Entrecard Vs. Blogrush
Being a new blogger, I have been trying several different tools in order to drive traffic to this website. Since starting this blog, traffic has been constantly increasing and I will start adding more income streams to this site as more and more people are coming to it!
One too that I use in order to track my metrics is Alexa. Alexa is “The Web Information Company” and they analyze traffic to all websites and present the traffic in a stock-style line chart. These charts are very helpful, especially because you can compare the performance of different websites to spot trends. This is helpful especially when considering the purchase of advertising space!
I was a bit surprised when I ran this comparative test between Entrecard and Blogrush. For those not yet familiar with Blogrush, it is a service similar to Entrecard where you as a blogger place a widget on your site and people use the widget to click through other sites and from other sites to yours. In principle, Blogrush was pretty cool but I think that it was rushed to launch before the product was tweaked for the blogger’s benefit. John Reese, the man behind Blogrush is a marketing guy so he created a lot of buzz for Blogrush. I belive he over promised and under delivered.
As you see on the following 3 chards, Entrecard is outpacing Blogrush in just about every stat.
Reach
Reach is defined as the “percentage of all Internet users who visit a given site. So, for example, if a site like yahoo.com has a reach of 28%, this means that of all global Internet users measured by Alexa, 28% of them visit yahoo.com”. On the graph below, Entrecard is on pace to pass Blogrush any day now. That means that more people will be visiting Entrecard than will be visiting Blogrush.
Rank
Alexa defines Rank as the “geometric mean of these two quantities [reach and pageviews] averaged over time (so that the rank of a site reflects both the number of users who visit that site as well as the number of pages on the site viewed by those users). The three-month change is determined by comparing the site’s current rank with its rank from three months ago”. What this means is that they take the number of visitors and they take the number of pages that each visitor views. They find the average and call it “rank”. Only 2.5 weeks after launch, Entrecard has already passed Blogrush in rank meaning that more people are viewing more pages from Entrecard than from Blogrush.
Pageviews
Pageviews is the simplest of the definitions; pageviews are the “number of pages viewed by Alexa Toolbar users”. Users who use the Alexa toolbar go to websites and it measures how many pages each users views. On this category, I think you’ll be surprised by the results.
Check that out! Entrecard is kicking Blogrush where it hurts!
In summation, Entrecard is doing a fantastic job for bloggers. They are sending bloggers a lot of traffic, they are providing very cheap (Free!) exposure to bloggers in the form of advertisements on other websites, and they are doing well at promoting themselves while doing all those things for others. Blogrush, on the other hand, was a premature system that doesn’t really benefit bloggers but it does benefit Blogrush as they use a certain portion of links to make money. The difference between the two is simple: Blogrush was created for profit and Entrecard seems to have been created as a real useful tool for bloggers. I’m not sure yet how Entrecard will make money, but for now I’m very satisfied with the service.
If you don’t yet have an Entrecard account, you are missing out on a potentially nice amount of traffic! Go get one and drop it here on this site!
Toni
I never really looked at BlogRush before, I was going to try and sign up but as Ive spoken to a few people this week and they said that it just doesn’t work and I’ll never get half the traffic that I get from Entrecard.
[Reply]
Nick
Toni,
As I mentioned on the post, I started to use Blogrush when it was first launched and noticed, on average, about 1 or 2 clicks to my site each day. After about 2 weeks, those clicks went down to 0! I’ve noticed that the opposite is true with Entrecard; the hits keep on coming and are increasing in number each day!
Blog advertising space is as a premium…I’d say stick with what works!
[Reply]
svensworld
I do not think that entrecard works that well, it’s more or less people stopping by to drop their card but nothing else, they are not really interested in your content. You should check the bounce rate and some different stuff, whereas blogrush drives people for your articles.
In my defense I have to say I haven’t clicked on one of those so far, somehow I seem to ignore reading the blogrush bar and entrecard is just not my thing.
[Reply]
Nick
svensworld:
I agree that Entrecard doesn’t exactly bring in the best kind of customers to a certain website but I think it’s a great tool to get your website “out there”. Since installing Entrecard I’ve also noticed that the direct hits to my website have increased and the page views have squeaked up a little bit. The bounce rate has also increased but in general I think it’s helping me out. I think it also has to deal with advertising strategy; I think that for Entrecard to work you need to advertise on the heavily trafficked sites like John Chow and others…which I haven’t done yet…but am working up to it!
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