Should Entrecard Be Dropped?
You may have noticed that I have been using Entrecard on Zath in the past few months, located to the right of my website, but do you know what it is and how it works?
What is Entrecard?
In case you aren’t familiar with Entrecard, it basically takes the idea of real-life business card exchanging and implements it in such a way that it encourages fellow bloggers/webmasters to visit your site.
This is achieved by clicking on an Entrecard widget that is located on someone’s website. However, in addition to just potentially getting a visit from the blogger you exchanged with, there is also an economy that has been set up whereby Entrecard Credits are awarded each time you click on someone’s widget and also every time someone clicks on your widget.
These credits can be used for various things, the main use however is to pay for advertising on other Entrecard participating websites in the form of a 125×125 advert within the Entrecard widget that they display.
Now I’ve been using it a while now, nearly 3 months in fact and am now wondering whether it is worthwhile to continue. In terms of receiving traffic from other users via the Entrecard website, this is how the stats stack up.
Traffic source – Entrecard website:
237 Visits,
1.16 Pages/visit,
Average Time on Site = 33secs
Bounce Rate = 88.6%
Traffic Source – Entrecard ads I’ve placed on other sites:
43 Visits,
1.07 Page/visit
Average Time on Site = 55secs
Bounce Rate = 93.0%
What Does Entrecard Mean to Zath?
Now I have to admit that I’m not somebody who spends hours everyday Entrecard ‘dropping’ (so to speak), I generally drop on sites I regularly visit and also on sites that drop on my site and any time I spot the Entrecard widget while generally browsing the net.
I also, haven’t placed loads of ads, I’ve placed ads on maybe 5 sites in total, so I’ve perhaps not utilised it to the maximum – my thought was to save all the credits I can and then advertise on one of the big sites, but then it’s tough to find an opening in their Entrecard advertising schedule!
Another thing to consider is that the more a person drops, the more it costs to advertise on their site since they are “more active” in the community, however by people gaming the system, they are artificially inflating the cost to advertise. Which means you could spend hundreds of credits on an advert and not get much in return since most of the site’s traffic could come from other Entrecard droppers who probably won’t take any notice of your ad.
From looking at the stats above I’m not convinced that the quality and quantity of traffic is really warranting the space on my website. I know I’m not alone in questioning this system, John Cow has written some interesting articles on dropping Entrecard and conducting an Entrecard experiment.
What Do You Think of Entrecard?
Do my Entrecard advertisers like being able to advertise on my site using the Entrecard system? Would you miss it if I removed it?
Do you think I’m getting the benefits of using the Entrcard system?
Have you used Entrecard? Are you still using it? What’s your opinion of it?
I’ve always had doubts about the quality of traffic Entrecard brings, but the way I figure it, it would be at least somebody my way that might decide to stick around.
I agree with you that people game the system. For a period of time there I’d drop like a mad dog just to see what the effect would be. True, it brought me up higher in the rankings on Entrecard, but I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing if done in moderation.
The way I see it, you have to do a few things to get a little more exposure:
1) drop on the blogs that are in your inbox
2) advertise on blogs that have at least a PR3 and an Alexa ranking of 100,000 to 200,000.
3) Consider recategorizing your blog on Entrecard. I’ve moved three times since becoming a member. Right now, I moved into the “Mixed Bag” category since that’s the way I think of my blog at the moment. Perhaps moving to something else might provide opportunities for other bloggers to see you when visiting the category of your choice.
In order to get more traffic you have to give a little traffic.
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I am finding I am slowly forgetting about it…. I have not checked my stats in ages and don’t think that I am getting any worthwhile traffic.
I thin if you want to immerse yourself in it then it is worh while and I will be keeping it for a while longer.
Mark - you make some good points - I generally try and drop on those in my inbox, I’ll consider those factors you mentioned when setting up ads in future and have also tried recategorised my blog to see if that helps. Thanks!
Forest - This is the first proper time I’ve looked at the stats for Entrecard and it’s certainly made me think about things - for the time being I’ll keep it and be semi-active with dropping, but if other marketing opportunities come up and I need the screen real-estate, I’ll probably call time on Entrecard at that point.
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Actually, they’ve changed their pricing plans, which changes the way credits are acquired. If I understand correctly, you can still earn credits by dropping cards on other people’s blogs, but the price to advertise (at least a portion of it) is based on whether someone has purchased an ad on your blog that day. Something like that.
At first I thought it was a glitch because I saw some blogs have an incredible cost to advertise - like ProBloggers which is somewhere in the 20,000 range!
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That is because they’ve recently changed the pricing system and some of the blogs have a lot of ADS in queue before they changed it.
I’ve seen quite a couple of blogs that HARDLY updates but have high price to advertise on because they take dropping very very seriously.
I would say entrecard is both good and bad because it provides me an extra 50 visitors per day after dropping like 200 -.- (I’m trying to increase it but so far my laziness only allows maximum 200 or else I will be pressured to drop entrecards, lol) but out of that 50… if 2 or 3 decides to continue reading my blog, it’s a good sign.
As for Project Wonderful, I’m still waiting for them to approve me.
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Most of the Entrecard will drop and bounce ,it definitely increases bounce rate of our blog.Well to reduce /solve Entrecard’s high bounce rate,i suggest that we should organize a simple survey among your website droppers through sending message to them such as “What kind of info you want to find out””What type of topic is the most attract you to read” and so on,so this will save our time to research what type of topics we should post.Secondly,we can build up rapport with other bloggers by exchanging ideas and link or even advertise on their website-This will build up a strong relationship between you and the droppers.It will reduce bounce rate ultimately.
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Speaking my mind? Great and thank you.
Matter of fact, most if not ALL of these Blog Traffic Generators are a full load of crap!
I even wrote a short article about it at my Blog.
Cheers!
Well just to update you all on this, you may have already noticed, but I’ve now removed the Entrecard widget, I think overall for it to be really successful you need to put in more time into it than I can really afford to.
I’d rather invest that time into doing other things with the site which could in turn bring in more than that provided by Entrecard, plus there’s every chance those visitors will have a better bounce rate.
Thanks for all your thoughts on this guys!
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