two months on entrecard...

... and what an interesting ride it's been!

Firstly, a big *hello!* to Monique: I remember hers was one of the first drops (and ad requests) I received, and I was like wow, if all the blogs I come across are like hers, I am set! I have really enjoyed her posts, which can vary from funny to deadly serious, but always with that pleasant easygoing style. She also happened to be my top dropper for my first month on board (that would be for September, if you were wondering. Yes I'm two months behind. I am nothing if not a major procrastinator, LoL!). Thanks Monique!


As I mentioned two months ago, I joined Entrecard in order to find more bloggers and blogs to read. Yeah, as if my blogroll isn't long enough, right? I already separated some out into "famous folk", "we've met" and the mouthful that is "socio-politico-religio commentary" in order to keep them manageable, and that's barely helping. And now on top of that I'm adding about 300 blogs to visit a day? Ummmm yeaahhhh... so now's the time to wave to my "regular" reads and say "I've not forgotten y'all!! I still do visit, but maybe weekly! Don't give up on me, aight?" *grin!*

Sometimes the "must drop 300 cards" monkey on my back rears its ugly head and I get caught up in quantity vs quality. But usually I'm good about it. "Drop and run" is not my modus operandi: I usually stop and read new posts. I do try to leave a comment if I have something to say/add to the particular topic ... but most importantly I've learned not to kill myself trying to get in my 300 drops a day, as you can see from this chart :)


If nothing else, surfing through the wide breadth of blogs within the Entrecard system has opened my eyes to communities I otherwise would probably not have discovered on my own, such as:

> homeschooling parents & kids
> Filipina (Pinay?) wives in the U.S.
> political blogs so red I swear my monitor started to bleed
> proudly christian bloggers
> cat blogs, both written by owners about their pets, or by the cats themselves :D
> all those food blogs omg omg omg LoL!

... and of course, blogs that are trying to make money with paid posts, with some "real" posts added in once in a while... I swear, the first few days I was exploring Entrecard, I didn't understand why so many blogs had the exact same article and photo (I think it was the free Obama bumper sticker one)... then when I saw wave after wave of similar articles all over, it finally dawned on me.. okay okay so I'm a little slow to catch on... then again, up until then the blogs I read were by bloggers who blogged for the joy of blogging, not for the money making paid posts! Sure some would have ads in the sidebar,,, but they didn't do the paid posts. Heck, I actually dropped a blogger from my blogroll a few years ago once she started with paid posts because I felt I was being used, and that I couldn't trust was she was typing was for real or for money, y'know? Sigh. And now I'm wading through a lot of these posts every day. There was one who totally disgusted me by talking about a tragic loss of a colleague's son then suddenly speculating that if they had known about this service that harvests stem cells from menstrual blood maybe it might have helped. Congrats, a paid post that turned me right off!

I'm considering not "rewarding" such blogs with my card drops, if a paid post is the latest post when I stop by. Considering. Because it wastes my time more than theirs. The jury is still out. If you have an opinion on this, please share, I'd be happy to hear it :)


As mentioned earlier, I didn't do anything at the close of my first month on Entrecard, but I'd like to take a moment to give some linky love to this month's folks who seem to like what they see here (or, like that my widget is easily accessible! ... for those who do the drop and run thing lah, that's not all of you, okay?)

Life After Work's Top EC Droppers (as at 9:40pm 31 October 2008):

spirituality and self help (31)
MJG's Rambling Thoughts (31)
Symphony of Love (29)
The Power Of Three (28)
Computer Aid (28)
Lofty Matters (28)
Earn Blogger (28)
NEWSVIDS (27)
The Way I See It (27)
Is 8 Enough? (27)

Of the above, if you were to go visit just one, give The Way I See It a try - I really enjoy the thoughts and stories shared; perhaps you will too.

And while I'm at it, here's another EC shout-out: this time to a fellow Malaysian I first knew as "The Fool" from "Fool on the Hill", which then changed to "Windmill on the Hill" when he shut down and merged his other blog "Windmill of my Mind". He writes a lot of technology-related stuff, but has enough social commentary and other topics that had me dropping by with a comment or three every other visit or so, such that he gave me an award (which unfortunately is on the now-defunct blog, waaaaaaahhhh he said such nice things about me too!!) a few weeks ago. So go say hi to him too, k?

I'd also like to tip my hat to the sites that pointed a whole bunch of folk my way, based on the number of clicks my widget got on their site:

slightlydrunk.com 108
Windmill of my Mind / WindMill on the hill 58 + 32 = 90
On The Bricks 64
Confessions of a Fitness Diva 49

All righty then! That's linky overload!!

Y'all have a good weekend, and for those who celebrate it, I wish you a safe Samhain.

Ciao!


[p/s - this is post # 922. I should start slowly planning on what to do when I hit the one kay mark, eh? Then again, that probably won't be for another 5 months or so. But stay tuned anyway, LoL!]