Business Card Details

• Quantity: 250 Die Cut cards
• Dimensions: 2×3.5″ Rounded Corners, 2×2″ Rounded Corners, 1.75×3.5″ Rounded Corners, 2×3.5″ Leaf, 2×3.5 Rounded one corner, 2×3.5″ Half Circle Side, 2×3.5″ Oval, or 2.5″ Circle
• Material: 14pt Cardstock Gloss / Matte / High Gloss (UV), or 13pt Cardstock Uncoated
• Shipping: Free shipping, 6 Business Days Turnaround

If you need some inspiration for a card design, UPrinting has some examples of their custom business cards. Or if you’re not feeling creative, Graphic River sells cheap (but great looking) templates you could use.

How to Enter

All you have to do is leave a comment on this page and tell us what type of business cards you would order, and what you might use them for. (For example, I could get the 1.75×3.5″ ones with the rounded corners and print up some bookmarks advertising one of my blogs, and leave some of them in a place frequented by readers of awesome fantasy novels like The Way of Kings or The Lord of the Rings.)

Optional: Retweet this post or Like it on Facebook.

Terms and Conditions

• You must leave a valid email address in your comment. Otherwise we will have no way to contact you if you win. (Your email address will be shared with UPrinting at the end of the contest.)
• The giveaway is open only to U.S. residents 18 years of age or older.
• Winners of similar UPrinting giveaways in the past six months are ineligible.
• The giveaway ends on October 22nd at 12:00 AM EST.
• A response is required within one week of a notice to the winner, otherwise the prize will go to the next entrant.

FTC disclaimer: This giveaway is sponsored by UPrinting. No monetary compensation was given.

Update #1: Comments are closed. The results will be posted soon.

The post covers the early days of the (ye olde) Hotmail service, well before Microsoft acquired the startup company, back when it was spelled “HoTMaiL.”

Smith wrote it down. He wasn’t sure about the “hot” part, but given everything else this seemed the best candidate. Then he noticed it contained the letters “HTML,” the acronym for “HyperText Markup Language,” the lingua franca of web pages.

The article largely focuses on the early attempt at virally marketing a website, which you’ve probably seen at one time or another. Back in 1996, and for years later, emails sent through Hotmail would have a little advertisement appended to the end, a single line reading “PS: I love you. Get your free e-mail at Hotmail.” This was back when email was fairly new to the general public, and it helped make HoTMaiL one of the leading webmail providers.

“Wait a second guys, don’t you get it?” Draper asked. A tag line at the bottom of each message would act as free advertising. “I can send you an e-mail and you can send it to all your friends and they get it and they can sign up and send it to their friends and pretty soon it takes off.”

It’s definitely worth a read, especially if you’re into the arcane lore and histories of the internet.

Two winners will be chosen at random from those who comment before the deadline of March 15. (Midnight, EST.)

How to Enter

• Leave a comment on this post, from the form at the bottom, telling us why you want the business cards, and what you will use them for. Will you promote your website by tacking them up on bulletin boards? Will you carry them around with you at a convention or conference?
• Be sure to leave a valid email address so we can contact you and see that you receive the business cards.
• Optionally move to the United States or Canada if you don’t already live there. UPrinting will charge a shipping fee if you reside outside of either country.

The two winners will receive a thousand business cards apiece, printed on any of the available paper stocks. The winners will be chosen randomly and the winners notified by March 16th.

I’ve used UPrinting before, and they do great business cards. The colors were good, and the stock was of good quality. They were quick about making the cards up and sending them too.

So, what would you do with 1,000 business cards? Tell us, and you just might be able to carry out your plans…

Edit: And the winners are…

I assigned each entrant a number, based on the order of the comments, and used Random.org to pick the winners. Congratulations to

• Steven Clark
• Blaine Moore

Personally, I don’t think globally buying AdSense PPC ads is the way to start. You want to target your ads a bit better than that. I have a few suggestions to try if you want to get the most for your investment.

Search Ads

Want to get a leg-up over your competitors? Try advertising in Google results.

