With winter here and Christmas passed, it is time to get rid of the Christmas wallpaper and make our desktop white as snow. Here are 10 backgrounds all desktops can use.

I won’t be posting anything new today or tomorrow on Christmas, so here’s a small tip:

Take pictures of a cute dog and upload them to Flickr. Be sure to write in the description something relevant and leave a link to your site. Of course, hopefully the dog is doing something relevant to the site.

Happy holidays!

BlogRush is a “small” widget that runs on a blog pages. Each time the widget is loaded it contains 5 clickable headlines to another users’ posts. Clicking on any link opens a new browser window and loads the blog and th entire post. Users earn “syndication credits” based on how many times their blog is loaded with the BlogRush widget as well as with each time one of their referrals (users that signup through them) loads the widget. For each syndication credit one recent blog post will be served to another users widget.

What it looks like:

The Concept

The basic idea of BlogRush is great. Someone visits your site, then your widget is showed on someone else’s site based on how many times your widget is loaded. Someone clicks on your widget, someone then clicks on your headline. Sounds great, tons of free visitors and all you have to do is give up a little real-estate—and the traffic is well targeted since you choose what category your ads will display in.

The Realization

BlogRush was released September 15th with an incredible amount of support. Shoemoney, DoshDosh, John Chow, Problogger and others were quick to see what type of damage could be done with the widget. Within three days of launch, Shoemoney was credited with referring 600 bloggers, a great triumph for BlogRush and a quality launch.

The Aftermath

After its release BlogRush received criticism for giving too much traffic to the big guys and not enough to the small guys. The term pyramid scheme has been used countless times when referring to products like BlogRush (the guys at the top get everything while the small guys get nothing). Bloggers like Shoemoney, John Chow and Problogger have millions of unspent credits. Since BlogRush uses an ten-tiered referral system, for every person a blogger refers and any blogger that refers, ten times down the line, the original blogger receives syndication credits for the number of times the widget is shown.

So lets take Shoemoney’s BlogRush referrals for an example:
Shoemoney originally referred 600 people within three days. If say, 20 of those refer someone else, then 5 of those refer more, then one of those refer someone else. He is receiving credits for all referred within his referral tier. So instead of just gaining credits from his massive traffic amount, he is also gaining credits for 627 other people. And that is just three days worth.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Shoemoney did something I have yet to see any other big name guys do—give his credits away for free. Nonetheless, the point remains.

John Chow stated while on the Shoemoney Show how he had a great number of unused credits, several million. He said that around 1% CTR is what to expect in most cases. So lets low-ball it and say it was just 1,000,000. One-percent of one-million is still 10,000 visitors—a nice amount, even for John Chow.

The Recommendation

For most blogs, BlogRush is not the answer. A blog receiving 1000 page views per day is possibly getting 10 clicks, probably less depending on how well the title is written, where the BlogRush widget is placed on the blog showing the headline, the right BlogRush category, etc. And how many of those that click actually stay and read? Again, depending on how well the content is written or catch the eye, accidental clicks—a 40% readership is a fair number. So out of 1000 page views, 4 people will read the blog, given everything goes right. Still confident? Then BlogRush is for you. It is always worth a try.

For others with a large blog readership or those who can get referrals easily, BlogRush is a great choice. The more page views the more readers, the more referrals the more readers. It is quite simple really; well, if you write intelligent headlines it is.

Still want to join? Sign up through me.

The winner has been selected and announced.

Entrecard is a service that allows bloggers to gain credits in order to buy ad space on other sites. For more information and a review, see my post called Entrecard – Is it worth it?.

The Contest

From now until the end of the year I am offering the chance to win 1000 credits on Entrecard.

What can 1000 credits buy?
Currently, 3 days advertising on JohnChow.com, 8 days on impNERD.com, 35 days of featured status on Entrecard, 3 fast passes or 40 Entrecard stickers.

How to enter:
There are several ways to enter the impNERD Entrecard contest. One way is to write a short post on your blog mentioning this contest. The other way is to add impNERD.com to your Technorati favorites by clicking the green box in the top right corner. If you do both you will receive even more credits.

In order to enter the contest by blog post, you must have two links in the blog post, one linking to this post and the other linking to impNERD.com’s home page.

Here’s how the entres will be given:
1 entry for a Technorati favorite
3 entries for a blog post mentioning this contest and a link to impNERD.com

After writing the blog post or adding impNERD to your Technorati favorite, come back here and leave a comment using the email address you used to sign up with Entrecard. I will then verify your entry and add your entries to the contest.

The winner of this contest will be announced on January 1st within a seperate post.

Entrecard has made its rounds on the blogosphere, but how good is it? Over the past month I have been testing the advertising capabilities by gaining enough points to display my 125×125 Entrecard on several leading bloggers, most recently John Chow.com.

At first the overall experience of Entrecard seems overwhelming–dropping cards, finding others to advertise on within my limited budget. Nonetheless, once my widget began showing higher on the advertising board within my category (Computers and Internet) credits were much easier to come by–I didn’t have to drop 200 cards/day anymore to be able to purchase ads.

Back to the advertising, John Chow’s blog was by far the best in terms of gaining credits; although, that was all I received. Almost all visitors from his blog dropped a card, then left moments after. I received zero new RSS subscribers and 0 new comments from the visitors (although I did receive one $1 tip).

In terms of most comments, there wasn’t just one. Several smaller blogs like DigitalOrder, Elite by Design along with two fair sized blogs, Web Atlantis and KIWIPULSE.

As far as RSS subscriptions, there weren’t any, at least not directly.

My stats as of 12/20/07:

So the question still remains, is Entrecard worth it?

Yes and no. To me it is. But then again, I have nothing better to place in the adspace just yet. The visitors are great and the comments left were generally friendly and intellectual. It is a great way to meet new people and discover blogs.

As far as money goes, it probably isn’t. If you want to put a nice banner ad in its place, by all means go ahead.

Do you use Entrecard? If so, recommend me.