Is EntreCard doing Any Good for You?
Posted by Patrick on March 26th, 2008
Sometime ago, someone commented on this blog saying I should switch my BlogRush widget for EntreCard if I wanted real good traffic. I think I the next day I was kicking BlogRush away, giving prime time visibility to EntreCard. Was that a wise move?
Love At First Sight
Ok, maybe not that much, but still, I was impressed by the traffic I got almost instantly. And since my advertising price was very cheap (still is btw), many advertisers were knocking at the door to get their banner displayed on Piggy Bank Pie. At one point I had to reject requests because there were simply too many adverts at the same time.
So I surfed the EntreCard wave for a while, and was not bothering about launching campaigns. I was collecting EntreCard credits, receiving traffic, and that was enough. However, when I decided it was time for me to launch campaigns on A-list blogs, I saw the other side of EntreCard.
A-list Advertising
To this day, I was not able to get advertising gigs on the A-list blogs I’m interested in. Ok, I understand very well that I’m not the only one hoping to show my banner on ProBlogger, but still, there should be an easier way to get in the waiting queue. I check on a daily basis and sometimes a few times a day, but I just can’t get the spots I’m waiting for.
Traffic = Crap?
As I wrote earlier, I was pleased by the traffic I received when I started using EntreCard. To this day, it’s my third biggest referring site behind Sphinn and StumbleUpon -SU being king of the hill- even though I’ve never launched an advertising campaign! So you should hear me say how great this is, don’t you think? Well, not really. I’m disappointed, I should say.
When looking at your traffic sources stats, it’s very important to also pay attention to the Average Time on Site value, which is the average duration of a visit to your site. You will then compare each traffic sources with your blog’s global average time to evaluate the referrer’s traffic quality. This is particularly useful when receiving visits from hundreds of stumblers: take your daily stats, you’ll see StumbleUpon as the top referring site, then check the Average Time on Site, and you’ll be able to determine if stumblers took the time to read your post. If the average time is below 30 seconds, either they were all speed reading ninjas, or your content was not appealing enough for them.
So, back to where we were. I recently checked the Average Time on Site for EntreCard visitors and found it was 30 seconds on a global site average of 2 minutes 15 seconds. And, if you dig a little bit deeper, EntreCard’s bounce rate is skyrocketing at 97.6%!!! Just for the record, StumbleUpon’s bounce rate averages 46.23%.
There are 2 possible explanations for these disappointing results: 1) card droppers, or 2) the lack of advertising campaigns from my part. But the more I think about it, the more I believe that card droppers have broken the system. And after reading The Last Drop for EntreCard by the cow, I think I’m bang on.
How about you?
I’d like to hear from you guys about this. Firstly, do you have the same stats as I do? Secondly, I would be interested to hear about bloggers who’ve setup advertising campaigns on A-list blogs versus average blogs. Did you get that many visitors? Are those visitors more card droppers? Please share your thoughts over to comments.
Don't miss a post in 2008, subscribe to receive PiggyBankPie's articles by Email. Using an RSS reader? Subscribe to our Full RSS Feed.
This Post Was Sponsored by:
Add me as a Friend on StumbeUpon - Blogging Collaboration Starts Here, Join Me Over at StumbleUpon
Follow me on Twitter - Let's Tweet Together!
Need a Little Hug? - rssHugger
March 26th, 2008 at 7:17 pm
Well, it’s been a bit of a mixture for me. I get a lot of 5 second, high bounce traffic, but I have also discovered and been discovered by quality bloggers in my niche. I don’t know yet whether I will keep the widget. I get good traffic from some ads, though like you I am disappointed that I haven’t been able to place on the widgets of any of the A-listers.
March 26th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
I think that the average time is a poor indicator. We know that there are a lot of droppers that will make the stats look bad. But can you see a concrete number as to how many visitors stayed over a minute?
Across the board, most members report the same experience. Most members drop a lot of cards and find blogs they enjoy reading. If you drop a couple hundred cards a day, only certain blogs will catch your attention. But just consider this a good way to test different types of posting, and if your average time goes up, you know you are grabbing more people’s attention.
March 27th, 2008 at 12:49 am
I’ve only recently started exploring entrecard but I have to say it does seem an odd system that would promote exactly the behaviour you describe.
with any of these traffic schemes that rely on gaining credit by visiting other sites, the motivation for clicking through is immediately suspect. They are clicking through to get people to their site, not because they want to visit your, and this is the fundamental flaw in the scheme.
March 27th, 2008 at 3:29 am
I think most of the entrecard droppers are quick droppers. They come and go. It means that the reader don’t read the article.
However, my photo blog seem to have lower bounce rate than my other blogs, because of the photo. One good fact about the entrecard is that I don’t need to look for the blogs in the same niche. They will come to you. You can easily figure out why you are better or worst.
