Entrecard - Profiteering and Expensive Ads

Kamila is back on the subject of Entrecard again after receiving an email telling her that EC credits are on sale from Entrecard. Here are the details:

10000 Entrecard Credits - USD$56.00 (get another 5,000 credits bonus!)
25000 Entrecard Credits - USD$125.00 (get another 12,000 credits bonus!)

So, for 1000 credits the cheapest you can buy these at until 1st August (tomorrow) is $3.38. This rises to $5 - $5.60 per 1000 as the now the normal price. Now Kamila isn’t being funny, but the previous $1 per 1000 EC that were being cashed in seems a drop in the ocean compared to what the going rate it now. She can’t see many people taking up this at these rates and to be quite honest advertising on Entrecard was always a pretty expensive business anyway even on $1 per 1000 EC credits.

Kamila can see why the EC credits for cash has been stopped as this would undermine the profits made by Entrecard. Again Kamila like many other bloggers aren’t too bother about that, but buying EC credits at the rate they are asking for is nothing short of robbery. Whether she thinks that because she has lived on a shoestring in Bulgaria too long may have affected her thinking.

Supply and demand rules in any business and Kamila thinks that this ‘offer’ won’t go do too well with EC members who just see it a profiteering. It will balance out though, and if no EC credits are bought they will have rethink.

Kamila thinks that the bottom line is Entrecard is a business and that business was bought to make money and no other reason. So why should we all be surprised with how things are developing here.

One last point Kamila must make is that it the wonderful Entrecard blogger members that make it worth staying in the community and that's why she is still here.

"Have a 1000 weekend, sorry a grand weekend!" Kamila says

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Goods News For Kamila - Persistence Paid

Some good news today for Kamila as she opens her emails as she normally does. There was a message from PayPerPost saying that Kamila’s blog is now accepted and she can now write sponsored posts.

Well it just proves that persistence pays. Kamila had applied a couple of months before and not accepted, so she got her act together and started writing posts more often and applied again last month. She was refused again due to only have one post on the home page. This was adjusted and she reapplied yet again and today was a result.

Kamila just hope now that she get some work. Nothing more that $1 commissions today she won’t be diddled with these, so she’ll look for jobs again tomorrow. That digital camera replacing the one that came with the Ark looks a step nearer now.

This is a lesson many could learn from – If you get rejected, NEVER GIVE UP!

“Rock On Ya All!” says Kamila.

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Using The Control Key - A Tip Passed On

On every computer keyboard there are so many keys that we don’t use. They must be there for a reason Kamila thinks. Well one key that has come in very useful recently for Kamila is the 'Control (Ctrl) key. Ever since she started blogging about a year ago she hardly ever used it and didn’t really know what it did. Well she uses it now for her Entrecard and Adgitize drops.

Kamila wasn’t quite sure where she picked up the tip as she reads so many blogs on a day-to-day basis. Well last week she found a great tip. It was to hold the Control key down whilst clicking on an Entrecard or Adgitize widget and the blog will come up on a new tab. Now Kamila can open multiple blogs rather than individually as she did before. What a find!

So, if you’re not doing this already try it, it saves lots of time!

“Enjoy the tip passed on,” says Kamila.

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$1 For A Paid Review - Don't Expect Quality Posts

Away from camel milk chocolate today, there seems to be even more paid ads for just $1 on Pay Per Post and many remain untouched for good reason. Kamila wonders whether the bloggers who do take up these $1 jobs give the advertiser a poor post. Would it be a natural tendency from bloggers to not put much effort in for a sponsored post that insults with such low pay? Surely poor ads would have a negative affect of the service or product so trying to get cut priced ads perhaps isn’t cost effective at all.

Kamila is quite sure that paid a decent rate for writing up a review she would willingly do the best job that she could with that post. Many others must surely be of the same opinion.

