I wrote a post about signing up with Entrecard a week or so ago… whilst it seemed like a good idea at the time, I’m slowly starting to think that, well – it’s a waste of time; a few other bloggers feel similar judging by what I read across the blogosphere.
Entrecard is great – if everyone uses it in a way that is beneficial to both parties (the blog that you are dropping a card on and yourself, of course). Now, the thing Entrecard does is get you to visit other blogs – ones that you may not have seen prior; I’ve found quite a few decent ones this way like Toni Turner (someone that’s ahead of Problogger and competing with John Chow at the top of the Make Money Online category), Bankruptcy to Millionaire, Bloggin-ads and a few others… those are a few of the blogs that I’ll do a checkup on every so often to see what they’re saying – I’ve also come across a load of shitty ones, but heck – I come across those anyways. Now, when I drop a card, I make sure to take a quick look around at the site – read the first article (and if it’s an interesting one, post a comment) and make a mental note whether I’ll be coming back or not. Nothing wrong with that, right? That was, I presume the purpose of Entrecard – to allow bloggers to find other blogs that they hadn’t known about before, and hopefully build relationships. If I think a blog is crap, I won’t visit it again, simple as – I’m sure most people will do the same.
The problem with any community is that you will always have your fair share of idiots – there are people that use Entrecard just to drop cards, and a lot of them at that. Now, there are idiots asking for an increase on the current limit of 300 a day – if you’re one of them, for shame. Dropping three f**kin’ hundred cards a day means that you’re probably not reading a lot, if anything on the blogs you’re visiting – I wouldn’t visit 300 blogs in a day and I doubt the people asking for a limit are properly visiting them either. As someone smartly calculated in the thread, even at three clicks a minute (a mere twenty seconds on each blog) that would be an hour and forty minutes of your time – I’d doubt that the idiots amassing 300 credits a day would even spend twenty seconds. It is people like that that ruin innovative ideas – and seeing that there are quite a lot of them, my feeling about Entrecard are growing less and less positive.
Yes, I will not deny that I have received a decent amount of traffic – 253 clicks direct from Entrecard to me, while I’ve received 20 clicks from ads I’ve placed – however, how much of that is useful traffic? Quantity does not always equal quality – I’d rather have ten visitors that turned out to be recent contributors (in terms of being active on the blog – comments and debating) over 253 visitors that brought out only five such people. For me, the majority (and by majority, I mean like 95%) of the traffic I’ve received from Entrecard is ‘junk traffic’ – I can only count maybe one person who has become a commentator here directly because of Entrecard, and even he isn’t too regular.
It seems that I’m not alone that Entrecard is slowly losing the buzz it had when it started out – two posts I’ve come across convey similar feelings. For a hilarious understanding of how bad the card droppers could become, read Can’t Get Rich’s post comparing Entrecard droppers to Warcraft credit farmers or Blogger Unleashed’s post on how badly Entrecard Sucks. A simple Google search will reveal quite a few more posts like that – the only reason I didn’t post more examples was because, well – the above two posts say it fine.
So that’s the card dropping idiots out of the way. The next point I’m going to make is directly related to that though, so don’t worry; it tears the promise that Entrecard made to shreds. One thing that Entrecard promised was the ability to advertise on the ‘bigger’ blogs – the likes of John Chow, Problogger et all. Whether or not you agree with their styles, one thing is for sure – they get a sh*tload of traffic, and better yet, RSS subscribers. The two aforementioned bloggers have around 15,000 and 30,000 RSS subscribers respectively, so they must be doing something right – heck, even if 5% of those visit your site, you’ll be happy – right?
To ‘celebrate’ this post I’ll be giving out 500 credits – I don’t really use them so someone that’s more into the system might as well. Just comment on this post below to stand a chance to win.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
December 31st, 2007 at 10:38 am
Long post. So, are you going to stop using Entrecard? I really like Tony Turner’s website, I found it very interesting.
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December 31st, 2007 at 10:39 am
What you say is true, there are a lot of people doing that just to earn a few more credit. For me and i think everyone else getting 10 real visitor is better then getting 20 visitor that just visit to get more credit.
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December 31st, 2007 at 10:59 am
I’m thinking of taking that crap off also. It’s ruining the design of my site and I’m not really getting anything worthwhile from Entrecard.
Starting to remind me of Blogrush…
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December 31st, 2007 at 10:59 am
P.S: I was just about to blog about this!
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December 31st, 2007 at 11:24 am
I’m waiting to see how entrecard does, the idea is great in theory but in a while the big names will take it off their blogs and then the whole place will be useless…
I’m still in for the 500 credits though!
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December 31st, 2007 at 12:19 pm
I just started my entrecard yesterday, the results are medicore. This post is IN FOR THE WIN!
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December 31st, 2007 at 12:32 pm
I think that lately, Entrecard has become a useless traffic generator like trafficswarm.com and others, and yes, once the big names figure out that 90% of the blogs they advertise through Entrecard are crappy, they will dispose of it.