Now unless you have a lot of money, you probably won’t be able to afford premium placing, which is quite pricey apparently, but you could buy some keyword-targetted pay-per-click ads to the left of the results. Not everyone looks at the ads, but more than enough do.

StumbleUpon Ads

StumbleUpon can bring you a truckload of good-quality traffic ordinarily. If you have some money, you can advertise with StumbleUpon. Their “ads” are simply paid stumbles. You choose some targeting options, and then pay $0.05 for every visit sent to the page you wish to advertise.

What could be better than ads that take people directly to your website?

You can set how many visitors you want per day, from 100 to 5000, the interest groups you want to target, location, age, etc..

125×125 Ads

I am a big believer in 125×125 ads. The small banners are tasteful and unobtrusive, and often advertise things of interest. They’re images, so they do more for you branding-wise than text ads even if a person doesn’t click.

This option requires a bit more research, but can pay-off well if you find a good site to advertise on. Compare statistics and prices to find a good deal.

You can make deals via email or phone with websites that offer 125×125 ad space, if you wish to advertise on blogs that sell ads themselves, or you could go through BuySellAds, a network for quality banner advertising. You can browse through their marketplace and find pricing and statistics all in one place, then pay to advertise on the site(s) you chose.

Whether you use either method or both, try to find sites that fit into your budget price-wise, and have decent traffic statistics. Then put together a nice-looking ad creative with 125×125 pixel dimensions before buying.

Advertising can bring-in some extra traffic, gain you subscribers, and simply get your website “out there” for people to see.

You print-up some bookmarks branded with your site’s logo and domain name. (You can do this yourself with an inkjet printer and some card stock.) Make them funny/interesting/cool-looking, and put a prominent logo and URL on it.

Now, go to your local bookstores and public libraries, bringing a large stack of the ‘marks. Go through and find some books on the topic of your blog, and put the bookmarks inside the books, like you were reading the book and marked the spot. Now the next person to come along and check the book out, or purchase it in the case of a bookstore, will notice the free bookmark (people like free stuff) and possibly visit your site.

How is this targeted? You put the bookmarks in books that fit your blog’s topic, especially books you’ve read and recommend. It’s cheap, it’s unobtrusive, and it works pretty good.

I’ve mainly done this with business cards, though bookmarks work even better, as people are more likely to keep them, and reuse them while reading other books. In one such case, I put cards in all of the library’s copies of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince before the seventh and final Harry Potter book was released, advertising an HP site with a big “Prepare for the final book” legend, the card’s background being the upcoming book’s cover art. I’d planned to do bookmarks, but didn’t have the time to print them up.

Photo by austinevan.

1. SEO Maniacs – They’re obsessed with improving their PageRank, and driving up their rankings using any means possible. A.K.A. John Chow before Google caught-on.
2. The SEO Disinclined – The sort who just blog and ignore the SEO aspect.
3. The SEO Neutral – Serious bloggers who do a little SEO, but don’t focus on it that much.

No matter which group you fall into, consider implementing the following tips.

• Use h2 tags for your post titles – Search engines like heading tags; the lower numbered the better. Use h2 tags for post titles, and h3s for sections inside your posts.
• Make your post titles into links – On archive pages, and on permalink pages, make your post titles link to the permalink page. Think about it. You have an h2 tag, which search engines place a high value on, with keywords relevant to the post, enclosed in a link pointing to the post. If you’ve heard of Google Bombing before, then you’ll realize the significance of this fairly quick.
• Optimize Page Titles – Your title tag should contain more than just your blog’s name. It’s contents are valued greatly by most major search engines, and it’s a great place to throw-in some keywords. Try this format: “My Cool Post – TheBlog.” Your average post title probably has good keywords relevant to your post, right? For your index page, you want something like the name of your blog, and either your tagline or just a list of keywords that relate to your site.
• Change Your Permalink Structure – If you use WordPress, don’t use the default permalink style! Pick the best option for your purposes, and stick with it. The default ?p=37 permalinks will always redirect to the ones you specifically set.
• Optimize Post Slugs – Many blogging scripts, such as WordPress, offer a “Post Slug” feature that allows you to tweak the URL of the post. By default permalink URLs are somewhere along the lines of “/2008/02/01/name-of-post/.” Using the Post Slug function, you can change “name-of-post” to something better, SEO-wise. This is useful for times when your post title has a lot of extraneous words like “of”, “the”, and the like.
• Use Meta Tags – While meta tags don’t have as much value placed on them as they used to, there still is some, and it’s a good idea to use them.
• ALT and Link Your Logo – Make sure your logo links to your blog’s homepage. This is more of a usability thing than SEO advice, but it’s still a good idea. On a SEO note, make sure you use an “alt” tag on the image, adding something such as the blog’s name to it.

