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Entrecard is a fantastic tool to drive traffic to your website, but one of the key components to making it work for you is to drop cards yourself.

One place that most people like to use for links to drop on is the inbox on their Entrecard dashboard. This is a strip running across the top of your dashboard, displaying the cards of the last 15 people to drop theirs on your site. Clicking each of these takes you to their Entrecard profile, where you can click through to their site and drop your card. This is called reciprocal dropping, and is a great way to boost your Entrecard traffic.

But there’s an easier way.

At the top of your Entrecard dashboard, there’s an invisible link. It’s located just above and to the right of the “t” in “On you widget”, below the RSS button.

Click it.

What this link leads to is a page displaying the cards of the last 99 people to drop on your site, and here’s the best part: these are all direct links, not links to Entrecard profiles!

 This helps in two ways; first, instead of having the last 15 droppers on your site displayed, you have one short of 100. The second (and most important) feature of this “hidden page” is this…it cuts the number of clicks to reach each site in half.

 This will speed things up for you quite a bit while reciprocal dropping. Couple this page with a Firefox addon like Snap Links, and you can do quite a bit of dropping in no time at all.

I was looking around today for a dedicated server between taking puffs of an inhaler and drinking liquid codeine for trench throat!

First and foremost when going shopping for a dedicated server my number one advice is to bring your wallet! It’s not going to come overly cheap an if it does come overly cheap… Be wary! I found some “Dedicated Servers” that were going for ~ $39.99 a month… No thank you.

Also when shopping for a host try and get one that has been around for a while and has a low alexa rank. You want one that is tied into the industry one that isn’t going anywhere. Imagine if your host suddenly went kaput… Personally I’d rather not imagine that.

I decided to buy one from The Planet Web Hosting. They also have an affiliate program so if you decide that you want to signup for a dedicated server. Send me a message signup under me and we’ll split the commission! In case you didn’t already know I love collaboration of any kind.

Here are the specs for the dedicated server:

R2G - Intel Pentium 4 Series 2.4+

Intel Pentium 4 2.4GHz+
Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Version 4
5 IP Addresses
10 Mbps Uplink
750 GB Bandwidth
1024 MB RAM
IDE
80GB Hard Drive
cPanel/WHM with Fantastico
R2G Provisioning Product

They also have a promotion going on where you get double the bandwidth; I don’t need it but I’m going to call them after this post to ensure I do get. (Why not!?) I bought the pre-made one because it also comes with cPanel which is something I need. The irony is the pre-made was perfect for me and cheaper then if I waited for a custom one! With the pre-made it should be ready in 1 hour. It’s been over an hour now and I haven’t gotten my login details but I’m not concerned. As long as I get it before tonight it’s all good in my opinion.

The only drawback about this from what I found was that I needed to pay on a credit card instead of paypal. Easier when most of your money is in paypal and in American. If I have to convert to Canadian then back to American… Definitely not the most efficient system! One easy way around this is to request a debit card from paypal which I’m doing now. Then I can put it on the card and away we go… I like to keep my work and play as separate as possible when it comes to finances for obvious reasons.

There you have it; we’re going dedicated it’s one of those problems you don’t mind having but also as mentioned yesterday is a big step. My one month hosting bill is equivalent to one year on the previous plan!

Are you on a dedicated server? If so where?

I made a post yesterday about how Entrecard and Project Wonderful combined equals a surge of traffic to your site. Yesterday I also had completed the first of hopefully many Facebook applications that will bear the Bloggeries trademark. I was going to announce it today but we’re getting timeouts all over the board so I’m currently chatting with a web host that came recommended to go dedicated server.

Going to a dedicated server is a bitter sweet experience. It’s a landmark for any site and that makes it sweet because you’re getting some serious traffic and strain on the server. The bitter part is that your hosting bill is quickly going to jump from $10-$20 a month to $100+! When I say $100+ it’s more like $135-$250 a month. I’m looking at a few plans and … What’s better to jump to 130 and do it right or try say one that is 80$ which is a huge step from where I was but still not “there”. Things I have to calculate are rate of growth; organic factors etc… Organic is important because once advertising campaigns stop etc… All that’s left is organic so it’s pretty important. Doesn’t make sense to buy for a traffic level + that won’t be kept for long term but at the same time I’d feel pretty stupid if I had to switch servers again in 3-5 months and I was loosing visitors due to time outs… Oh the dilemma.

Few Questions:

1) If you are currently using dedicated hosting please comment here with who you are using, what plan and how the tech support is. (Tech support is very important).

2) Think it’s better to just dive into a big boy or do a modest upgrade?

3) If you know anyone using a dedicated who talks highly of it and you can pay with paypal please let us know.

That’s about it for now; I wrote a 10 point marketing plan for the application so I can’t wait to release it. I am however mature enough to realize that many people who aren’t “attached to it” like myself or friends will likely try once. If they get a timeout bye bye so it’s worth delaying the launch for another few days. (trust me it’s killing me).

Since this is a “What I’m Doing” post… It’s been an interesting day for me here. I planned on writing a few bloggeries today but looks like I’ll just get one out! Spent the day in and out of pharmacies and clinics for a horrible chest infection that is circling my part of the world like the plague. I’m glad I wasn’t around in the middle ages because if I’m getting this now chances are I would of gotten the plague as well. Thanks to the inventor of penicillin!