How to achieve an EntreCard rush

Posted on August 7th, 2008 by Richard Catto 2,389 views

I think a lot of bloggers are aware of the “rush” effect of certain blogger’s social communities on their blog traffic and are usually very keen to learn how to exploit techniques to maximise their traffic.

Why do bloggers crave traffic?

Because traffic translates into ad dollars. The more traffic a web site gets, the more attractive it is to advertisers.

There are a multitude of articles written about how to exploit Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Mixx etc. and many who claim to be able conjure traffic at will from these sources, but frankly they all suffer from an inconsistent ability to DELIVER.

At certain times, they fare much better than at others. But eventually, they all suffer from diminishing marginal returns. Part of the reason for this diminishing effect is that there exists a kind of “arms race” between the bloggers and the social network. The social network actively seeks to discourage attempts to exploit it. They prefer to have traffic generated via organic means, i.e. naturally, as a result of posting a great article that everyone is interested in reading, rather than deliver a constant flow of traffic to blogs which do not rise above mediocrity.

While this is a noble goal for them to pursue, it still leaves the ordinary blogger scratching his head and wondering what to do to get the traffic he needs to make the ad dollars he seeks.

I believe the EntreCard community fills that needed gap. With EC, it is not merely a case of submitting your blog posts to it and then sitting back and waiting for the traffic to arrive, which is the case with many other social networks, such as StumbleUpon.

Even when lots of traffic is generated by, for instance, StumbleUpon, the bounce rate is usually ridiculously high with few of the readers contributing to one’s blog by way of leaving a comment.

Bloggers want traffic, but they also seek to expand their regular readership base and to get their readers to participate in the discussions. This builds their own personal community and adds interest to their blog.

So how does one gain an EntreCard rush?

By dropping the maximum number each day – i.e. 300 drops.

This used to be quite difficult to achieve, but with the recent introduction of the EntreBar, which is a toolbar add-on for Firefox 3 web browser, this task has been made a whole lot easier.

But it’s not just a matter of dropping on 300 random EC blogs, how you drop is also important.

For instance, if you dropped on a random set of 300 EC blogs, I have observed that you can expect that only a third of them will drop back. So for your 300 drops, you’d get roughly 100 drops back.

But you can do better than that.

Over time, by examing your drops inbox you can identify those EC bloggers who fairly consistently drop back on you if you drop on them. Favourite them. Unfavourite all those who rarely return your drops. Over time, your list of favourites will contain only those EC bloggers who consistently reciprocal drop on you.

Then use your EntreBar to browse your favourites and drop on them FIRST.

If you have, for example, 100 favourite EC blogs, that leaves you with 200 drops left over to do. Divide that in half and drop your next 100 on blogs that have something in common either with your blog’s overall theme or in common with recent articles you’ve written. By doing that you may find that some of those who return your drops will find something about your blog which resonates with what they are doing and feel interested enough to do more than just drop on your blog.

The last third of your drops can be done on a random selection of EC blogs. The EntreBar conveniently offers a random selection option to make this easy.

But whatever dropping strategy you adopt, you will find that you get the maximum amount of traffic from EntreCard if you drop the maximum number each day.

So it takes effort, and that is what distinguishes EntreCard from other social networks. In that respect, EC gives you more control over your traffic because there is something concrete you can DO everyday to make it happen. You have less control over the other networks and therefore your results are more random and more inconsistent.

If you have a favourite method for maximising your EntreCard traffic and reader involvement in your blog, I’d be interested to hear it. Please leave a comment sharing your experience.

Tags: ad dollars, blog traffic, EntreCard
Filed under blogs |

6 Responses to “How to achieve an EntreCard rush”

1. Enfotainer Says:
   August 7th, 2008 at 12:30

   Nice article. I’m dedicatedly doing 300 drops per day, and as I see it I’m only getting around 200 drops in return…so am persistently checking the loopholes and deleting those who’ve not been dropping me for quite a while. Dropped you too with hopes that we can be drop-friends…LOL

   Enfotainers last blog post..How To Hack Feedcount

2. Richard Catto Says:
   August 7th, 2008 at 13:30

   I’ve favourited you.

   Currently I’m still hovering around the 100 return drops a day.

   Thanks for stopping by.

3. sailor Says:
   August 7th, 2008 at 18:09

   It was interesting reading about the new happenings at Entrecard. I have left EC and I do not think I will be going back in the near future, maybe with my smaller blog, I don’t know. I used to drop 600 total per day from two blogs, this was murder. On average I received about a 50% return on this effort. Since leaving EC my blog’s bounce rate has gone down from 89% to 51%.

   I do not advertise on my site so this bounce rate was not really a worrying factor. Interestingly enough, even with the bounce rate coming down at present I am still getting quite a bit of traffic from SU and Social Median. I have however stopped showing full posts on my blog (still have them in the feed) and it is most probably this that is bringing the bounce rate down.

   sailors last blog post..Adding Images to our Content

4. fragileheart Says:
   August 8th, 2008 at 04:11

   Interesting indeed. Love this facebook layout btw. I was taken aback and had to do a doubletake. It’s so strange my drops vary. I only really return drops from my inbox and then go on to my favourites but the amount of drops I get everyday vary so much. Oh well.

   fragilehearts last blog post..Today is a geeky day indeed

5. Richard Catto Says:
   August 8th, 2008 at 04:46

   @sailor: I think you suffered from drop burn-out there, sailor. I can quite imagine that doing 600 drops everyday would quite quickly become a major pain-in-the-ass.

   Doing 300 drops takes me about 2 hours. 4 hours is way too much time out of a day.

   I think you may well be right about your strategy of displaying only an excerpt of your posts on the front page. I think I may investigate that at some point and see what effect it has here.

   If you decide to re-join the EC community, I’ll drop on you everyday.

6. Richard Catto Says:
   August 8th, 2008 at 04:49

   @fragileheart: I’m hoping that the designer of this FaceBook layout will release another one, reflecting FB’s latest design.

   I saw a big jump in my return drops today – 48% up on the previous day. The previous day, I dropped on 300 random blogs to see what I got. I got exactly 100 return drops.

   But today I dropped first on all those in my inbox, so it definitely does pay to recipro-drop.

   By the end of the month, I hope to target a return drop of 250 per my 300. I wonder if anyone has been able to achieve more than 300 return drops?

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.