Kamila finds that the subject of paid post comes to the forefront again. Pay Per Post nearly accepted her blog, but at the time she only had one post showing on the home page; Pay Per Post wanted multiple posts. So Kamila tweaked it to their requirement and resubmitted. Hoofs crossed, this time she may squeeze in. The waiting game resumes for Kamila.

Ending with a question from Kamila. “Does anyone have any idea when this recession is over?”

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A New 'Snobby' Camel Chocolate Out

Just a small diversion from blogging topics from Kamila today as she found out that chocolate is now being marketed made out of camels’ milk. Kamila naturally has known about the health benefits of camels’ milk, she had been brought up on it after all. Kamila thinks that the people who are marketing this are a bit ‘snobby’ and she knows that it will be a very expensive product aims at the ‘well to do’.

Why anyone thinks that products in Harrods are better than product on other shops is a mystery. They just charge more in Harrods; mind you an Arab owns it! It was the same when Kamila was for sale in Hamley’s Toy Shop in London’s Oxford Street. If she were in another shop her sale price would have been much lower.

Although the camels are based in the Dubai, United Arab Emirates there is quite a strong relationship between these and Egyptian camels.

The world's first camel's milk chocolate will be available in Europe and the U.S. soon said a spokesperson for Al Nassma, the maker of camel's milk chocolate.

In the UK, camel's milk chocolate will be sold at Harrods and in the US San Francisco's Chocolate Covered will be among the first to sell the chocolate.

100 tons of chocolate will be produced a year in partnership with Austrian chocolate maker Manner, Al Nassma manufactures the end product at its Dubai facility.

3,000 camels in Dubai produce the milk. It plans to launch an online shopping facility within a month, the company said said.

"We aim to be the Godiva of the Middle East," "It's a luxury product, so we will never be in supermarkets. The plan is to be in one mall in each UAE city."

All chocolates are natural with no preservatives or additives and will be available in a range of locally popular spices, nuts and honey, the company says.

Camels' milk is seen as healthier than cows' milk, containing five times more vitamin C, less fat, less lactose and more insulin, making it a good option for diabetics and the lactose intolerant, Van Almsick said.

Source: www.examiner.com

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Money And Paid Ads No Big Loss For Many On Entrecard

More pertaining to a parrot then a camel Kamila will repeat the news that Entrecard is ending EC to convert to cash alongside the dropping of paid ads. Well we all knew this was coming it was just a matter of time before the cat was let out of the bags. Kamila now wonders how many EC members will leave the bandwagon knowing that this is not a cash driven community any more.

In a way although Kamila has lost the opportunity to cash her EC credits, which were being saved for a digital camera (and she has a hefty sum) they are still valuable in a different way. Using the EC credits for more advertising and buying goods and services the EC market place in some ways is just as good as cash.

It is with a sigh of relief from Kamila that paid ads are dropped, this was a bone of contention to many EC members, with Kamila as no exception. She felt that many members were put off with only getting half the exposure for the same ‘fee’ was a bit of a rip off.

The new owners have been decisive and made decisions that won’t please all, but those EC members who joined for the reasons of upping traffic and community spirit must be dancing a little, Kamila did a little jig when she heard.

Kamila thought again and wonders whether anyone would like to put a digital camera up in EC marketplace for Kamila to buy with credit. This would be a great help to her and her master.

“Have fun over the weekend!” Kamila says.

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What Is The Optimum Length Of Posts? - Easy Really

There is a question that entered Kamila's head after Daisy The Curly Cat commented on her last post about how to keep bloggers on your site to avoid another bounce statistic.

Daisy's Quote:

I have found that the longer and more complicated a post is, the less likely it is to get comments. I think you are right, too, that a punchy title is important. Sometimes we don't spend enough time on that.

Kamila has been thinking about how long should apost be with this comment then it suddenly occured to her that is was obvious. 200 words must be the optimum length of a post to gain maximum affect in pulling power after title and picture to spark up interest.

And how did Kamila decide that his was tha case? Simple she sought professional advise and who esle better to go to that advertisers and marketing folk.

