The Entrecard Experiment
I decided to try out some Entrecard advertising a few days ago to see how it performed. Up until then, I’d just been letting it sit in the sidebar and build up credits and I hadn’t even logged into my account in at least a week or so. I decided I wanted to advertise on John Chow’s site, seeing as thousands of people visit it every day I thought it would be a good investment. The cost of advertising on his site at the time was 2048 credits, and I was a little short so I bought some on eBay for $5 or so (who has time to actually drop their own cards??). I took out an ad on his site, let it sit for a day and checked that stats to see how many clicks it had generated: 53. Really? I guess it’s not THAT bad, seeing as CTR’s for these types of ads are always gonna be pretty low, but seriously it really seems like a waste of time.
If you’re one of those people who loves dropping cards, I’d like to hear from you as to how much traffic you’ve actually generated through Entrecard. To me, it seems like a waste of time, as the largest number of clicks I’ve received from any single widget has been just over 100. You might say “well I drop cards all day and don’t buy credits like you did so it doesn’t cost me anything,” but it actually does cost you something: your time. If you’re sitting there for hours dropping credits and barely generating any traffic from your ads, what’s the point? You might as well invest that time into more profitable marketing strategies. However, if you’ve had success with Entrecard and haven’t had to spend your entire life dropping cards, feel free to fill me in on any stats and tips you have, and maybe I’ll send you some credits in return (LOL!)
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You’re completely right about the AD in john chow dot com.
I had the same bad experience, in my case was even worse I paid 2,048 credits and only received 21 clicks. I got so mad when I saw the results.
I read his blog everyday but I won’t invest my credits in his blog anymore.
I’ve invested in some small blogs and had pretty good results.
To tell you the truth Entrecard has worked out pretty good for me, I even created a contest to help other people too.
Success!
I don’t advertise with Entrecard often as I’ve found the results to be fairly poor, but I do go around and drop cards regularly. I check the sites that have dropped cards on my sites first and visit their advertisers. Visiting sites works well for me as I get hundreds of visits to my listed blogs from Entrecard members each day.
FYI: i bought your book from DP and got the link from there. I like this blog a lot and read all your posts. It took me 2 hours
EC isn’t a total waste. I have received visitors from there who read and comment (although not as much as I would like).
When I was active, which was a few months ago, the best thing to do was advertise on new blogs and cheap blogs and not to worry about the expensive ones. Buying ad spots that are 2,000 credits is a waste of time. Most of those blogs don’t receive anywhere close to 2,000 visitors, nontheless EC card droppers. So if you are in it purely for the credits it is the wrong game.
However, if you want new readers and commenters, EC is OK. It isn’t great by any means, but it is fair for new blogs that wouldn’t be read otherwise.
I also saw your link on johnChow.com, i have a question for you…
Upto how much extent your website traffic was affected when your website was shown for complete one day on johnChow.com??
Waiting for your asnwer soon!!
It only received 53 extra hits so not much really. Like Gary said it’s probably better to buy on multiple cheaper sites.
hey you can delete this because I know it’s off-topic but I don’t think your contact page is working.
Thanks for letting me know, I’ll take a look at it. If you need me my email is info[at]stakloaded[dot]net
Hey there, been reading your blog for a short while now. great post I was thinking about buying credits for EC but now I’ve decided to just put ads on tons of cheap sites, I’ll let you know how it works.
Nice blog, you have a very good graphic artist. I like their style. Very Hollywood indeed.
Thanks, I actually designed it myself
John Chow’s site is over-rated. I advertize on blogs I have visited that I like. I feel others may like it too. I never understood what the appeal of Chow’s site is, I have seen it and it was pretty blah.
i do not care much or do not waste much time on dropping EC … i drop on few blogs which i read daily or few new blogs too like i landed on here too ….
i have a Q … how can we increase the value of our blog in EC ..
Value only increases based on how many people want to advertise on it, it’s totally independent of traffic or anything else.
I had to give up dropping cards as well. Unfortunately Entrecard is a total waste of time. Recently I have spent around 7000 EC for advertising on different blogs , their price ranging from 64 EC up to 1024 each. I ended up spending 7000 EC for just 265 click to my blog. That is pretty bad I suppose. If we divide 7000 by 265 we get nearly 26.4 credits wasted for one unique visitor. Assuming 1000 credits are 9$ , that means every click costs 0.23 $ cents. You are better off advertising through Google or Yahoo , because the traffic from Entrecard is 90% bounce traffic , people are interested in making up credits and not reading your blog. It`s way to expensive. The only way Entrecard would work better is to lower their advertising cost and find another way to gain credits , not by surfing hundreds of blogs like crazy everyday. I think I will let my credit balance grow and let it for sale. So anyone interested can contact me , or just leave a comment on my blog.
Good Luck
I am relative new to entrecard, but I found your blog in entrecard and I think is very useful blog, also I have found a lot of useful blogs on entrecard and others that are crap.
I believe entrecard could be useful if blogs receives traffic from other sources specially from search engines so the visitors will find you entrecard Ad on other blogs and they may visit it. Entrecard is great idea, but people do not know how to use it. I have seen many people trying to advertise in my blog but the problem is that their niche is very different to mine, so what I do on those cases is reject the ad. One of my blogs is related to artificial intelligence, why are they trying to advertise there if their blogs are from a different niche? What the hell is the relation between an artificial intelligence and neural networks blog with making money online? Do people knows anything about marketing?
THAT IS THE BIGGEST MISTAKE WITH ENTRECARD USERS. They want traffic and profit from their blogs but they do not know anything about marketing.
Other big mistake is their banner. PLEASE!!! if your are advertising your BLOG use a relevant banner, one that attracts visitors. I have seen many people using their picture or a picture of other person in the widget, why should I use my photo on the widget? Please do not take it personal, but which is the relation of a picture of a girl in the widget with making money online? At least put some money on her hands. Entrecard is a free service and a good service but people is not using it properly.
Your failure with John Chow blog, was you banner picture because is not related with making money online. A girl is not synonymous of making money, it may attract people from a dating blog or from match.com but not from an online business blog.
Entrecard is a good piece of marketing, but if you want it to work, put your self to work first.
My advice to all those how want to increase their traffic is:
-Establish you blog niche.
-Do some SEO, PLEASE!! DO SEO search engines are the money makers. Make a keyword research.
-Use entrecard properly. Design you entrecard widget wisely and advertise on related niche blogs.
-Make sure that the blog where you want to advertise at least is listed on google, do a search about a phrase from the blog and If Google find it, visitors will find it and they will find your ad.
I have a business blog, and still I am not receiving the traffic that I want, but the little advertising that I have done had results. I am not planning to use entrecard as my biggest traffic source but at least I am using it properly.
PS. Do not take it personal this is just my opinion.
Best Regards.
Daniel.