Think John Chow noticed the reaction to his latest post: Who Wants some Entrecard Credits? Giving away a measly 200 cr for a recommendation, he got so much response he had to update his article to say “enough”. John’s a bit tight in the wallet to not march right over to Turnipofpower.com and buy a few thousand Entrecredits to please his readers. For $30 in credits, he could buy 15 recommendations. Profanity deleted Did any of you “Make money online” bs artists read that number? $2 for a recommendation that’s coming from real blogs, blogs that would never touch the “Pay-Per-Post system otherwise? Change “recommendation” to “review” in the contest and think backlinks.
Who Wants some Entrecard Credits? 3000 hungry Entrecarders, I guess. Couple of funny things from the Chow post. He still doesn’t “Get” the system but at least he doesn’t bash it. Do people need to be hit over the head with a frying pan to realize the high priced sites are the ones for OUTSIDERS to advertise to card droppers? (Like Ponyboy and Sodapop Curtis would even have that kind of scratch?) Real Entrecarders can make a post on the Entrecard forum and get more traffic than an ad on Saphrym’s site.
When an A-List blogger says the words “prevent gaming the system”, he really means “prevent others from passing me” until he figures it out. There is no click fraud, fake voting, or other tactics found in the popularity contests Chow usually participates. Look back to his whole Laptop Voting fiasco article. He won despite another site cheating.
Here are my comments I recently posted on JTpratt.com
What amazes me is the ridiculously high ranking of A-List bloggers who do nothing but display the Entrecard on their site. I certainly don’t drop my card on their site unless I ran an ad there and needed a screenshot. Are you sure you are a niche blogger? Because I may only have 300 readers a day, but you can be pretty sure every one of them is enthusiastic about my “niche”, which happens to be Entrecard. Smart advertisers who want to target that Entrecard niche have already picked up on it. Is it too small for the “make money online” crowd to tackle, or they just don’t see it until they read about it elsewhere? No, you can’t run 300 niche sites yourself on entrecard, but you can easily run 1 or 2. I think that is the real issue, it requires community effort to get even one blog off the ground in entrecard. But as Entrecard grows, so does my niche. Doubling every 2 months, I don’t think joining Entrecard is a mistake.
Let’s end this article with a comment by Graham Langdon, Entrecard Founder
Thanks for the mention John!
I’d just like to point out that we are in the process of re-working the pricing algorithm. The system in place was the original one that we started with, and we were hoping that the most popular blogs would naturally receive the most cards each day. Well, we were wrong, so now we are going to incorporate data from Technorati, and even a little from Alexa, along with our own data, to get the rankings and the price right.The one thing that the current pricing does get right is that for every two credits you pay, your guaranteed at least one visitor clicking around your ad.
But, like any form of advertising, you do want to check out the site to make sure you are getting a good deal for your money… er… credits.
Johncow suckups Rejoice! Not. One thing Entrecard does is jack your Alexa ranking below 100,000. Run a single “Vote for me on technorati” contest and you have your ranking there as well. Reminds me of Blogjuice.
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16 users commented in " Chowing Down: An A-List Blogger Wakes up! "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a Trackback **********Didn’t see this before posting in the Entrecard forum. But I agree wholeheartedly. Why is this non-issue such an issue? If you don’t want to advertise on a site whose price is not in line with how many readers it has, don’t advertise there. Isn’t it in everyone’s best interest, except John Chow’s ego, to have Chow’s pricing lower than mine or Saphrym or Turnip or whoever? People should be rejoicing about this. They can advertise at his site for a reduced rate.
http://entrecard.com/blog/?p=74
hmm. Is John Chow breaking the rules?
C-Squared - New Rule: No asking to exchange recommendations via message system. He is, but he is not using the messaging system. But being one of the top sites, don’t expect his account to be banned.
Stan: A-Listers like to whine about gaming systems, the same time they are running a contest signing up people to mailing lists and feed readers. How many of the feeds point to empty mailboxes created to inflate the numbers? Also, whose rss reader numbers do we use. I have many readers who subscribe directly without using feedburner.
