I know, I know, you love Entrecard and you blog about it most of the time. I find it rather entertaining that some webmasters even own domain names with “Entrecard” in them. What were you thinking? You’re dependent on the success of a site that at most times, is slow and sometimes unavailable; a rocky trip for an early success story.
In January, the value of an Entrecard credit was relatively high, but not today. The value per 1000 EC’s in January was around $7.50, but today it’s barley worth $3.50 per 1000. I recently had 67 ads running concurrently and I received only 23 referrals from those ads. This is an awful click ratio for a 1300 ec investment.
The outages and slow page loads are not a good thing for any start-up, but with the a lack of funding it’s hard to scale up this great concept for the members of Entrecard.
The forums are a tragic waste! I see many posts that really offer good incentives, but members don’t get it. I see posts offering up EC’s for Stumbles, Comments and yet no one replies. This absolutely confirms why the value of Entrecard credits are down.
I am much more productive blogging without depending on Entrecard credits as a primary advertising source. I dropped 300 cards for 67 days straight to gain more ad space through Entrecard credits, but the referral traffic from these ad campaigns just didn’t hit the ball out of the park.
Entrecard recently they added a few great additions to their web site. You can read all about it at Entrecard. We still love Entrecard, don’t get me wrong – but the honeymoon period is over. We are still happy to have found many friends through this site.
We would like to hear your thoughts on Entrecard. If you’re here to defend its merits, remember to be civil. Leave us a comment!
-Frank J
I haven’t really looked at Entrecard as a site to get solid traffic. I have only made 300 drops thrice. On the average, I only managed to drop 20-40 drops. But still, its a good place to find great blogs and bloggers like you. So, it’s worth the time. :-)
Its a bit strange to ask for thoughts on it, but only if someone is going to trash Entrecard. Why not allow for open debate on its pros and cons? Is bashing Entrecard the cool thing to do now?
My personal opinion is that people who don’t like the EC system should remove the widgets and quit using it.
For my part, it has been useful to find other bloggers and blogs that I read – in fact TechJaws I came across as well as your own blog Frank due to Entrecard and both being on my daily drop list of bookmarks. Without entrecard I never would have found your site and that was organically (from the EC site’s list of blogs), not through ads you placed.
The post was mainly to point out the value of the EC, and yes no doubt without it I would not have met or read many of the blogs I came across.
I think its time someone set up a site dedicated to Entrecard Bashing. Entrebashing.com. Entrecard is all about bloggers, and bloggers love to bash. I like to do the odd windows Bash now and again. Entrecard has had it coming to them for a long time. They change things at their own leisure without consulting the community which has made them . I was never able to drop 300 cards and now in the current dispensation i only drop on those blogs that i read regularly and those that i find by accident. Its a good idea however, the implementation and the policies are seriously lacking.
Yeah.. I thought I wanted to save up as much EC as I can and then sell it out.. I now have 30,000 EC but don’t know what to do with it :\
Don’t feel like selling 1000EC for $3!
I am surprised that EC hasnt faded away yet, the Alexa took a huge hit nearly wiped off 5 months of growth.
I still use Entrecard on a regular basis. I get some nice steady traffic from it, but it is being replaced by Google.
I’m not one to bash the system, mainly because it is optional to use and free. Entrecard has slowly been improving over time, and will (hopefully) continue to change and improve in the future.
Once they clean up the useless blogs that are creeping into the system, then hopefully the quality of sites will get better.
67 ads and only 23 referrals? What type of blogs were you advertising on? Were they cheap and affordable or more expensive and respectable?
Paul,
I am not bashing, I am making people aware of the value of a credit has gone down and that there’s still system problems.
I bought ads from 16ec’s to 256 ec’s.
I’m new to EC so won’t say too much yet,
but your right, the forums really need to be upgraded. I actually just posted that in the EC “features and ideas” section.
If nothing else ever comes through with EC, I can say I have found quite a few good blogs that I’m now reading everyday. I wouldn’t of found this one as well had it not been for EC.
Thanks for the news — I stumbled this page and dropped my card. Keep us informed — its hard to keep up with all of the changes these days with the Big E.
Thank you Matt!