EntreCard

• You can “drop” it on another EC user’s widget. This means both you and the recipient get an EC credit, and your card is displayed in their EC Inbox. It’s like throwing a business card across a table to someone.
• You can advertise on a user’s widget. By clicking the “Advertise” link in the site’s profile, and paying the auto-adjusted price in EntreCredits, your ad will be submitted to the site owner for approval. If it is approved, your ad will be shown on their site for 24 hours.

As soon as I registered, I was flooded with advertising requests, as users saw the new, cheap, entry in the EC directory. Within two hours of being in the directory, my widget was booked for the next 15 days or so. The request rate has since settled down, but I still have a comfortable influx of ads.

So far, I have 203 credits (and growing fast). I’ve already bought a couple cheap ads, and I’m saving up for the 300+ credit price of an ad on ProBlogger.

The whole system works well, and is fairly easy to use, though there have been some server issues recently. (Only the EntreCard.com website has been affected though. The widgets still display fine.)

There are three widget sizes that should fit in most blog sidebars. There is a 127×138 one, a 200×127, and a 250×127. Here’s a screenshot of the “Get Code” page.

EntreCard is an interesting idea, and it nets you some free publicity. It would cost you over $500/month to buy an ad on ProBlogger, yet you can get an EntreCard ad there for a reasonable rate of 323 EC credit. So, I’d say it’s worth trying out.

A TopicCard is basically a business card, but instead of telling people about your business (or website), it tells them about a topic. You don’t even have to pay a printing house for your cards. If you have Photoshop and a printer, you can easily make your own business cards.

A TopicCard should ideally include

• Your logo
• The URL to your site
• A header explaining what the card is about (i.e. “What is RSS?”)
• A short text blurb explaining the general idea of the topic
• An URL pointing to a resource that teaches more about the topic. This could be a post on your blog, a category page, another website, or virtually anything on the web.

I used TinyURL for the “What is RSS?” card, as it was the first time I tried something like this (try fitting http://www.videojug.com/film/rss-in-plain-english on a 2-inch-wide piece of cardstock!). If you don’t want to use TinyURL, you can use your own redirection system if you prefer. You can either write your own PHP/MySQL/mod_rewrite system for redirection, or install a pre-made redirection script like Shorty. Shorty works great when it’s installed in a directory like “go,” so your redirects look like www.you.com/go/here.

I wrote my own redirection script, because I wanted more power than Shorty offers, and I like having absolute control of how my scripts work. Once my stock of “What is RSS?” cards is depleted, I’ll print new ones that use my custom redirect script instead. I’ll simply edit my PSD to have NTugo.com/go/rss/.

Once you’ve printed your cards, you just leave them on bulletin boards, hand them out to people, etc. Just carry a few with you wherever you go, and look for opportunities.

What can you make a TopicCard about? Search your blog’s archives for ideas. If you can’t find anything appropriate, write a new post.

Bonus Tip: Include an image related to the topic. You can see a small RSS icon on my “What is RSS?” card. Note that it looks cool if you put an image on a layer beneath the text, with the opacity lowered so the white background bleeds through.

It seems that Google has been “un-googlebombing” sites. Sure enough, all those famous Googlebombs have been altered. They claim that their intervention was not manual, but a change in their ranking algorithm.

Is it ethical though? Technically, the search results were that way because of genuine links. Despite their “Don’t be evil” motto, they’re tampering with the results. Should they be doing this? What do you think?

Personally, I think they have a responsibility, as the most widely-used search engine, to not fiddle with their algorithms for frivolously “fixing” things such as Googlebombs.