Have you ever tried using Yahoo Answers? To be honest, it can be a tough place to get a real, helpful answer when you need one. It’s full of people with the following tendancies:

• Strongly oppinionated but dont’ know anything about the actual topic
• Don’t read the question so don’t give you a useful answer
• Insult you because they can
• Copy passages from wikipedia that aren’t helpful
• Answer with “I don’t know.”
• Give you a sentance teaser, and then a link to their website.

So if you actually DO come across a good, helpful answer, they are like gold. Not to mention a boon for webmasters seeking targeted traffic.

You see, so many people focus on Google and Google alone when trying to build up their space in the internet, that they forget about Yahoo. Yes, people still use Yahoo. And people still type questions into search engines when they don’t know where else to look, and Yahoo questions often pop up on page one of the SE results.

Yahoo! Answers is a boon for webmasters is particular niches, such as automotive, beauty, food, health, pets or science, because you have a multitude of potential visitors all looking for information. Information that your website just might be able to provide.

There are a few tricks to gaining that traffic, but they are quite simple.

1. Actually be helpful. Nobody is going to click the link you dropped if you haven’t given any information.
2. Don’t drop links all the time, and don’t link exclusively to your websites. It’s spam.
3. Use a username which relates to the website you are trying to promote, and mention the website in your profile. I have noticed an increase in yahoo search results for nich website names using this method, rather than direct traffic from dropped links.
4. Don’t copy text. Write out each answer individually. Few things will earn you more thumbs-down than copy-pasting a wikipedia article
5. Vote for your answers. A lot of the time a ‘best answer’ will not be chosen by the person who asked the question, but is instead chosen by hte most votes it gets after the question is closed. You have nothing ot lose by voting for your own answer, so why not do it? Best answers get more exposure!

The point to all this, of course, is being helpfull. The internet has enough junk on it already, stand out by helping someone.

What a nice concept for a blog: looking at life.

Blogging on life philosophies is often very difficult to do without diverging into religion and either starting debates and alienating readers. However, Lucy’s Planet Happinessmanages to write freely and welcomingly without forcing any personal beliefs onto the reader. How very refreshing!

The content of this blog has a distincltly ‘meditating’ feel to it, and the content is quite thought provoking. A personal favourite post of mine is about Conditioning. The posts do not appear to generate many comments, but I think this is because readers leave with a head full of thoughts that they just can’t turn into a coherent sentence.

They layout is simple and elegant, and the lack of colour is largely made up for by the colourful thumbnails at the start of each post. Her most recent posts have adsense instead, which I think is a shame. Perhaps a little tweaking is in order to find a way to put an image next to the adsense block instead of replacing it? It looks like there’s space there, so it’s worth a try. Also, at the moment each image is a thumbnail that can be clicked to view just the picture by itself. That’s not necessary, and is occasionally distracting, so needs to be looked at and fixed. I make that mistake myself from time to time.

 Overall I would give this blog an 8 out of 10. It’s very enjoyable, each to read and only requires a tiny bit of tweaking.

You can’t fight the land, and you can’t fight Entrecard.

There is a Bushman’s saying. “Don’t Fight the Land. Accept the droughts and floods and clear blue skies, and live through them all.” It means that whatever it is the land you’re standing on throws at you, you’ve got to put up with it, and you might as well be happy about it. That, or move elsewhere. But if you love the land, there’s no way you’re going to move anywhere else.

The same applies to Entrecard. You use it, you like it. Heck, most of you reading this now came here through it.

And more than a few of you have complained at the thought that soon, people will be able to just buy credits. Officially. Through Entrecard. With money.

Yes, this will change the Entrecard Economy. No, the sky will not fall down.

Live with it. If this does actually turn out to be a catastrophic decision when the dust has settled, then Entrecard can reverse it.

You know, it might even be a bonus for us bloggers, who my get busy advertisers who don’t want to drop cards, but still want to advertise on us. Or we could ever earn a few bucks selling surplus credits. Those contests offering credits might actually be worth something all of a sudden. You never know.

So stress less.

I just have no tolerance for Spammers. Not long after receiving the previous spam comment, in the last post, I got this one:

You are cordially invited to be my guest blogger.Basically,you can write the post which is related to “Make Money Online and Blogging resources” and you are allowed to post 2 posts per week.Readers will vote your post and if you receive the most votes,you will be Top guest blogger of the month and you will have more readers to your blog eventually.

Feel free to visit my blog to find out more information.

Some nice words there, ‘cordially’ sounds very rich, but that doesn’t make the spam any better.

You might read that and think it’s a decent invitation, but this Entrecarder is just fishing for posters, and any poster will do. It’s a copy and paste message, he didn’t even address me by blog name. Not to mention he hadn’t even dropped a card on me that day, which if he had he would have noticed that I do not tolerate spam.

How do I define whether something is spam or not? Simple: If it is unwanted and possible to send the same message to multiple people with minimal change. This qualifies and earned itself a report.

Oh, and this blogger uses the word ‘cum’ instead of ‘come’. I wonder if he knows what it means?

Yes, Entrecard is a neat traffic/networking system. You drop your card on people, and most will drop back providing you’re safe-for-work. So why is it some people feel the need to go out of their way and message you about their contest, when their card already states that they have a contest going on? Oh, and they will message linked accounts too.

I got this ‘charming’ little message today:

Hi,

I’ve launched a contest which can be seen here: (URL removed)

This is a monthly contest. Every last day of each month, until the end of 2008, I’m going to send FREE 1500 EntreCard credits to lucky contest winner of each month.

Best regards, (Name & URL removed)

PS. Don’t forget to drop your card!

Perhaps you’ll disagree with me, and you’re welcome to, but I think this is spam. It’s a cheap contest desperately trying to inflate comments and subscriber counts. The smarmy ‘don’t forget to drop your card’ also rubbed me the wrong way, because this little joker hadn’t even dropped a card himself.

I replied thusly;

Mate, a few points.

1. You don’t need a link to your post AND your blog. What’cha think the card is for?

2. It’s spam. I have unlinked blogs here and you’ve sent the same message to two of them, last month.

3. You didn’t even drop on me, but you’re basically asking me to go write a post about your contest. You’re fishing for entrants.

4. You sound Patronising.

Best Regards, The Bushie

P.S. Don’t forget to drop your card.

I think what I have done is fair (including reporting him for spamming) because he ticked me off the first time, and this is the third. We shall see what happens.

Disagree with me? You’re allowed to. But I’d prefer knowing that I’m not the only person out there that gets bugged by this behaviour.