BasBasBas.com

Tag: advertising

  • So long, and thanks for all the drops! (8 Reasons to Quit Entrecard)

    I am leaving Entrecard. For a while now, I’ve been thinking about it and recent events have made the decision all the more easier. I’ve turned off advertising on my blog. When my last ad finishes, on the 16th, the widget goes. Until that time I’m still returning drops.

    Entrecard is a social network for bloggers who can drop by each others’ blogs and earn credits in return. With these credits, they can advertise on each others blogs. A nice system, but in the end it’s not worth it for me.

    8 Reasons to Quit Entrecard

    If you’re a blogger using Entrecard, don’t take any of the following points personal. If any of them insult you, please keep reading on until the end of this article.

    1. Poorly invested time. Unless you’re on a very fast connection, it’s going to take you a considerable amount of time per day to get the best out of Entrecard. To get the best out of it, 300 drops per day is a must and its results are spectacular then. However, your time is better invested in discovering and commenting on relevant blogs, using Twitter and more actively engaging the blogosphere, because…
    2. Entrecard traffic has low value. Much of the traffic generated through Entrecard just inflates your statistics and increases your bounce rate. Many people just “drop and run”, as it’s dubbed in the Entrecard community. In the end, the traffic has more value than that of most social bookmarking services, but is for the most part still of low value.
    3. Bad quality blogs. I’ve had it with low quality blogs. There are too many of them. Poorly written content, grammar and spelling mistakes all over the place, lots of sponsored posts, bad designs. Stay away from me.
    4. Non-interesting blogs. I suppose making a blog about your cats is fun, and I’m sure it’s fun for many others to read it, but I’m simply not your target group. You don’t need me on your blog and I don’t want to be there to be honest. There are many other types of blogs I am not interested in that I had to visit because of returning ‘drops’.
    5. I don’t care about your ‘hubby‘. Dear Stay/Work At Home Mom (SAHM/WAHM) bloggers, please erase this word out of your vocabulary. If I see it one more time I will puke. Never thought this word would end up on my own blog. Refering to your spouse like this in every one of your blog posts is like two ugly people making out right in front of me. My stomach cannot help but revolt. Sorry. I guess Entrecard has brought me to your blog, but I doubt you really want someone like me there.
    6. Linkback building obsession. My God, is there an immense obsession with getting linked back on Entrecard. It’s good to get links back to your blog, because it helps to build your status in search engines. Google Bombs are proof of this. Entrecard is a BAD place to build your linkback. Firstly, you want to get linked back from blogs and sites that are relevant to your site. I don’t need topdropper links back to my page from blogs about cars.
      Secondly, I don’t want to give “link juice” out to unrelated blogs. It’s unfair to the related, relevant or highly interesting blogs that I link to. More about this on SeoBlogr. I read a better article about it recently, found it via Entrecard, but forgot to bookmark it. Doh! 🙁 So stop caring about your Google PageRank (PR) people, I have zero PR and I get a LOT of search engine traffic. Start worrying about writing good content, writing some linkbait and having high keyword density (but not too high or you’ll get flagged as spam 😉 ).
    7. The captain is drunk. I’ve put a lot of energy into the community on the Entrecard ship and we’ve sailed far and become friends, but the captain has been making poor choices and I suspect he’s incapable of taking this censorship much further. I love the community on board, but I’m getting off before we hit an iceberg. Graham, the owner of Entrecard, is childish and yesterday banned one of Entrecard’s top users. As you can see in the comments, many people are outraged. I think this was the final proof of Graham’s immaturity and incapacity to make the right decisions at the right time. Although Turnip‘s tweet wasn’t a great show of maturity either. 😉 While Graham is saying the negative publicity is only good for Entrecard, his poor leadership is not and new and current members will soon realize that.

      8. (more…)

  • EntreCard my way

    EC LogoWhile using EntreCard, I’m doing a couple of things to add even more value to my actions or drops. Since it’s rainy and grey outside (can’t wait to go to Turkey), it’s a perfect day to write about it.

    Firstly, I’ll explain what EntreCard is. Secondly, I’ll go through some of the basics for all the readers who are not members yet. Thirdly, I’ll explain what I do in the form of some tips and pointers, so hopefully the whole EntreCard experience will become better for all of us. 🙂

    I find it extraordinarily hard to explain what EntreCard actually is. It’s a blogging community, it’s an advertising system, it’s a way to network with other blogs… On the main page Entrecard talks about themselves as “your businesscard 2.0”. The most essential thing about Entrecard is surfing to other community members’ blogs and “dropping” a card on their Entrecard widget (see top right sidebar). By dropping cards, you earn credits, which you then can spend to advertise on sites that are on Entrecard.

    Entrecard partnered with SezWho, a comment tracking system, so that it can give you credits every time you comment on another person’s blog. Great way to stimulate community-forming on members’ blogs! So as you’re going through your daily dropping, be sure to leave comments! Maybe you get tons of comments nowadays and they don’t mean much to you, but remember that time when one or two comments did matter. Comment on other blogs and experience the gratitude and reciprocation.

    Something else I do regarding comments on my own blog is I generally give them 5 stars through SezWho. What can I say? I love every one of them. This helps people to build their rep on the net.

    If you like a certain post on someone’s site, or like the whole overall site… Stumble it! Digg it! Whatever you use… Just do it! Write a Tweet about it, it doesn’t matter. When using Entrecard, many people are so wrapped up in it, that they forget to give a “thumbs up” for content they like. Start Stumbling content you like of other Entrecard users and you’ll notice that the next time people you stumbled visit your blog, they might leave a stumble before leaving.

    If you place an ad on a site… Stumble or Digg the site! Either when you apply for it, or on the day it’s actually running. Increase your chances of visitors in any way you can.

    Reciprocate drops. Check your inbox and reciprocate. That’s the easiest way to get a basic reader community on your site via Entrecard.

    Put some statistics on your website. I generally check for three things:

    • Number of subscribers to the site.
    • FEEDJIT. Since my blog’s about Istanbul, Turkey, it helps me to assess where most people’s visitors are from. I find that Europeans are generally more interested in my site than people from Indonesia or the Philippines.
    • BlogCatalog. It allows me to see how often the blog gets visitors. It shows the names of BlogCatalog community members and shows how long ago they visited the site. It gives me an indication of the traffic the site gets.

    When none of these are present, I can be a bit wary about spending my EC credits, but not always of course. A lot of Entrecard is about experimenting! After all, it’s just credits you’re spending, so spend away.

    Monitor your EC statistics, award your top ten droppers publically (giving an incentive for others to drop on your site regularly), and make friends! Because EC offers such a friendly environment, if you’re the least bit active, it’s impossible not to make friends. 😉
    If you liked this post, consider subscribing by RSS or email.

Related Posts Widget for Blogs by LinkWithin