Having been rejected from Pay Per Post she noticed that most advertisers ask for a post to be 200 words in length. This can therefore be taken as gospel as the most apt length after all they have done all the research to find the peaks of advertsing success.

So around 200 words are what bloggers should aim for, mind you most do in Paid Posts anyway so it is a good habit to get into.

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Dangling Carrot - No Guarantees Though

Image via Wikipedia

It is Kamila now with her thinking cap on as she tries now to think about how to get people to stop off more at her blog when they are surfing. She is becoming a little concerned with the bounce rate of her visitors and knows that this could affect her PR2 as it stands.

Kamila knows that in order for someone to dwell on her blog she has to have preverbal carrot dangling on a stick. Now Kamila doesn’t confess to be too knowledgeable just yet into the complexities of psychology and advertising skills, but she not stupid and on a first level she has a good idea that many might want to follow.

Surfing through the first thing Kamila sees on a blog is the title and the next thing either a wad of text or a picture. Kamila just thought over this and came to the conclusion that the title has to be such that it would pull blogger, that was the first thing. The title is the most important aspect of a blog. To prove this you just have to surf and make a list of the blogs that you dwelled upon, it is the titles that swung it. Try it make a list of those blogs you read and see if Kamila is right.

The next thing Kamila thought of was pictures, they make such a difference to a blog posting. If you have a title that pulls you in and an interesting and relevant picture within the same frame you are well on your way to avoiding a bouncing guest. It is such a simple formula but with no guarantees. If someone is just there for the drop no matter what you put in your post to entice won’t make any difference.

Well Kamila knows the proof of the pudding is in the tasting, but is happy that she had discovered a little more about how to attract bloggers for longer.

Kamila says, “Wow, it’s hot here today!”

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Project Wonderful Changes - Little Tips From Kamila

A big ooops! from Kamila as this was posted a few days ago buy all the data was lost when she tried to edit it. So Kamila has had to write it all over again. Sorry for those who commented on the original post, these were lost as well - Kamila on the learning curve, she's sure other have done the same at some point.

You may have noticed that Kamila has put out a few more Project Wonderful ads on the top of her blog. She prudently took this opportunity to do so while the bids were briefly at $0.0. The reason for this was that to change the format of your Project Wonderful ads you have to cancel all sponsors bids and start from scratch again.

Kamila felt that there were a few bidders out there that weren't being shown she made provisions for more ad spaces. She knows that the ad price will fall and hopes that it will bring i a ;little extra at the end of the day. Project Wonderful is really fun to use and Kamila spends ages surfing through Project Wonderful member's blog to see if she can get an ad or two in place. It is quite time consuming though if you are new to the system, but by using the many filter systems inbuild into the site you can find exactly the right place to bid ofr your ad very simply.

To date, there haven't been many bids on the row of ads placed by Kamila, but hopefully when bloggers see that the traffic she is now generating is growing this may well spark interest. Bidders get a full view of the traffci records of all blog they bid on. The other beauty is if you search you can place ads without any payment at all, but this is restricted to a limited period but well worth it if you have the time to search.

Although Project Wonderful doesn't give Kamila too much traffic, it is another system where she is being seen with a good blog community and of course a good quality backlink. Well worth just registering for just that!

"Have a fun day!" says Kamila.

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No More New Cash Outs Options For Entrecard Members?

Image via CrunchBase

What a weekend Kamila had! It was 40 degrees centigrade over the weekend in the village and reminded her of her youth in Egypt but fertile soil instead of sand. Relaxing just didn’t take place though as she lent a hand with harvesting the onions and prepare the soil for the next crop of winter cabbage and leeks.

Arriving back to town it was blogging again and the whole weekend Entrecard and the take over was on Kamila’s mind. Together we have over 100,000 EC and were going to use those funds to buy a new digital camera as the one we own right now is really in a bad state of repair. But now the new owners have stopped the option to join up to covert credits into cash it seems that the intentions of the new owners is to halt the payments in their tracks. Kamila is sure the Graham Langdon made it a condition to honour previous credit to cash prior to their takeover but future payments remain very much in doubt. It looks like that camera will have to wait quite a while longer as Kamila didn’t register for the cash swap condition beforehand.

