The Last Drop For Entrecard
Posted on January 13th, 2008 by John Cow under Ramblings, The NetIf you're new here, you may want to check out this cool new contest. You could win almost$3000 in Prizes!
We’ve had the entrecard (EC) widget on our blog for a while now and never really actively participated in their booming community. If you’re familiar with their forums, you’ll know there’s a select group of EC power-users. They seem to wake up, and go to bed with nothing but EC on their mind. Their blog’s are filled with post after post on how to increase your EC traffic, how to optimize it for your blog, how to network with the community,Top droppers MeMes, etc etc. That’s all great, but we think some are getting a little carried away with it all, unknowingly destroying the system.
Here’s the thing: The whole purpose behind EC is to get noticed in the blogosphere because your 125×125 ad gets displayed on other blogs that have signed up with EC. Obviously if your card is featured on a huge blog like Problogger (who gets sponsored by EC) or JohnChow, you’re bound get get a nice bump in traffic for those 24 hours. Currently the cost for these two blogs is 330 and 260. So why on earth would someone waste over 400 credits to get featured on a blog that has 21 RSS subscribers? You wouldn’t if you have your head screwed on the right way!
We’re not saying your blog is bad or crap, we’re just saying there’s no justification for such a high price, having compared the stats with the other blogs. It’s like us starting to ask $900 for a review, while you can go and get one for half that amount on JohnChow.com. We’d set ourselves up the bomb!
Now this is where the problem lies. The EC powerusers are so keen on getting becoming popular within the ranks of the community, that they are working hard in chain dropping their cards on all EC blogs each day, just to accumulate more credits and inflating their own advertising prices. Emails keep getting send around, asking for drops, reccomendations and whatever else it is that will get you popular on the categories pages.
Its really not doing any good for anyone. The blogs that get their cards dropped on are experiencing an increase in bounce rates. The bloggers that stops dropping quickly vanish into thin air. The bloggers that keep dropping, is happily inflating their own advertising cost. And for what? Just to get featured in the top 3 on their respective categories?
Bouncerates through the roof.
Unfortunately the current system “Effort=Reward” has become unusable since it has been encouraging this form of ‘gaming the system’ and the end result causes a distorted view of how popular a blog really is on the outside world. If you think you’re paying 400 credits to get featured on a popular blog, therefor getting high exposure to the blogosphere and receiving a bump in traffic, think again. You’ve just wasted your hard earned credits on a blog that might look popular inside the EC community, but isn’t all that popular outside the community - where it matters if you’re looking for traffic.
The only way to stop this is to alter the script so it won’t add to your ‘popularity’ when you’re dropping cards. Getting more popular because cards are getting dropped on your blog is a natural and organic type of growth, which would be a more accurate reflection of the popularity of a blog in the place where it really matters - the blogosphere. Until the EC team can find a way to prevent blog inflation from happening, we’re dropping EC.
(PS We’re waiting for Becky’s ‘told you so!’ comment).
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January 13th, 2008 at 12:27 am
I use entrecard as a marketing system only. I drop my card on blogs that are in the same niche, not to earn credits but to get exposure. Birds of a feather tend to flock together…or so the saying goes. I still think being able to buy a spot on a blog like John Chow for a couple hundred entrecard credits is worth it. I also agree that you need to be careful where you are spending those hard earned ECs.
January 13th, 2008 at 12:28 am
Yeah, they should set a maximum of drop a user can make, like 50-100. To be able to sell a spot at 400 EC, it just means he is receiving more than 200 drop cards each days. So if a widget receives an average of 50 cards dropped into it each day, advertising on that widget will cost 100 credits per day.
January 13th, 2008 at 12:28 am
Yeah, I was looking through the site a few times and noticed that many sites have high ad costs but don’t seem to be very ‘popular’ otherwise.
However, you’re paying with points, not money so you’re not losing a whole lot. And points are very easy to make - you don’t even have to do anything really. You can just throw up a widget and let other people drop cards on you.
