How To Buy EC Ad Properly

When you want to buy 125x125 ad spot via Entrecard network you need EC credits, first of all and those you can earn or exchange for $. Common practice is to browse users by choosing 'campaign' tab on your EC account dashboard. Next, you find proper category among many available like trends, computers and Internet, books, make money online etc. After this step, what you will choose depends on your credit balance (like in real life), but that's not all.

You should also first check what kind of blog is behind the offer you want to buy. Higher price doesn't always mean you will get more clicks. This should be more or less true, but it isn't, specially for lower prices. When you purchase an ad for 1024 or more credits, you can pretty much be sure you'll get your clicks, but if you buy 256 or less credits ad, beware. Check how many RSS readers blog has, some traffic proof or anything else similar.

This is the reason why I'll publish all my purchases and results. It should be a fair trade network. I would also like to see more of this reports on other blogs. In this way we can safeguard those who buy ads via Entrecard network.

Take a look at image above how I got most clicks from cheapest blog and just one click from blog where I paid 128 credits. That's what I'm talking about here. If you have published similar report on your blog let me know here or via twitter.

One Dream Came True

It is now over one full year since I wrote the post How to Save Planet Earth in 4 Days. Back than it was more of a marketing experiment, but with good intention and I really thought the idea is great. However I knew my blog can't reach greater audience and after a while I forgot about.

You can imagine my surprise when I saw my imaginary, idealistic fantasy actually came true! Only difference is switching off will last one hour and not 24 as I have imagined.

Project is called Vote Earth. It will occur this Saturday when over 1.000 cities in the world will switch off their lights for 60 minutes. Take a look at video which explains the reason for this world wide action.

I'm really excited to see how many people are concerned about global warming, specially those who can actually make a difference.

Be a part of history, make contribution and join the party!

7 new vector tutorials you don't wanna miss

1. Vector Build Methods


2. Create a Milk Bottle with a Funny Cow Label


3. Vector Tutorial: Creating a Realistic 3D Beverage Can


4. Using Offset Paths for Dynamic Lines


5. How to Illustrate a Malevolent Skull in 8 Steps


6. Drawing a Piano Keyboard


7. Use the power of Illustrator to create cool 3D infographics



Please share, digg, tweet or whatever. Thanks.

Positive changes are always needed

Hello all.

First of all there are some news from Entrecard, this week they announced opening an ad network available for everyone, which has some interesting implications. You will be able to sell your credits for cold hard cash. Others will be able to buy your widget space and if you don't want to accept some ad due to not appropriate content you will have to pay some credits as punishment!

They have also introduced 'above fold' rule, which means your widget must be somewhere on top of your home page, but only after that they changed this rule to 'first scroll screen' rule. In order to comply with this one I had to edit my layout and change sidebar elements position. In case they wanted to stay with above fold rule I would definitely remove Entrecard widget from my blog, since it isn't my greatest traffic source anyway, just a way to connect with people.

Another new sidebar element is NEW ARTICLES space. This is actually Triond feed widget that grabs my latest articles and displays titles and shortcats for easy access. This is great because no longer I will need to post short versions of articles to link them from here.

Last thing I wanted to tell you is how my Twitter account is getting wings lately with some new interesting followers. I'm trying to be as active as possible and provide some valuable infos there, so do join me.

Street Billboard Vector Image

This new vector image is something I needed to make fast, it was done in 10 minutes or so, but in the end I haven't used it where I planned. Instead, I decided to upload it on Fotolia, my favorite microstock photography agency and they accepted it very soon.

Street Billboard is forth vector image in portfolio, many more to come. I have two more coming and both are about advertisement.

Vector tutorials are OK, but I think better way to learn is to take photos of everyday things and make vector based on those photos. In this way you don't violate any copyright issues and every final creation is entirely yours.