At this moment Kamila has also notice a few Entrecard members leaving, not many, but see can fully understand why to some who use this solely as an earner rather than a social building tool.
It is a camel that remains loyal to Entrecard as long as the new company tread carefully and have bloggers at the bottom of their heart. Business is business so they have to make money, but Kamila feels that the potential of Entrecard, unique in its field, gives room for something for everyone. Indeed, Kamila feels that a little competition for Entrecard with a similar system would go well to urge Entrecard out of the monopoly they have right now.

All things considered Kamila feels that apart from the sign up for cash option being taken away, nothing has changed, but she feels that the wheels of change will turn slowly around, but it is more with excitement than pessimism, Entrecard can’t afford to make more mistakes as they have in the past and the new company must be aware of that is they have any sense.

“Chiao for Niao” Says Kamila, “And thanks for the positive comments guys”.

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Drop And Run - A Natural Process In Blogging

Kamila understands why people are moaning about drop and run bloggers on Entrecard and Adgitize? The ‘bounce’ factor is a concern to many who fear Google will think their blogs are not keeping people’s attention. But the extent of criticism Kamila feels is unfair.

There is a demand to just click for traffic by drop and run tactics and that’s one option many people take especially if their blogs desperately need traffic. If bloggers don’t want this type of traffic, (bouncing traffic) then they can quite simply withdraw their membership from communities that churn this type of traffic out. There is no point just moaning about all that does is create a bad feeling and alienate bloggers it is better to just move on. On Entrecard this will probably change soon though.

Kamila puts her hands up and admits she does sometimes run through some blogs on a drop and run basis, but she dwells on those that create interest for her. It is natural that good blogs will get less of a, ‘bounce’ type traffic. Most bloggers will pause, read, comment and perhaps interact with interesting elements on some blogs they find that distracts the when they are clicking through. Then others they will just click through. There is no point in dwelling on a blog that you have no interest in. She can’t see what all the fuss and bad feeling is.

There will always be a certain percentage of bloggers who will just be there for quick clicks, but for Entrecard now to put a detection system in on drop and run bloggers so they won’t get credits Kamila feels is a bit extreme. If blogs surfed aren’t of interest to bloggers they just won’t bother visiting them after initial assessment in the first instance.

In all instances Kamila will continue to use the same method of dropping on those who have dropped on her and many will be paused upon if Kamila finds them drawing her in. Others she will just bypass, will she click on the latter if there is no credit involved? Mmmmm, knowing Kamila she will because she is that type of camel, but other bloggers, well we’ll see.

"HAVE A LOVELY WEKEND YA ALL!" - Says Kamila

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Spam For Breakfast?

Image by Getty

Every morning before breakfast Kamila checks her email and comments box. If someone makes a comment on your blog Kamila thinks it is quite rude not to acknowledge or reply to it. At the very least she feels that bloggers who comment should be thanked for taking the time and effort to do so. Spam comment are a different story.

There is one big exception to the rule of replying to comments and Kamila used to get very annoyed that this happens. People who spam are not very considerate people and remain a nuisance to many a decent caring blogger at the best of times. At first Kamila wasn’t quite sure what spam was. But over time she began to realise that genuine comments stand out far apart from spamming comments. In fact they are not comments at all but a presentation of an online business card that invoke scams and the likes.

It was the cases that Kamila used to follow many of these spam messages up as in the early days, not to far gone, she was quite humbled by receiving messages from anyone, it was quite a novelty, but this novelty factor wore off very quickly and annoyance set in. It was just wasting Kamila’s time and energy sifting through these spam messages and some were actually blatant criminal activities. Kamila didn’t know why the police just didn’t get stuck in following them up and arresting people at the other end.

