Last week I made a post about people who use Entrecard precariously and place their widgets above the fold. I do not agree with this strategy and claimed that it takes up valuable space that could be used to monetize your website. Divablogger took the bait and issued a nicely written response to my argument. The following post is my retort.

Let’s start with the first comment that got my attention:

“placing it somewhere more accessible makes it convenient for people to drop their cards”

I agree completely with you. This statement is actually helping me to prove my point. You see, although I do like Entrecard for its potential to generate a fair amount of traffic to a website, the advertisements on the widgets are still free and cost $0 in real world money. So why would you sacrifice space on your website where you could be making real money in order to promote somebody else’s site who is just using you for your widget? Don’t you feel so….used? You are willingly giving up the potential to sell ad space on your site and make money online for a silly Entrecard point. I’m no economist but I would call this “negative equity”. You are not gaining anything valuable by giving away prime real estate on your blog nor are you being properly compensated for it. If ever in doubt, just repeat this mantra: “What Would John Chow Do?”.

You also stated the following:

“Being in directories (which are strongly promoted by the creators) is like being a part of the daily life of entrecarders who use these directories and are too lazy to create their own.”

I’m not entirely sure what you meant by that statement. Firstly, of course directories will be promoted by their creators! I promote all kinds of things that I make; this started in kindergarten when I made my first hand print on paint then had my parents hang it on their refrigerator. It’s just plain simple to understand. Secondly, although Entrecard is a fantastic avenue to reach a wide readership and gain an audience, I don’t necessarily want to be in a directory of lazy people. “Dress for success”, as they say. I would rather have proactive Entrecarders and Bloggers like my sponsor JasonBoom that participate and support my site. He is obviously working hard at promoting his brand and blog and is not a “lazy” blogger. If you take away all of the lazy bloggers, I believe that the web would be filled with content that is of much higher in quality than what is available today.

I guess we could go around and around in this argument. You believe that placing your Entrecard widget, which gives away a free link and takes away space for paid advertisers “above the fold” is the smarter and better thing to do. I believe that placing the free link widget that still brings me traffic “below the fold”, thus saving more prominent spaces for paid advertisers is the smarter thing to do. The point I was trying to make is a financial one, where as you were making a point about quantity of traffic. In the end it is just a question of “quality versus quantity”. I would much rather have 1000 daily visitors who found my site through other quality “non-lazy” blogger’s websites. These visitors would probably read multiple posts and pages per visit, leave comments, become advertisers, and even help me out by clicking and following my affiliate links. It seems to me that you, on the other hand, would be satisfied with 1000 daily visitors who get to your site, click the widget and leave. I’m in this for the quality, but if that’s the kind of visitor that you want going to your site, then I hope your strategy works out for you. To me, it’s a no-brainer.

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Dear Entrecard users,

I want to take this time to talk to you all about a little something I call “common sense”. This letter is not intended for EVERY Entrecard user, just the vast majority of them that make my life really easy.

In the last few days, I have been using Entrecard (henceforth known as ‘ec’) more and more in order to rack up credits so that I can spend them on certain things for this site. Recently I have traded 500 ec’s for a header design that is being worked on right now. With so many other interesting things in the ec marketplace, it makes good sense to rack up a ton of points and spend them on things that will help make your site better, more interesting, or more visible.

As you know, it is possible to get ec credits either by dropping your card at other websites or by ‘charging’ people to advertise on your site. The thing I love about advertising with ec, and no doubt one reason why so many people love it, is that in reality the advertisement is free. The point of ec is to get you to visit other websites and check out the work of other bloggers in your niche or in new niches all together. The truth of the fact is that most people (myself included) will sometimes just load up 20 pages at a time, drop their cards, and leave.

Not sure where I’m going with this yet? Hold on, it’s coming.

