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I like to have fun from time to time and give away free things like money, so here is your shot.

$100 and two copies of the Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss up for grabs.

Click here to go to the CONTEST PAGE.

I like to throw in a funny post every now and then to end the workweek on a good note. I stumbled upon this prank gone bad on Youtube and thought you would enjoy.

As for the whatnot. Jason over at Blogtomic.com interviewed me about blogging and life, you might enjoy learning a little more about myself and my motivations for blogging. You can find the interview here. Also Ty from Ty’s Blog posted his first video blog post today and I think you might like it. You should head over and check it out.

State Convention

What a week and weekend it has been here in Fargo, ND. Leading up to this weekend I have been preparing and helping to organize with the state convention for the Republican Party. This is my first election cycle involvement apart from marking a ballot with a check. The primary purpose of my involvement wasn’t due to my love of the Republican Party but rather to promote and represent the Ron Paul campaign. I am happy to report that Ron Paul will be receiving 11 of the 23 delegates up for grabs at the National Convention this September in St. Paul, MN.

End of the Month

With the end of the month being tomorrow I will be posting the final stats and accomplishments for March on April Fools Day :). I will say that I have accomplished way more than I ever though possible for my first month of blogging.

A great April Fools Day prank

Here is an awesome prank and maybe a last minute idea any of you who don’t have a prank already lined up.

It is possible to achieve great traffic from Entrecard, and the best part is, it’s free. Okay, it is free if you feel like building networks and dropping Entrecards yourself, otherwise it will cost you a few bucks. What am I getting at here? I have been performing a little unofficial test on the best way to spend Entrecard credits for advertising on blogs. Of course, you could choose to spend all your credits on stumbles, Digg, or in the Entrecard shop or forum and could very well achieve more traffic. I am talking about using Entrecard for the core it was designed for, advertising on blogs.

The most beautiful part of the Entrecard model is the ability to advertise on other blogs for free and with little time invested. Dropping Entrecards and earning credits has become an art, and many people are becoming highly efficient at it, taking only 25-30 minutes to drop all 300 cards. For those who don’t know, you are limited to the number of “drops” you can do a day in order to keep ad-price stability in the system.

The number one goal when advertising on other people’s blogs is to receive the highest number of return clicks for the amount of credits spent. On the statistics page of the Entrecard account, there is a section that tells you how many credits it costs you to receive one click. The best possible result is to have return clicks to your blog cost less than 1 credit. None of my top ten returns cost me more than .9 credits per click. This means I am getting more than 1 visitor per credit to my blog. If I am able to do that with all 300 credits I can collect in one day, I could possibly have 300-400 visitors to my blog for 25 minutes of work. I don’t know about you, but this seems like a really good idea worth perfecting. If you get really lazy, you could buy the credits you spend and save even more time.

How do I select what blogs to post my advert on?

The secret is to select a blog that will provide you with more than one visitor per credit. Most of the blogs that will provide you more than one visit per credit are blogs with low advertising costs. I rarely advertise on a blog that costs more than 30 credits unless I know or really like the blog. If I want to advertise on blogs using 300 credits per day, those credits will go further if I advertise on blogs that cost between 2-30 credits. On average, 300 credits will allow me to advertise on 20-40 different blogs a day. Advertising on this number of blogs each day leads to some interesting results, mostly positive.

How do I pick the blogs?

When you go to the campaign tab on Entrecard, one of the options is to select “unseen” blogs, or blogs that you have not visited recently. I find all the blogs under 30 credits and advertise on all of them. Then I hit refresh and repeat the process until all my credits are gone. I do encounter some rejections advertising like this, but I get the credits back and typically if someone rejects my advert, he or she visited my blog, and I got one free visitor ;). I think you are beginning to see the logic I am diving into. The idea in the stock market is to buy low and sell high. The same applies to Entrecard. An advert that costs you 2-4 credits to advertise on really has no way to go but up. When its advertising price goes up, more people are visiting the blog and therefore you end up with more than one visitor per credit spent.

In the Entrecard community, it is better to be on 50 blog in a day than two. For the same cost as advertising on some of the top blogs for a day, you could advertise on 20 smaller blogs and receive a better ROI (return on investment). I have never received as good of ratio advertising on the higher priced blogs than I have the lower cost blogs. Take this marketing idea and run with it. You’ll thank me later.

1. Gas stations contain lots of flammable material that will in fact catch fire and burn.
2. It is possible to get severely burned yourself.
3. In a small town, news travels fast, especially when there is a town siren.
4. It takes time for the volunteer fire department to reach the fire, but first they drive past the fire to pick up their trucks to put the fire out.
5. The pumps will stop working until they are reset, adding to the embarrassment as people you know try to fill up.
6. The emergency shut-off switch is never in the spot you think it is when you need to find it the most, or it’s behind the ice freezer.
7. Having to admit you thought it was a great idea to flick a lighter you found on the ground earlier that day while pumping gas.
8. Considering running away from the fire in order not to get blown up while innocent bystanders look on.
9. Washing the car for the second time that day in order to clean off fire retardant from the extinguisher.
10. Telling your grandparents coming to town that you almost blew up the car they gave your mom.

In fact, all of the above is true and happened just like that. I was about 14 and made a bad choice at the wrong time. Fortunately for me, the car was spared and had just a little burnt rubber around the gas cap. The gas station was also spared and never did blow up. I did start to run and got about 3 steps away before I decided to find the shut-off switch, which I never did find. I eventually ran inside and yelled at the attendant to shut off the pumps. At that time, someone who saw what was going on put the fire out with a fire extinguisher. The moral of the story is to listen to the warning signs at the gas station so the same doesn’t happen to you. My poor mom and the things she had to deal with. Now it is a look into my past and a funny story to tell. Not many people I know can say they caught a gas station on fire and lived to tell about it.

Note: I did not get burned at all, and the picture shown is not the gas station I caught on fire.