Kamila still gets lots spam even through spam filters she had installed. Those that do get through she just ignores. A quick click and they are gone. Life in all circle has its good and bad sides, the Internet is no exception and like everything else Kamila has found that taking the rough with the smooth is the only way. She certainly won’t let spam upset her; if it did they would have won the war.

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EC Toolbox And Firefox Compatibility Problem Solved

Kamila had a problem yesterday choosing between Mozilla Firefox 3.5 or EC toolbar, both very good innovations, but a choice had to be made at that time. A message was sent straight away from Kamila’s friend Cornyman (picture to the right) to tell here that there was a new version of the EC toolbar that runs with Firefox 3.5 and that she might want to try it.

Well try it Kamila did and it worked really well. So now she has the best of both worlds with firefox and Entrecard working together to provide a more effective and user-friendly system.

Kamila is a very happy camel right now, but not solely because she has her blogging wish list fulfilled but that there are blogging friend that are there to help.

“People who have time for others are the best kind of people,” Kamila says. And on that note Kamila now is on task with some surfing whilst dropping using the EC toolbar!

A PS from Kamila to say that the EC toolbar she was recommended and now uses can be found here - > www.topclanz.net

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Kamila's Choice - Firefox 3.5 or EC Toolbar - Who Won?

After a weekend of violent storms and broken power cables in the village farmhouse, Kamila was quite relieved to get back to the Yambol City house. It had been quite a scary time with the weather the last 48 hours.

It was back to blogging and Kamila is beginning to experiment with new programmes and system to make life a little easier with certain chores online. One very useful tool she had recently found was the Entrecard toolbar. She could drop any time she wanted using the toolbar menu and didn’t have to log into Entrecard each time. She had been using this for a few weeks now and thought she couldn’t live without it.

Then Mozilla came out with a new Firefox 3.5 browser version and Kamila downloaded this with great gusto as the previous version had many glitches. Once downloaded she found that the EC toolbar wouldn’t function as it wasn’t compatible with the new version of Firefox!

So Kamila was faced with a choice of the EC toolbar and the older Firefox 3.1 version with its glitches, or leave the new firefox 3.5 browser running and live without the EC toolbar. She chose the latter only because of the annoying bugs that the older version of firefox kept throwing at her.

Kamila also wrote to Entrecard (Graham) and asked whether the EC toobar can be modified to run with Mozilla Firefox 3.5. Hopefully this can be done and Kamila will have the best of both worlds.

Kamila wonders whether anyone else has had to choose between the two and if so what was your choice?

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Nearly Top Of Pile With Adgitize

Kamila has found that she and her team under ‘Bulgarian Scrapbook’ is now is second place to Cornymans Moneypage on Adgitize. We had been lingering between 3rd and 4th place for a few weeks now, but we now find ourselves moving up even further nearer to the top the pile and we are all a bit excited seeing us there.

1 Blog Name: Cornymans Moneypage Total Points: 4066

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2 Blog Name: Bulgarian Scrapbook Total Points: 4060

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3 Blog Name: nuke it dot org Total Points: 4040

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4 Blog Name: Positive Men Total Points: 4032

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5 Blog Name: Gas Savers Total Points: 4030

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6 Blog Name: Healthy Lifestyle Blogzine Total Points: 3950

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7 Blog Name: Wishing On A Falling Star Total Points: 3850

Kamila realises that being right next to the top doesn’t mean we earn more than others. Just getting 300 points a day will guarantee the fee back for advertising and profit on top. This is of course without any affiliate commissions taken on at a rate of $5 per new signing on.

All in all Kamila finds that this is probably the best advertising system on the Internet right now. Where else would you get paid to have you site advertised!? It takes only some 10 minutes each day to click on the 51 ads need to get that extra 100 points in addition to your daily blog post (100 points) and advertising reward of another 100 points. This brings the total to a guaranteed 300 plus further points for clicks on your ads meaning full revenue paid each day covering more than the advertising cost of $0.50.

