For the last 2 weeks - nada. No clicks from the Adverts I had purchased from the Arts and Graphic Design Categories. Here are my stats:
8/9 = 31
8/10 = 13
8/11 = 15
8/12 = 11
8/13 = 1
8/14 = 8
8/15 = 12
8/16 = 0
8/17 = 4
8/18 = 7
8/19 = 2
8/20 = 1
8/21 = 2

Hmmmm, so its time to purchase from other Categories that would bring some decent traffic. But despite all this, my Alexa ranking is now 487,090!

Well, its been a month since I’ve been on Entrecard. My Alexa ranking has dropped from 7,105,243 on 7/17/08 to Today 8/12/08 - my ranking is at 857,778.

Again I want to acknowledge my Top Ten Droppers in the last 30 Days!

I’ve been very selective as to where to place my adverts on other blogs. At first, I only purchased from the ART category (funny how I got declined from some other Art blogs because of not being appropriate). Now I am shopping in the Graphic Design category. But maybe one day I’ll go free for all and shop at all categories. On the flip side - I am approving all placing ads on my blog.

This is my Entrecard 125×125 Widget. It has been almost a month since I’ve joined Entrecard (joined July 7th). My Alexa ranking jumped from 7,105,243 (on 7/17/08) to today at 1,055,925. My one week average is in the 200,000 (so far).

Blogging about Van Eno is difficult since I don’t have much content about this artist (that is why this site exist to network with other collectors). So I resort to blogging about myself and how I created this site, what I had for breakfast, my partner’s pet peeves - trivial mundane stuff. Being on Entrecard, I have come across similar posts and it is fascinating (and sometimes boring) to read about the person behind the blog. It is humorous to read about lunch at a local burger joint stories when the blog is about how to make money!

Well anyway, I want to acknowledge my current top ten droppers since I joined last month. Thank you All!

What is Entrecard? Well, it’s several things. It’s a blogger community, it’s a free advertising network and it’s a game.

Basically, I put a square 125×125 (or wider) widget on my blog. The widget has an ad of another Entrecard member’s site and a base button that other Entrecard members click to let you know they visited your site. This is called “dropping”. Now for every drop you do, you get EC’s - also known as Entrecard money. With the Entrecard money you can buy ad space on other people’s sites. You also get more EC’s when others “buy” an ad on your site via the widget. So for just a little time and clicking you can get some good ad exposure and traffic.

Now for the “game” part of it. You can “drop” up to 300 times per day. So the goal is to drop all 300 in one day. The more you drop the more others drop on you, the more drops on you the more popular you are. So it’s a little like a game to see how far and fast you can climb in the hierarchy.

However, after the novelty wears off - it is difficult to visit 300 sites a day, because you will probably stop and hang ’round on some of them. I mean in this community there is a blog about everything and anything. Interested in hating cats or pink stilletos or organic beer? Somebody on Entrecard is blogging about it. I mean, you can start dropping at 1pm and the next thing you know it’s 5pm! You do have a life, Right?

Within the membership of Entrecard - there are Statistics provided to you (see pic above).
It tells how many you’ve dropped per day.
How many other have dropped on your site.
How many people clicked on your widget advert from other sites?

And a table that shows your Top 10 Droppers in the last 30 days. Well since I only joined for 1 week, here is the list of my Top Ten (as of today Sun July 13, 2008). Thank you All!

This was the original homepage look of the website.

This website was created back in the Fall of 2006. At the time, I wanted the domain vaneno.com but it was unavailable (or being squatted). But as I thought about what this site would be - a dot net seemed more appropriate (and it was available). I first created this site using Microsoft Frontpage (screenshot picture above) - and I, being a newbie webdesigner basically learned the design by trial and error. I grabbed some clipart pictures that I found on the internet and a few animations (ie. gifs) and placed them on the site. Typed my story and Done! It was a raw site but I got it together. Got a cheap host (only paid $30 a year) to launch it onto the WWW.

After it was complete - I was proud of myself at the result. It wasn’t perfect but hey, it was a live website that I built all by myself. And of course, the purpose of this site was to introduce the world of this brilliant but unknown Artist from Key West.

Since the hosting plan I chose was cheap - it only supported a static site. Nothing dynamic can be done. No one can comment nor fill out a guestbook. I didn’t know anything about web scripting, asp, php nor cms. I didn’t even know what HTML was.

So now comes 2008 and had invested into a one year web design certification program - and bam, now I know what I want to do. With the help of Digital Realmz Consulting, I was able to convert this static site into a blog (using wordpress). Goodbye MS Frontpage - Hello Dreamweaver!

I still need to add and modify some plugins but overall, I am happy with this site. And in the last 2 years, few people had sent me photos and stories of their Van Enos. Happy to see there is an interest in this Artist.

I hope I have done good for the memory of Van Eno. His name and his art are immortalize in the WWW. I hope to network with other collectors and those who know him so that we can all share and know the Man and his Art.