If you look at my site, or countless other successful blogs, you’ll see a sidebar with a few paid advertisements on them. I’m working on selling more ads on my site and the requests will come in soon, I’m sure. Those paid sponsors become acquaintances in the short term and possibly business partners and friends in the long run. They get to know the blogger and vice versa. So, here we go. Why on earth would you, as a blogger and web designer, place your Entrecard widget above the paid links and in a place that is really easy to find on your site?! You are basically giving away PRIME real estate on your site for people to quickly find the widget, click it, and leave your site. They basically “hit it and quit it”, if you know what I mean. They love you and leave you. They hunt you and dump you. Do you see where I’m going now?

Another reason why you should NOT place your ads front and center is that, in the long run, advertisers will get mad and leave you. Why should they pay a premium to advertise on your site if you are giving away free advertisement in a space that is even better than theirs?

USE YOUR HEAD, PEOPLE!!

I’m not mad at you. In fact, I love you because you make my life easier. I just wanted to tell you my thoughts on your decision. I probably don’t remember who you are, what your blog is, or what it’s about but I do thank you for the credit.

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!

Last week I wrote about Entrecard, a new social website that I joined in order to increase traffic to this website.  Since joining Entrecard, I must say that I am impressed with its ability to drive traffic to websites.  I have seen the this site’s traffic jump up drastically since I joined.

I think that Entrecard can do the same for you, and that’s why I am starting the very first contest for this website!

Up for grabs will  be at least 100 credits to Entrecard so that you can advertise your site on several other websites.  Advertising starts at just 2 credits, so with 100 credits you can put your site on as many as 50 websites!

Here are the rules:

1. Sign up to my RSS Feed through the email signup form at the top of the page.
2. Validate your subscription by following FeedBurner’s instructions
3. Leave a comment on this post saying that you signed up using the same email that you signed up for the feed.

BONUS CONTEST

If you want to win 500 or more credits to Entrecard, post a link to this post on your blog and make sure to have the anchor text “Make Money Online” pointing to this website.

A winner will be drawn at random by the end of next  week for both contests and the winners will be mentioned on my front page with a link to your own site!

Introduction
On Tuesday I learned about and signed up to a new link exchange service called Entrecard. Entrecard is a new program from the same guy that launched the One Million Dollar Wiki and has been generating a lot of buzz around the blogosphere. Entrecard is like a business card swapping service where you create your virtual business card with your website’s logo and you “drop” your card at others websites that are using Entrecard. By dropping your card at other websites, you receive credit with which you can purchase advertising on other website. As a member of Entrecard, you also receive credits whenever people drop their cards at your website.

The Good
Shortly after joining, I immediately began receiving traffic and offers from advertisers to advertise on my website. This makes sense because I was the new kid on the block and ads on my site were very cheap (credit-wise…there’s no money exchange going on w/ Entrecard). Additionally, these new visitors left some positive comments on my posts and made me feel good about my site (awwww). Thirdly, all this new traffic helped me to almost top my 1-day visitor record of 83. I got 78 hits yesterday thanks to Entrecard and its influx of traffic. And did I mention that Entrecard is free? To join, click on the button “Get one!” on the right sidebar.
The Bad
With every good thing comes a bad thing. After analyzing my logs, I noticed that most of my new visitors stayed on for an average of 24 seconds. Just long enough for the site to load and for them to find the Entrecard button so they could give themselves credit for dropping off their card.
It seems to me that it’s fairly easy to game the system by clicking on each advertiser daily. You gain enough credits to place your ads on the big name sites like John Chow or Problogger without having to spend a dime.
Conclusion
I’m going to say that it’s too early to tell if Entrecard is good or bad. I know that it is good AND bad, but I don’t think that it’s decisively one OR the other. The influx of traffic is nice for the stats, but if these new visitors aren’t reading my posts, signing up for the RSS feed, or clicking on my links then I don’t know if I should bother using this service. I have a few ads running in the next few days through Entrecard so I’ll see how that turns out for me. In the meantime, I guess it’s a hung jury.