So it is a weekend of celebration in the Bulgarian, household as Kamila and her family toast to being oin silver medal position with Adgitize right now. Kamila realises however that could all change tomorrow as it is to tight with points accumulated at the top and we could drop as quickly as we rise.

The box is waiting below to anyone who wants to join the Adgitize system.

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Adgitize Hits The Mark In Traffic And Profits

Kamila and her team just got paid by Adgitize for the month of June. As you can see, after the deductin of $14 for a month of advertising fees, there is a hefty sum of $9.81 profit. Kamila as some of you may know works with her master who has other blogs from Bulgaria, but she is very much part of the team.

So, Kamila in her new found wisdom more than suggests that Adgitize remains as part of the makeup of her daily routine of just blogging and clicking on a few Adgitize advertising blogs that takes a split second longer as they are alongside Entrecard blogs. "Easy money and great advertsing and traffic return" as Kamila says.

Here is the notification we got today.

Payment details

Amount: $23.19 USD

Transaction Date: Jul 8, 2009

Transaction ID: xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Subject: Adgitize Publisher Payment June 2009

Message:
Thank you for being a Publisher/Affiliate in the Adgitize Ad Network. This is payment for June 2009 Affiliate services and / or accumulated months as a publisher showing Adgitize Ads. Thank you, Ken Brown, Adgitize

Custom note: Adgitize Publisher Payment June 2009

If you want to join the friendly team of Adgitizers and be as happy as Kamila, just click on the ad here:

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Blogger Blogroll - Now In Action

Yet another very useful tip Kamila had realised she hadn’t taken up. She should have done this when she first set up her blog, but is just got left. “THE BLOG ROLL”. This of course is for those bloggers under the banner of "Blogger".

This is such a great tool for listing blog you like and another great way of encouraging others to get you on their blogroll as a swap. Kamila has many friends but really up until now hadn’t anywhere to put them. Kamila is kicking herself that she didn’t’ start this earlier in her business blogging career.

The blogroll widget can be as big or as small as you want, Kamila decided that if she was going to show off here friends on her blog she might as well do it properly so her option was to have a little picture and the title and excerpt from the latest post.

Kamila is now determine to remember to put all her friends that run her favourite blogs on her blogroll when she next visits them. So if you know Kamila, look out for your blog and most recent post that will be rolling off on Kamila’s new widget.

It is becoming quite clear to Kamila that there are 1001 things to do on blogs, but the little by little system is working very well. Still dropping Entrecards, Adgitize clicks and listing in directories as a daily routine – And most important, writing posts.

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Follower Widgets On Blogs - A Great Link Back System ANd More

Fresh from an extended weekend in the village watering melons and tending to potatoes and sweet corn, Kamila is back in the office kitchen now tending to her blog.

She has made a great realisation this morning when surfing through some blogs. She found that she had been mentioned in a friends blog: cornymans-blogreviews.blogspot.com. This was such a pleasant surprise with the nice things that Cornyman had said. He has given SEO advice to Kamila before now so he is very well versed in SEO matters with many other blogs to his name:
The One Minute Guide
All about babies and kids
Cornymans Money-Blog

This aside, Kamila has now added a section to her blog on the right hand side column. Why she didn’t think of this before is a mystery. Perhaps with so many things to think of it was a basic oversight. There is a section now for followers, (called Kamila’s Kind Friends) where you can view new posts each time they are made, this is through Google’s own “Friends Connect”.

This will now give new back links both ways, Kamila’s PR2 blog to those who follow and back to Kamila from friends’ blogs. In Kamila’s own words, “A great and simple way to add back links and make friends as well!”

Kamila now looks for the same system in other bloggers and follows them herself if she likes the blog. How many times has Kamila seen a blog she likes, but then can’t remember where it was? Loads! This can’t happen now with the follower widget in place. And far better than having a RSS subscription clogging up your email inbox!

“Happy days are here again!” says Kamila. “I love Mondays!”

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