How to achieve an EntreCard rush

Posted on August 7th, 2008 by Richard Catto 2,367 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 Comments »

The new EntreCard toolbar is EC on crack!

Posted on August 5th, 2008 by Richard Catto 1,550 views

This past Sunday, August 03 2008, saw EntreCard roll out its best new innovation so far – the EntreBar toolbar for the Firefox web browser.

With this new toolbar, EntreCarders can easily navigate the EC community of bloggers and accomplish so many things.

Features:

Power drop

I’ve never before found it so easy to quickly navigate the EC network of blogs and rack up the drops

Navigate inbox

to recipro-drop on all those who have dropped on me

Locate news EC blogs

I can find the cheapest sites, the most expensive, the most popular, random etc. in all the different categories

Lacking still, however, is the ability to navigate by location. I’d like to, for instance, browse all the EC blogs in South Africa. I can’t do that yet, because EC does not tag blogs by location.

But it’s a vast improvement to my use of EntreCard, which remains the most successful blog promotion community yet established, in my opinion. If you have a blog, I recommend strongly that you join EntreCard.

Tags: EntreCard
Filed under blogs | 2 Comments »

For Bloggers, Entrecard Strives to Make a Difference

Posted on July 16th, 2008 by Richard Catto 1,558 views

Full disclosure: this post is being written as an entry in this EntreCard contest. To avoid being penalised by Google, the preceding link is nofollow.

It’s been a while since I last wrote about EntreCard (since Sunday January 13 2008, in fact).

EntreCard is a service for bloggers, and its goals have been to help bloggers become more successful by increasing their exposure and thus driving more traffic to them.

To that end, EntreCard set up a system of credits whereby visitors to a blog gain an EntreCard credit by dropping their "calling card" (aka their EntreCard) by clicking the Drop link on the EntreCard widget which the blog publishes. When they do that, both they and the blog owner gains one EC credit each. Obviously, for this to work, both the blog owner and the blog reader must be part of the EntreCard network.

EC credits are used to purchase 125 x 125 pixel adverts on blogs which are part of the EC network. One of the most controversial aspects of the EC network is how the pricing for this advertising works. This is determined solely by an EC algorithm. Blog owners have no say at all in the pricing of their EC advert widget. So instead of being market based (using, e.g. an auction system), the price is centrally controlled.

Only blog owners may join the EntreCard network at the moment and to remain a member, they must display the EC widget.

One of the earliest detectable problems with the EntreCard system, is the high bounce rate that the EC network creates for bloggers. What this means is that, in the rush to amass the maximum of 300 EC credits per day possible, some EC bloggers load blogs, click the Drop link and then exit the site without reading a single blog post or leaving a comment on the blog. To many bloggers this seems to be a self-defeating exercise. Gaining EC credits is not the ultimate goal of bloggers, rather building their own involved community of readers is.

To put the brakes on these quick-droppers and increase participation in blog commenting, EC has adopted a number of measures. Firstly, EC recently outlawed quick-drop pages which are defined as any page upon which no blog content is published save for the EC widget, and perhaps a few adverts. The EC blog has also introduced various contests, such as CommentRUSH to encourage EC bloggers to comment on a chosen blog. EC has also led their users to Digg to get their users to use Digg to promote EC blog posts they enjoy.

The latest initiative of EntreCard has been to partner with SezWho which provides a method of tracking commenters and their reputations across SezWho’s installed base of blogs.

EntreCard is running a "secret" contest (with EC credits as prizes) to motivate EC bloggers (such as myself) to actively promote this new partnership, not only on their own blogs, but also, rather controversially, via a third party social network service – twitter. This could be seen as inciting their users to spam twitter.

Even more controversially, the EC "secret" contest offers bonus credits to those EC bloggers willing to use a special EC supplied "bonus title" as the title for their post, and furthermore EC stipulates that bloggers using such a "bonus title" may not disclose that they are doing so. Anyone who knows even a little bit about SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) will realise that these bonus titles are being crafted by EC to game search engine results.

Full disclosure: this blog post is using an EC supplied "bonus title" as the title for this blog post.

I believe it is a pity that EC decided to adopt these rather dubious and opaque methods to promote their new partnership with SezWho, because it does nothing but detract from an initiative that could prove very rewarding for EC bloggers.

EC is augmenting SezWho’s benefits by awarding EC credits (up to a maximum of 150 EC per day) to EC bloggers who comment on other EC blogs. Credits are awarded according to the rating the comment achieves. Spam comments receive no reward.

FURTHER READING:
Desperation at SezWho? Partners with Izea, Entrecard, and Creative Weblogging
Announcing the Partnership of Entrecard and SezWho

Tags: EntreCard, SezWho
Filed under Blogging | 6 Comments »