I never registered so far, as I don’t have the time to visit many new blogs to get points, but I wouldn’t mind to win 500 for free
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December 31st, 2007 at 12:49 pm
There was a contest that was giving 5000 entrecard points away, so that would mean nearly a month on john chows blog.
A lot of traffic, huh?
But with the small timers, it doesn’t really do any good.
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December 31st, 2007 at 12:51 pm
I believe AdToll are giving away 13,000
Once you get past the bigger blogs, it’s not worth the time to advertise on most of the smaller blogs… they either get too few visitors or are filled with a load of shit..
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December 31st, 2007 at 2:40 pm
That was the one
I saw it on DP, I got my figures wrong!
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December 31st, 2007 at 4:53 pm
I’ve just started using the service and was beginning to notice some of the issues you have raised – EntreCard visitors to my website have a greater bounce rate, spend less time on my website and hence visit less pages.
It’s not perfect but I’d definitely rank EntreCard as one of the better blog promotion services I’ve used for a small blog that just wants to get it’s name out there and to get some numbers under its belt!
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December 31st, 2007 at 6:26 pm
I wonder who the first person to hit that 300/day limit was. I’m sure there are better ways to publicize your blog in an hour and forty minutes every day than Entrecard.
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December 31st, 2007 at 6:34 pm
I’m very glad you like my blog
As for this post, this is some good reading material for us. I do agree that Entrecard is somewhat putting themselves into deep shi* and hopefully it’ll be fixed before it’s too late.
-Mike
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December 31st, 2007 at 9:07 pm
Ah well…. BlogRush started out with a big bang, worked wonders for many people, and then eventually died down.
Same was the case with Blogexplosion.
Don’t expect Entrecard to be any different. Maybe, and just MAYBE, it might last for a little longer than those mentioned above.. but.. in the end.. the idiots take over, quality goes down, gets replaced by quantity, and the idiots jump with joy..
Ah.. these ‘traffic exchanges’ were never good.. atleast.. not for me
BTW… Jason..
the eBook sale went through. Nice and sound…
$950 sitting in my PayPal now
Thanks for the SP Credits…
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December 31st, 2007 at 9:34 pm
wow I just check my entre card account and john chow wants to advertise on my site lol.
Entrecard is only good to advertise on high blogger you advertise low you get 2-3 clicks
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January 1st, 2008 at 2:57 am
I think Entrecard should put up some minimum time requirement. I mean, before you could drop a card you should stay in a blog for like 20-30 seconds or so. But I guess people can still come around that.
Personally, I don’t like dropping cards much since I’m just stacking up credits I’m not using.
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January 1st, 2008 at 5:53 am
I’ll take those 500 credits off your hands
Actually, yes, I do agree that the traffic is ridiculously unimportant … except that you get a kick out of seeing the spikes. I have met a few people I otherwise wouldn’t have met though, and gained a handful of subscribers, so that’s a good thing.
I just wish the darn thing would load faster.
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January 1st, 2008 at 8:00 am
[...] (the amount of comments on the last post); the number drawn was 15. Were you the 15th commentator? Head on over and have a look…
. I racked up another 100 or so credits during the night, so I’ll [...]
January 1st, 2008 at 3:04 pm
Long post! Entrecard, like all other traffic generators is open for abuse. That’s one of the reasons I don’t get involved with any of them. They may sprint out of the gate, but rarely finish the race (remember BlogRush?).
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January 1st, 2008 at 4:30 pm
Grats to Usman for winning!
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January 1st, 2008 at 5:37 pm
Congratulations on winning the entrecard points, and to Hamza for the great sale!
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January 1st, 2008 at 7:33 pm
What the ‘fook’..!!
I missed it by 1 fykin comment
@Sawan..
Thanks mate
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January 1st, 2008 at 9:17 pm
Good point. Those idiots really irritate me. Dam them! I have found many interesting sites via entrecard.
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January 2nd, 2008 at 9:25 am
Hey, thanks for the plug. I’m glad you enjoy my writings (I’ll be back into a regular posting schedule starting today).
I’m in agreement with you that entrecard sends alot of “fluff” visitors. And I’ll admit I’m a card dropping whore. BUT I found your blog through about 3 different places–entrecard being one of them, but I kept getting sent here. And now I’m a regular reader (if not always the most active commenter). Since it’s free, it doesn’t really hurt, in the week I took off from posting (and I wasn’t even advertising on any blogs) I was still getting 50 or so EC visitors a day.
But I think with a little thought you can turn EntreCard users into readers with good writing and intriguing headlines (or entrecard contests). I know I was able to fill up 90% of my scratchback widget by offer 100 ECs to “tippers”. Even though I was asking for only a dollar, I think that’s pretty good considering the “unestablished-ness” and new blog smell of http://www.bankruptcytomillionaire.com
I don’t think EC will last forever, BUT it is good for getting some free traffic without trying too hard, while it lasts.
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January 7th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
[...] The free t-shirt. Now, no offense Tyler, but after this post of mine on how bad Entrecard was turning (and you know the credits I tried to give away? The winner didn’t even claim [...]