March 27th, 2008 at 11:56 am
I think that a lot of promo sites are great but like Terence said they come and go. This reminds me of those large glass brandy snifters your drop your business card in to get a free meal or drink. A great way to get email addresses but the people were already there.
Another problem is that this will not work on the dreaded Wordpress.com blog becuase of the JAVA Script
March 27th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
It just inspire me to see my traffic meter go up but knowing that most are fake traffic, doesn’t give me any harm at all. As long as it doesn’t hurt my earnings or anything, I dont care if it’s real or fake. If I know I have clicks on my Adsense, then I know it didn’t came from entrecard traffic. But who knows?
March 27th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Wow, Graham took the time to write a response? Lol… um, maybe he shouldn’t check out my post on “If you didn’t have Entrecard, your blog would have no visitors!” and how people manipulate the Alexa ratings with fake traffic.
But Patrick, I have the same stats as you. I even took a screenshot on my Entrecard article. But I liked the whole purpose of Entrecard in meeting new bloggers and being introduced to new blogs, but there are too many people chain dropping or whatever the term is so I rarely use it nowadays.
And for those people that rely so heavily on Entrecard for their traffic (and NOW has great Alexa ratings), they’re in for a rude awakening.
Jay
March 27th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
I get 3-6 visitors a day from it (all with high bounce rates), and so I can only feel bad for the 100 blogs ranked lower than mine in my category, as I doubt they are getting ANY traffic at all.
However, I don’t know if I will remove it because my 3rd sidebar is completely empty anyway and a free 3-6 visitors a day is better than not having them right now.
March 27th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
Yes, I too have noticed the same thing. In fact, just last night I was wondering if I should remove the Entrecard widget and forget about Entrecard all together.
I do the drops as well (when I have time), but when I drop I do take the time to read a few of the blogger’s posts, and I have found and subscribed to some great blogs in my niche by doing so. However, many of the Entrecard droppers don’t do this. Instead, they drop and leave.
March 27th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
I was not expecting such a high number of comments for this post. Wow, thanks guys for commenting.
@Graham: Thanks for stopping by. You know, I wrote this post hoping someone (you) from EntreCard would notice it and hopefully do something to prevent card droppers from tricking the system. Just the fact that you commented on this post is great and I thank you for it. I’m just hoping you will think of a scenario that will make things better. As you can see here, the debate created lots of reactions and to my total surprised this was submitted to Sphinn & SU and I even received comments via the BZ submission. So clearly, users are concerned by this issue. I hope you will implement something that will prevent misbehavers from tricking the system. It is kind of weird to see unknown blogs with such a high advertising prices, higher than John Chow and Pro Blogger… something’s not right. Mathematically it makes no sense, unless they are playing against the rules. Again, thank you for stopping by and taking the time to comment.
Patrick
March 29th, 2008 at 2:04 am
Update: Just checked my stats from the past two days from Entrecard traffic… 2 seconds spent on my site and a 96% bounce rate…
Figured you’d get a laugh with me!
Jay
March 29th, 2008 at 9:35 am
@Jay: Hey man, what can I say, at least it proves the EntreCard widget loads pretty fast
March 29th, 2008 at 9:39 am
Hi,
Sure enough - I checked my stats and sure enough the bounce rate is pretty high (about 85% - jeez). But like others have said, it does give you an opportunity to find some great blogs (that’s how I found this site).
Regards,
Mo
March 29th, 2008 at 7:01 pm
[…] http://piggybankpie.com/blogging/is-entrecard-doing-any-good-for-you/ […]
March 30th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
[…] thoughts on EntreCard and if you think it brings real good traffic. I invite you to read my post: Is EntreCard doing Any Good for You? __________________ Patrick […]
March 31st, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Entrecard has not really grabbed me. I was disappointed in the quality of the sites when i looked through the directory. I did not think I would get much from it, so I am surprised that the traffic I am getting from it is noticeable although not huge. But considering I am not doing anything with it that is more than I expected.
April 2nd, 2008 at 2:44 pm
I got a lot of quick hits the first few days, but after that just dribbles of traffic. Bad thing was I started visiting some other webs they had and the firewall and virus software starting beeping, then even one of their cards set off and ID Theft buzzer on my web(not a big deal, spoofed URL), so I dropped them. Good idea, poor execution. I will check back with them, blogcatalog or mybloglog seems to be just as effective.
Mark
April 10th, 2008 at 11:18 am
When you write about the community, you will always get people commenting.
This post will need to be updated because of the new EntreCard ad system. It’s no longer about chain dropping to jack up the price of my ad. It’s now about how many people are in your queue. I just dropped 256 credits on you, which is pretty much everything I got. I think I’ll by EC bankrupt by the end of the week.
April 10th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
@Rudy: And this is why the community is so important, because you are the one telling me about this very good news. I haven’t read about it yet but be sure I will get the facts and if I consider it’s worth writing another post, be sure I will Rudy.
Thanks for stopping by and commenting Rudy.
Patrick