If you’re looking for serious advertising, then no, I don’t think Entrecard is a good choice. But if you’re just a regular or small time blogger then it’s a free way to get some easy attention. And who knows, advertising on a blog with 21 subscribers may get YOU 21 more subscribers (if you’re interesting enough for them).
January 13th, 2008 at 12:29 am
[...] good way to get people using it, but longer term, it seems detrimental in my opinion. And it seems others agree with that [...]
January 13th, 2008 at 12:38 am
Pretty good decision……
I would soon hang it up!!!!!.
January 13th, 2008 at 12:46 am
I just put it on and your already ridding yours!
January 13th, 2008 at 1:23 am
I’m not sure if you are aware, but the formula used to determine popularity has absolutely nothing to do with how many cards you drop. The exact formula is (the number of drops you receive on your widget per day) x 2.
So, when you say that “getting more popular because cards are getting dropped on your blog… would be a more accurate reflection of popularity” you are actually describing the exact way the system works.
And when you say that “the only way to stop this is to alter the script so that it won’t add to your popularity when you drop cards” again, you are again describing the system exactly. You receive absolutely no popularity points for dropping cards. It is all determined by the number of cards that you receive on your blog.
The fact is that the blog in question receives 200+ drops per day, and thus is a measure of how active other Entrecard members are on that blog.
In the future we may change the pricing of blogs. But for now, the number of drops received daily is an easy way to calculate pricing and figure it into the economy in general. Each drop creates two credits, one for the dropper and one for the received, and thus each costs two credits to advertise and thus “absord” the cost of the drop.
January 13th, 2008 at 1:26 am
[...] of Entrecard on his blog, and just today when he raise that issue again, the cow announces the removal of the widget on his own [...]
January 13th, 2008 at 1:26 am
I was about to write a post on how to fix the EC system. But you’re right, that system needs to be fixed or it will be obsolete like blogrush
January 13th, 2008 at 1:27 am
As a side note, you would never pay your hard earned money to advertise on a blog you didn’t research. So if a blog costs a lot of credits to advertise on, its very simply to check alexa and technorati to decide whether or not you are going to get value.
And when you pay 400 credits for that spot, it insures that 200 people will click through that ad and be exposed to your site.
January 13th, 2008 at 1:42 am
I wrote an article saying how entrecard sucks, and no one really cared, but now we’re seeing another (and i mean bigger) blog talking about how ec may not be all its cracked up to be, and it’s true! EC is not all that great.
I hate being the first to realize these things.
January 13th, 2008 at 1:45 am
I really need to stop commenting on this post…
But I thought I’d point out that based on the stats above, 1770 hits and average time of two minutes, Entrecard has brought you 59 hours of readership for free.
January 13th, 2008 at 1:47 am
.
Saphrym’s efforts to promote his blog (via contests and such) seemed ‘cheapened’ a lot on this post. Which brings the question to mind, “where were we all when we were just starting?”.
So why on earth would someone waste over 400 credits to get featured on a blog that has 21 RSS subscribers? — because readers can relate to him, like his writing style, and believe that the good effects of his efforts to get noticed in the blogosphere ‘where it matters’ will rub off on them when their widget is on his blog even for just a day.
You can afford to leave Entrecard because your organic readers will always have you on their RSS, and you have had the headstart that everyone wished they had.
But not everyone is as big as you. And we all have to start somewhere, one way or another.
January 13th, 2008 at 2:09 am
January 13th, 2008 at 2:12 am
The EC thing just isnt doin it for me either.. I was thinking of having a contest to give away my 1,500 or so EC credits.. Anyone interested?
January 13th, 2008 at 2:15 am
Graham: “But I thought I’d point out that based on the stats above, 1770 hits and average time of two minutes, Entrecard has brought you 59 hours of readership for free.”
That’s a nice way to put it, but do take into consideration the following that a large part of the JohnCow readers are participating in entrecard. Only 51% was new traffic as you can see in those same stats.
