One of the good things about being part of the blogging community is that other bloggers tend to post things about new trends as they appear. Then they sort of propagate virally. Now one thing I have found that seems to pop up on every blog is new and better ways of getting traffic. This is almost as common as the get rich quick schemes that pop up.

 Well RSSHugger is another one of those sites promising to increase traffic. This is their spiel as to what they are about.

The Idea

rssHugger is a unique website that aims to bring bloggers and readers together. rssHugger aims to provide blog owners with a unique easy-to-use way to promote their blogs by sending them traffic, building backlinks for search engine optimization, as well as attracting new rss subscribers if the content is interesting to the reader. rssHugger aims to help visitors be able to easily find blogs that write about subjects they are interested in. These subjects include: internet marketing, making money online, charity, sports, gambling, and many more. If the visitors find a blog that they had not previously heard about, they can easily add it to their RSS readers or bookmark it.

 So it seems to be kind of like Stumble Upon but for RSS feeds. Now in order to get your blog listed you can pay a small fee or write a blog about them. Being cheap as I am I have opted for writing a blog about them. However it is kind of hard to review something that you have not yet tried. So I cannot make any reconmendations at this time. But I will keep you update.

 On another note EntreCard is still performing very well for me. Right now as I write this is will cost you 124 EC to advertise on this site, and there are currently spots open. Others who have had their card displayed on my site have reported to me that it has worked very well. So if you have an extra 124 EC buy some ad space here.

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 Well it seems from my posts on EntreCard, here and here. Most EntreCard users and users in general have not had much luck with BlogRush.

 Now it should be noted that unlike EntreCard, once you install the BlogRush code there is nothing more you have to do. With EntreCard, some user action is required. You have to place ads, approve ads, and drop a few cards at least. How ever the pay back from EntreCard is far greater. I have been receiving over 100 unique visitor’s from EntreCard a day now. That far out weighs the seven to ten I have been getting from Blog Rush. However I am not going to drop the ugly bulky BlogRush widget just yet. I have however moved it beneath the fold (a less prominent spot according to people who research ad placements).

 Eventually I will migrate the Blog Rush widget completely off the Tenacious Creations site. I am okay with spending 30 to 45 minutes a day promoting my blog with EntreCard. Yes it is more time than I would have to spend with Blog Rush (with Blog Rush I wouldn’t have to spend any) but I don’t look at it as unproductive time. Not only am I promoting my site but I am finding other interesting sites. Or at the very least interesting content. Plus I get the warm fuzzy feeling of participating in a Blogging community.

 I should also mention that I have become sort of an EntreCard evangelist. There are a few sites that I have found with BlogRush that I frequent that do not have EntreCard yet. I took it upon myself to drop them a note to try EntreCard. I hope they do, and if so it would be great if they could drop me a note here. I will be more than happy to write a recommendation of their sites for EntreCard.

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 Sometimes it seems as though the internet is full of thieves. When I first started my blog I noticed that my high resolution finished pictures were being stolen. That lead me to learn how to place an unobtrusive water mark into my images.

 Now it seems my posts are being stolen word for word and published to sites full of ads. I guess I should be flattered, that some one thinks my posts are worthy of stealing. But they don’t even include a link back to my site. If I even get the idea for one of my posts from another site I always make sure to credit that resource. I would ask people do the same for me.

 It turns out this is common practice out there in the big bad internet. They even have a term for it – Blog Scraping. Well I thought there was nothing I could do about it until I came across this post.

 I was all set to add some code to my site when I thought “Hey I should just make a plug in to do this.”. Thats when the light bulb went on, and I realized that there probably was a plug in already written for that. So I resolved that I would search first to see if there was a plug in out there already made. Well it just so happens that some one beat me to the punch in writing the plug in. If your running word press you should check out Joost de Valk’s SEO Blog to grab a plug in that inserts a link back to your site in your RSS feeds.

 I really don’t know what else one can do to prevent these Blog Scrapers from stealing your content. But if you know some better ways please tell me how in the comments.

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