Entrecard Update Review
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I posted on the additional benefits with Entrecard a couple of weeks ago. My first reactions to this little program for sharing web business cards was positive. Guess what, unlike Blogrush, they are still positive. I’m seen a decent increase in traffic since joining this little program.
Entrecard Stats
Your Account
| 611 credits in your account | 53 credits to advertise on your blog |
| 709 cards you dropped | 352 cards dropped on you |
| 129 clicks via ads you placed | 79 clicks from your blog to others |
| 227 clicks from entrecard.com to you | |
| 18 ads you bought | 9 ads bought from you |
As you can tell I’ve had over three hundred visitors from Entrecard during this period. I’m not totally sure the time frame for the stats, but I believe its for the past 7 days. If someone has other information contrary to this please let me know.
I just started dropping a decent amount of cards the past two days so I can build up a few credits. The entire Entrecard system works on a currency of Entrecard Credits and its what you use to purchase adverts on high profile blogs such as John Chow or Problogger.
All blogs start out with a cost of two credits to advertise, then that number increases as more people drop cards on your blog. The system requires the user to actually visit your blog to drop their card, so you get visitors from that. Of course these visitors are other bloggers in the system who are trying to earn credits, so they mostly swing by drop their card and go onto the next blog. This is exactly what I’ve been doing the past couple of days when I’m earned over 500 of the credits you see listed in my account.
The important numbers are the clicks via ads you placed. I’ve generated 129 visitors from ads placed on other blogs during this period. These are real visitors coming from other blogs to my site. I’m sure a certain number of these are other Entrecard users surfing through the ads building credits, but most are real visitors who may like my blog and stick around for a while. By the way if you are new and have not subscribed then click the RSS image now 
You can see that I’ve also generated 79 visitors to other blogs that have chosen to advertise on this site.
Now these are not numbers that will launch me into A-List status, but every little bit helps. I don’t really see the value of Entrecard in the actual traffic, but more so in the community and relationships that are being built by the people involved in this little project. There is an ecosystem growing where not only do people earn credits the ways listed above, but links are being traded for credits and contests are being held for credits. This post is actually in response to the Entrecard contest on the Entrecard blog.
There is also a sense of helping one another out, but commenting on other blogger’s posts, submitting posts to social bookmarking sites or voting on posts. I’ve also had several blogs highlight certain posts on their speed links or other posts and I’ve done the same. This helps everyone’s technorati authority and to increase visibility of their blogs. These actions help everyone out in the community, which means we should all grow our traffic together. Everyone wins by working together.
Now I will have to admit there are a few things that still need work. The number one is the forums. Graham if you are reading this, those are not just going to work out. There are plenty of free forum packages out there that should be utilized. I would not even mind registering in another system and setting my avatar to my Entrecard avatar manually, but if the community is going to continue to communicate then there has to be a better tool for this.
Second thing, some of the credit prices are getting out of hand. At the time of this writing a spot on John Chow costs 181 credits and my little blog here costs 50 credits for a day. This makes it hard for the new people to gain those high profile spots and the traffic that goes along with it. I was lucky as I happened to be logged in right when John Chow joined, so I grabbed a day on his blog for the 2 credits. Considering the number of visitors I received form his blog that day, I could not justify letting go of that many credits for a single day now. Those things are hard to get a hold of. Something has to be done to top out the prices. I don’t know what that is, but at the rate its going in another couple of weeks it will take all my current 600 credits to grab a spot on his blog and probably quite a few others. I would agree to lower my cost to advertise. I would rather having new people able to advertise on this blog, when spots open up.
Technorati tags: entrecard, blogging, generating traffic, a-list, john chow, technorati
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Comments
I have to agree that Entrecard has been a positive experience more in tune with bloggers helping bloggers and has brought a nice steady traffic flow for my site as well.
As for the credit points getting too high I agree as well. The problem stems from the fact that the credit amount is calculated by how many drops on your widget. If you are on the front page of the campaign page you will get a lot of drops whereas if you fall inside the category it slows down. Entrecard should really calculate credits based on past advertising or maybe let the owner of the site set the rate. At the least they should randomize the blogs shown on the front page as well as the categories.
Entrecard definitely needs a better forumn but like everything else Grahm has been listening and upgrading things daily so I’m sure he’ll make it better.
P.S Thanks for Letting me advertise on your blog!
Hi Bruce,
I agree with you that it’s a nice little community developing which is what I’m focusing on.
My widget is getting expensive too for a finance blog - not one of the more popular niches. However, I’m fine with this as I agree with you that the traffic from the ads do not reflect the price of credits.
I probably generate more traffic by dropping cards and commenting on other people’s blogs. It’s generally reciprocal.
@ Mariam
Thank you for bringing up the info about the IE cookies though. I was actually having the problem in Firefox, but I got it fixed by clearing my cookies.
Bruce was lucky to pick up a high traffic ad for 2 credits, I just picked one up from chow for about 180 just to see what it would do for me. I currently don’t see a reward for the higher traffic users of this widget though. Its great for the smaller bloggers to get exposure, but whats the reward for the bigger guys to take up a valuable ad spot.
Hello,
I’m an Entrecard participant as well, and indeed, it’s a very good service
I came across your blog through the forum, and I’ve gotta tell ya, this is a good blog
[…] Bruce Hopkins has a good analysis of his results: http://brucehopkins.net/blogging/entrecard-update-review.php […]
Those are a lot of cards that have been dropped off! I thought I was doing good dropping cards, but you got me beat by like 3x. Its nice to know your getting good stats from Entrecard, so I hope when some of the approved ads that I picked up come out I’ll be able to see a return from it.
Are you currently having issues with the widget? I’m trying to drop off cards, but its saying Get One, instead of Drop Off at the moment.