And with 75% bouncerates, it means 1 out of 4 visitors had a look around for two minutes. Cutting down 1770 to 880 (50% new visitors). 25% of 880 is about 220 visitors per month, or 7 per day.
Something else which occured to us; because people are chain dropping, it could very well have been someone that had 50 windows open for every card they were dropping. By the time they were finished, the closed all the windows which would explain the 2 minutes average.
Obviously its all just speculation, but we just think we’ve misinterpreted entrecard’s purpose from the beginning, looking at the replies we’re getting here and in the forums. It seems more of a community/clique building now than it is a traffic exchange site.
January 13th, 2008 at 2:17 am
I have 21 RSS susbcribers? Wow! I only had 2 before Entrecard.
January 13th, 2008 at 2:21 am
Saphrym, we just highlighted you as an example because you had the highest advertising cost when we looked. Nothing personal.
January 13th, 2008 at 2:26 am
Well, it is a social advertising network. Part social network, part ad exchange.
And keep in mind that your homepage has five full posts on it. There isn’t much of a reason for 75% of the traffic to visit another page when they can read your five latest posts from the landing page, unless they’re searching for something specific or are interested in advertising.
But Entrecard is, without a doubt, most beneficial to small and medium size blogs who can really benefit from an extra 50 visitors per day, an extra couple comments here and there, 25 more rss subscribers, a boost in Alexa rank, and a free ad on Problogger for a day. It’s not for everyone.
January 13th, 2008 at 2:26 am
I don’t take it personally at all.
January 13th, 2008 at 2:27 am
Nice Saphrym!
January 13th, 2008 at 2:30 am
I agree with Graham Langdon, it’s not for everyone but bigger should participate in order to help their regular bloggers. I recently got a spot on JohnChow EC. It’s priceless to me!
January 13th, 2008 at 2:33 am
It seems that EC is already doing this to a degree (sponsoring), but when it does start generating revenue in some way, why not use it to finance “premium users” (such as this blog) who have no real interest in using EC, but could be paid to reserve some ad space for smaller bloggers via the widget.
That benefits everyone involved; and makes sure the program retains one of its initial attractions - being able to advertise in short bursts of influential blogs. It then becomes a more economical way for anyone to advertise where they otherwise could not.
I think there is a danger of larger blogs removing the widget one by one, if they don’t receive a tangible benefit long term. And then you’re left with a collection of small blogs, and whilst there is no harm in that (I’m all for collaboration and networking), it does mean it loses part of its appeal.
January 13th, 2008 at 2:40 am
Entrecard is good right now because it’s a free advertising method for anyone’s blog. It is also a fun and popular one for now, until the next best things rolls in. And johncow.com was already taken!:)
I am new in this blogging “business” and I need some exposure like every other blogger. Entrecard offers exactly that. I don’t mind the artificial traffic directed my way as long as stats are going up, RSS subscribers and all that, because there are some people that actually stop for more than 2 minutes.
Card dropping is exactly like giving your business card away. And you only get rank credit based on how many people dropped their card on you. And when you choose where you would like your card shown I am sure you would check those sites first right?
I am not saying Entrecard couldn’t improve in time and do agree that the higher the price for a blog, the more likely is for other bloggers to check it and drop their card and therefore further increase that price. But it’s a good free traffic generator so far.
January 13th, 2008 at 2:55 am
I played a bit with EC and their price is determined by:
a) cards you drop
b) cards you receive
c) the click through rate through your widget
So it is easy to raise the credits that are required to advertise on your widget, all you got to do is drop cards like nuts, is it worth…try it and you will see (i say not that much).
In any case whoever wants some entrecards, i run contest giving away 800 entrecard credits (sorry for laming around :P).
January 13th, 2008 at 2:55 am
Well said Simon. Retaining big blogs should be on top of the list. Never figured out why Shoemoney.com removed his widget after a couple weeks.
January 13th, 2008 at 3:06 am
I actually asked him (I was curious), and he said it was because of all the advertising requests he had to decline all the time, which generated a lot of extra email about it.
