into your dashboard as seen here:

The biggest thing to note about your dashboard are the following:

1. The amount of credits you have (this is your advertising credits, EC’s)
2. The amount of cards you dropped today / all time
3. The amount of credits it costs to advertise on your blog
4. The amount of cards dropped on you today / all time

• Entrecard Credits (ECs)

These are advertiser credits, like online dollars. Each site you want to display your entrecard on costs a certain amount of ECs per day. You purchase advertising in 24 hour chunks for a set # of ECs from a blog site.
The more popular a blog is (the more drops it receives) the more it costs to advertise on that blog.
You get 1 EC for each drop you perform on someones blog, and you also get 1 EC for each drop that is made on your blog. You also get ECs from advertisers who purchase spots on your blog, but these ECs are paid only when the advertisers AD is displayed not at time of purchase.

• Dropping Cards

Dropping cards is one of the best ways to get ECs as well as get your blog visited by other Entrecard users.  When you first start out and link a blog, you will use the “Campaign” button at the top and do a search for blogs related to your blogs topic.  If you write poetry, do searches for “Poem, Poetry, Writing”…etc and then visit each and every one of these blogs sites and drop on them.

Tip:  Hover over the little Entrecard of the Site and hold Control Key and then click on “Visit Site”.  This will open the site in a new Firefox or Google Chrome tab.  This allows you to mass open a bunch of sites at the same time, then flip to each of the taps with Control - Page Up or Control - Page Down, click the drop, then Control + W to close the tab.  This is a little trick which allows me to make dozens of drops very quickly.

Here is another note, look for sites that say “Drop For Life” or “Drop U Back”.  You know these people will almost always pay you back with a drop.  Secondly, look at blog post before you drop.  If you visit a blog that has a last post > 30 days ago, pretty much assume there is a good chance it is a less than active blog.  Drop if you like the topic but don’t necessarily expect a drop back.

I always try to read some of my dropper’s posts on their main page before dropping, and I comment where appropriate.  This is because even though they appreciate the drop, dropping and running will give the blog a high “Bounce Rate” and though they get the Unique Visits, it shows that their content isn’t keeping people on the site for a follow up click.

• Drops Inbox

After you have done many drops and you notice people start dropping on your site, go to your Drops Inbox as often as possible, at least daily.  Remember you can only drop once time per 24 hours, and if people are doing 2 drops on your blog but you are only returning 1, they aren’t inclined to keep dropping as often.  Entrecard requires a little bit of work, try to drop on all people who drop on you every day.  I set aside 1 hour per day to just perform entrecard drops and advertisements.

The funny thing is, when I was doing multiple Entrecard drops per day, I was losing track of which droppers I was returning the favor on.  I now use the “Show only people I haven’t dropped on” drop down menu, to show all the Entrecards of visitors who I haven’t dropped in the last 24 hours.  This way if you check your Entrecard several times a day, you know who is left to drop on for that day.

• Advertising

Okay here is the fun part, when you start off a new blog you need to advertise it, but you won’t have very many EC’s so you want to click on Campain, and click on Search, then Sort by Cheapest. But beware, many of the cheap blogs either are decomissioned or have never updated in months so they are cheap for a reason. New blogs sometimes don’t have a badge setup yet. Visit every site before you pay to advertise on the site, make sure the site is up, the site works, and doesn’t have content that conflicts with yours. Also visit their profile and see how often they accept or respond to advertisers, and note what their reject rate is.

When people advertise on your blog, visit their site first before just accepting.  Make sure its content is appropriate.  Secondly, reject some way off topic advertisers.  By doing some rejections, you actually make your blog more popular in the long run as you don’t look like you pander to just anyone.  But don’t reject too many or people won’t even try to advertise.

• Handling Multiple Blogs

This is one of my favorite parts about Entrecard is the ability to have multiple accounts and link all of the blogs together so you can switch back and forth between your Entrecard accounts.  You can only do 300 drops per day on one account, but if you have multiple accounts you can drop up to 600 cards per day.  I often try to get 300 drops per day, and I usually do at least 20-30 additional for my secondary blogs for about 400 drops per day.

The switch tab near your email at the top is very useful, this lets you see linked accounts and transfer ECs between your blogs so you can give your baby blogs more advertiser credits.  This also allows you to easily switch back and forth between your accounts, to check their dashboards for advertisers, and visit the drops inbox to return drop favors.

• Dragon Blogger Tips

Last but not least now I will explain how I use Entrecard.
I always drop everyone who drops on me, and if there wasn’t enough people dropping on me to fill up 300 drops, then I start campaign browsing. Honestly, I sometimes do Random searches, and drop on random people. I always give preference to bloggers who list “Drop U Back” or who list their Top Droppers on their blog, as these people tend to show more odds to return the favor. Secondly I drop on my advertisers, even if they aren’t in my drops inbox, because they advertised with me, I drop them. I also sometimes blog chain, and I can knock off lots of drops this way. This is when you visit a blogger’s site, and open the entrecard ad in their site to another site, then do the same over and over again. Dropping on each site as you go. This causes me to reach out to random blogs, but it also lets me see the blogs who really are advertising like crazy out there. When I see one blog having ten or twenty ads on other blogs I know they are heavily promoted.

I buy advertisments on expensive sites where I can, and cheap sites when I don’t have the credits for the big sites.  If I don’t have any ads running in the next 24 hours, I will sort my searches looking for blogs that have no ADs in the queue.  I try to have at least 3-4 ads running every day on someones blog somewhere.

I do visit the Statistics page and look at top droppers…etc and I will do a follow up blog on leveraging the Entrecard Analytics.

Happy Dropping my friends,

-Dragon Blogger