Entre Card – A Radical Blog Review – Part III
I will start today’s post with a quick apology. For those who thought that my statements from yesterday regarding the traffic received from each ad placement was derogatory – the contrary was the situation. All blogs mentioned in my previous post were mentioned because I thought they delivered good traffic. As a realist getting a quota of 3 or 4 to 1 is in my opinion pretty good. If spend 400 credits and get 100 visitors – I am satisfied. On too today’s post.
I have mixed feelings about Entre Card and at present I am in two minds whether or not to continue using it. First, I do not have the time to go card swapping all day. At present, whilst I am receiving a good price for my ad spot – I know that will not last long and the credits will run out.
The problem I see with EC is that it is a little like Stumble Upon – sure, you can get good traffic, however a lot of the traffic is just passing through, not stopping to read let along buy or click on any advertisements like adsense. Let’s be realistic about this. Most droppers are doing just that, drop – click on the ad to move to the next one – drop – etc – often not even reading the blog content. This is good for traffic numbers, good for Alexa scores, not good for actual blogging.
With that last in mind though, I have picked up some new readers and I have found some interesting sites that I revisit regularly. What about changes or improvements.
I don’t know if there are any real changes I would make. What I probably would like to see is a combination of EC, SU and SezWho. That I think could be a very powerful tool. Imagine the following.
Rather than earning credits for visiting and dropping – you earned credits by visiting and commenting – this is where the SezWho component is required. You only get the credit if the blog owner approves your comments – so they need to be relevant comments. For every comment that you leave, your page received a visit by another user – this is where EC or better yet, a SU type browser button could be used to just jump to the next site – READ and leave a COMMENT – move onto the next site etc.
This would make the whole exercise worthwhile – it would make the visits relevant and meaningful. Will it happen – I am sure it could – will it – probably not – I can see problems that rather than solving would probably be used to kill the idea from the start.
One thing that I do know, the big bloggers like John Chow, Darren Rowse and Andy Beard would not use the service as it really would be a total level playing field for everyone. Besides which, some of the bigger named bloggers would not be caught dead commenting on a little blog (I know that at times they do – but generally speaking they don’t even visit little blogs let along comment).
EC is great for traffic but only fair for quality visits (as against visitors). EC seems to benefit the big attractive blogs and not the little blogs. Whilst many have proclaimed EC as the replacement for BlogRush – I see them as being in the same boat – they have their uses but their long term benefit is doubtful and their future on my blog limited. If you find EC works well for you – let us know.
Come back tomorrow where my post will be a three month review of the advertising concept known as the Rubicon Project.
Other than comments on my own blog, I actually tend to comment on smaller blogs a lot more than big ones.
My criteria for commenting is that the blogger has to have something interesting to comment about, and that is it.
If someone has just created a list of top bloggers, I am unlikely to leave a comment unless it was really well done.
As for Entrecard, I honestly don’t have the time to make use of it.
Hey Les. Nice post. I agree almost completely. I differ I guess in the acceptance of a 4-1 ratio. I think we’ve become used to these kinds of results and therefore we don’t push the envelope. If we had a system as you mentioned that is truly about the quality of the comments (and as Andy said..the content of the posts as well), then you’re onto something. There is no reason someone can’t devise a site based on such a system. Think about it, would you rather drop 300 cards and get 3 responses or do 10 quality posts/comments and get the same exact back? A u comment I follow site to the next level is what I think you’re gettin’ at and I wonder why it’s not done in some “game” or whatever format…Why? Ya wouldn’t need to hit hundreds of sites but simply perhaps dozens! Viral done right is very potent!
I drone….Peace……..T
Andy – I probably do you a dis-service just clumping you in with the other bigger blogs, I know from visiting other blogs that you do visit and comment
Tommy – I agreee with you and with a u comment I follow system it would be 1 to 1 – one comment = 1 page view – if the stumble system was used then the next blog you visited would be totally random (although I would like to be able to use tags to determine the genre)
I think it would rock. 10 quality visits over 100 any day – more likely to get conversions into long term readers to,
thanks for your comments guys
I can now see John COW’s arguments about people who drop a lot getting really high ad rates … while having really crap blogs at the same time.
I agree with you that it takes too much effort to stay on top of EC and with all the “u drop, i follow” movement, its becoming more and more about dropping instead of visiting.
Btw, the angry face on your ad scares the jeepers out of me so I tend to not click it
Aw – thanks not an angry face – that’s just a stern old teachers face – or at least a radical blogger laying down the law – I am not that bad – really – just ask my kids – on second thoughts – don’t
I agree with most of what you’ve said. I’m fairly new to entrecard and already I’m seeing flaws. While I spend a good deal of time online, it’s very tiresome to drop cards just at random.. but apparently a lot of people have the time to do so?
I do like it because I can click on someone’s ad spot and read all sorts of different blogs that I may not have been exposed to before. So for that, I find it useful.
Thanks for providing nice information.
Good Post…