January 13th, 2008 at 3:13 am
@ Saphrym
Make that 22 readers, just subscribed
you should thank cow for the free plug, im sure you’ll get more visitors now 
January 13th, 2008 at 3:23 am
[...] quitting Entrecard message revealed what’s really bothering him. It’s Saphrym. You know, that guy [...]
January 13th, 2008 at 3:28 am
January 13th, 2008 at 3:53 am
[...] Suzie posted a link to the Aussie Blogger’s Forum today - apparently, John Cow is dropping out of Entrecard. [...]
January 13th, 2008 at 3:56 am
[...] = “34d024″; var mooter_wrapper_url=”"; var run_method = “onload”; var mooter_target = “0″; The Last Drop For Entrecard saved by 1 others TayuyaUchiha bookmarked on 01/12/08 | [...]
January 13th, 2008 at 3:57 am
I just drop my card to get some exposure but not really focussing on EC…
There’s no guarantee we can get traffic especially medium class blogger like me..
January 13th, 2008 at 4:01 am
I picked it a while ago.. http://paulhartrick.com/bye-bye-entrecard
not as elegant as JohnCow but same underlying message. I get more traffic from a monthly $5 adtoll ad with the same bounce rate but 100x more unique visitors, and I don’t have to do anything for it which allows me to drink with friends not spend every waking hour in front of a “Drop Yours”, so I cut it loose.
January 13th, 2008 at 4:07 am
Talk about irony, I found johncow.com through EntreCard. I subscribed to your RSS feed because of a recommendation from an EC member (Fat Man Unleashed).
Now you just dropped EC. Nice way to thank the community.
January 13th, 2008 at 4:09 am
Well put Paul …. cut it loose!
January 13th, 2008 at 4:13 am
Rudy, what has us dropping entrecard have to do with thanking the community? Are we obliged to keep the widget up for the communities sake, eventhough we are now seeing that the system isn’t growing into what we thought it would?
Nice way to respect our decision.
January 13th, 2008 at 4:43 am
Not sure if it is the perfect, but this could be a start - http://www.thinklikeansob.com/2008/01/12/fixing-the-entrecard-system-the-solution/
January 13th, 2008 at 4:44 am
That’s why you rejected my ad… well that’s OK then!
January 13th, 2008 at 4:53 am
Cost is computed at number of drops received time 2, right? Well, I guess 200 members like to drop their cards on his widget unless of course he found another way to drop cards on himself…
January 13th, 2008 at 4:58 am
I wonder what it would do to the stats if you could only drop 25 - 50 cards per day instead of the 300. I think that it would make you save your drops and only choose the ones that you really liked. This would be a better measure of popularity if people had to be choosy about who they dropped on. I honestly don’t have time to drop 300.
January 13th, 2008 at 4:59 am
As of this exact moment, 165 people have clicked through ads on other sites to visit mine. 207 cards have been dropped at my site. So that leaves 42 people who got to my site in some different way and dropped cards on me.
So the ads I spent credits on are over 3/4 of my Entrecard traffic.
Just thought I’d share.
January 13th, 2008 at 5:02 am
Oh, we have 137 credits left after we gave away our last 1500. Who replies first with their entrecard profile link gets em!
January 13th, 2008 at 5:04 am
http://entrecard.com/user_details/789
January 13th, 2008 at 5:26 am
No offense John Cow, but you’re not active in the Entrecard community. How could your opinion really matter if you don’t participate.I’ve never seen you post in the EC forums or even say hi to anyone there. You barely have a clue how it works. Sure, you’ve checked your stats and saw your bounce rate climb and sure you’ve been there a few times to place ads or approve them. But I honestly don’t think your involvement has gotten much further past that.
You say a “outside the community - where it matters if you’re looking for traffic.”
Inside the EC community there are currently 1700 bloggers. What is the most targeted way to get traffic? Google search results. How do you get good search results? Links to your site.. Who’s responsible for posting links to your site? BLOGGERS like you John Cow and the 1700 other bloggers in Entrecard and the million blogs that are all over the internet.
