For Bloggers, Entrecard Strives to Make a Difference

Posted on July 16th, 2008 by Richard Catto 1,561 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 »