Your site is about making money online through blogging yet you are dropping 1700 targeted visitors that are hungry to make money online. You could show them but instead, you say goodbye.
Not a smart business move IMHO.
January 13th, 2008 at 5:33 am
SEORob, We started with the widget because we got paid for a review. Nearly every credit we ever received has been given back to active entrecards users. We never profited from them.
If you can compare 1700 blogs inside on entrecard to the 70,000,000 outside if it, we’re starting to wonder if your name should be SEO rob.
And we’re not dropping 1700 readers, we’re dropping the entrecard system. If the users don’t want to come here anymore because we did that, they were never really interested in us in the first place.
January 13th, 2008 at 5:37 am
Many people just drop their card on some other website or blog just to get their own blog famous by showing how much ec you must give to advertise on their blog but when you visit their blog and you can see the feed subscriber is very few and the comments are not much too. They really need a system that able to control dropping card each day.
January 13th, 2008 at 5:55 am
You don’t get it at all do you. Do a search in Google for: “john cow” entrecard. There are 7,470 results, many of which have links pointing to your site and Entrecard has only been running for a couple months.
January 13th, 2008 at 6:01 am
Leave entrecard out of it and we see 39,200 results. What are you trying to say?
January 13th, 2008 at 6:14 am
[...] What’s really funny is this. He recommended that: “Getting more popular because cards are getting dropped on your blog is a natural and organic type of growth, which would be a more accurate reflection of the popularity of a blog in the place where it really matters - the blogosphere. - JohnCow.com“ [...]
January 13th, 2008 at 6:33 am
7,470 divided by 39,200 = 19% of your Google SERPS are in one way or another related to Entrecard. Entrecard is giving you a large amount of exposure in Google that you wouldn’t have had without them.
January 13th, 2008 at 6:50 am
Whatever the case may be, it’s a free advertising that works pretty well for small blogs. More traffics would mean more potential royal visitors.
January 13th, 2008 at 7:24 am
John,
I have to say I agree with you. Once again, a trip to JohnCow.com didn’t let me down. I’m not dropping EC, because it’s bringing my 6 day old blog a significant amount of traffic. But, It doesn’t in any way make since for it to cost 400 credits to advertise on such a small blog. (Yes Saphrym, you have a small blog… I had 20 subscribers my first day - Slammed!)
John, you do understand why it worked out that way though right? The initial idea was flawed from the start. I’m surprised it took this long for it to get to this point. The talk of selling EC credits (Also brought to my attention by Saphrym) sparked me writing my post “How To Kill EntreCard”. It seems that now EC has bigger problems than what I predicted would happen if people started selling their credits.
Keep up the good work John. And no matter what you may read on my blog about your site (I slammed you) know that it’s just a blog. This is one of my favorite blogs. I would expect you to be able to handle me poking a little fun at you every now and then.
January 13th, 2008 at 7:29 am
Hell, as much controversy as this post has created, I wish my blog had the highest advertising price. I’ll take all that publicity for free. John, my blog launches on Feb 1st. Feel free to say whatever you like about it….good or bad.
January 13th, 2008 at 7:30 am
By the looks of the new icon in the sidebar i`d say the Cow has had the last word on the topic.
January 13th, 2008 at 7:36 am
sweeeet exitcard widget, how do I get one? Maybe you can sell them in the EC store, price would be balance of remaining credits…..hahahahahaha
January 13th, 2008 at 7:48 am
You are making a big mistake John
I really like your blog, but the fact that you had Entrecard kept me coming back almost every day.. I just don’t know if I will be visiting so often anymore.
Please come back!
January 13th, 2008 at 8:37 am
Oh you guys saw the ExitCard? LOL
January 13th, 2008 at 10:40 am
Just curious if you noticed that 7 out of your 10 Top Commentators” are Entrecard users?
January 13th, 2008 at 11:53 am