Prediciction: Shoemoney and Chow will come up with a scheme to promote themselves on entrecard via a competition. Fans of both will argue, vote, and drop cards until both skyrocket to the top. Then we will all read about how they monetized their success months too late to be useful.
Turnip,
Graham also lifted the cap on the number of times you can send credits in a day. Isn’t that nice?
Anyway, that’s good idea about the contest. I’ve got over a thousand credits, how many technorati faves do you think that could garner me? *snort*
Jenny: So to placate Chow, Graham opens the door to big time credit sellers.
It really bugs me that they redefined the rules to accomdate this Chow guy. To come out and say that the buying of recommendations is ok if done externally is just crap and completely invalidates any legitimacy or sincerity that may have existed in that section.
SB
It just goes to show- having the reputation as an A-List blogger gets you what you want. My personal opinion? The so-called A-listers blog about the same topics day in and day out and their followers, unfortunately, drink the Kool-Aid. I’d rather read a blog with a variety of topics instead of seeing pictures of what a person ate for lunch, how much he spent on it and how much he made last year.
I have to say, I am not a JC sycophant. I have read his blog and don’t find the appeal, but he is a top earner and someone that you have to read to see what is going on. I don’t link to him and hardly ever mention him, he gets enough traffic. However I did write a little tongue in cheek review, but mine was too late.
I’m sick of reading from these “A-Listers” and their “Z-Lister” copycats saying that Entrecard is unfair because of people who drop many cards each day. The amount allowed each day is 300, you can’t fake those numbers, you have to go and visit blogs.
They call the traffic “junk Traffic?” I say bullshit because while I may get people passing over my posts as they drop each day, at least they come back and it is up to me to hook someone in with a decent post so they stop and comment.
Good post Turnip.
Beth: Usually I’d agree, except I’m the one reader that likes John Chow’s food posts and conference videos. As for check, I’m still waiting for my first affiliate check, I was told “it’s in the mail”.
Drew, A-list and Z-list bloggers have the same issue. They can’t hook people in with their repetitive content. So many people say they came to my site just to drop and run, but ended up reading and commenting. I don’t care if that leap took 1 visit or 30. I stopped using google analytics, so I don’t know or care my bounce rate.
Like I have said many times before, advertising on Chow’s blog using Entrecard isn’t that smart of an idea. Many others, both cheaper and more expensive worked much better in terms of gaining comments/rss subscribers/card droppers. A reworking of the algorithm would just mean that Chow’s price is going to be the one inflated instead of someone elses.
No matter what, someone who drops more cards is going to receive more credits. They will have to make it so if someone drops a card on your widget it is worth more points than if you drop a card. Then they will have to completely do away with the community, so talking to one another won’t make someone else come to your site and read *_*
People are complaining about the prices (well… Chow and Cow are -which they are probably the same person anyway-) and they aren’t offering a solution. The only thing they have suggested is putting their sites at top because they have a higher subscription rate on Feedburner–which doesn’t mean crap unless you are using Entrecard as a form of advertising for a product and not necessarily gaining readership/subscription/more credits in the process. How many people are? Seriously, how many? 2?
Graham is going to make a HUGE mistake and completely transform the community by incorporating the changes suggested. I received 0 comments, 0 subscribers from Chow. I did better advertising on a site for 10 credits.
BTW Turnip, Bounce rate is pretty much crap anyway. Bounce rate is described as someone who visits a page and then leaves without visiting another. IMO that can be a very good thing.
Just think, someone on Google searches for [puppies playing] and comes to my site which has a picture of puppies playing. They see it, laugh and download, then leave. Was I successful with that one person? Yes. Will it count towards my bounce rate? YES!
Blogs have notoriously always had a high bounce rate as well… especially with RSS subscribers. Why would someone who visited your site 1000 times view more than the newest post?
The only way that bounce rate is a good measure is if you are selling a product and the order forms are within your site… and even then you shouldn’t worry about it unless you are doing paid advertising.
I agree Gary. He’d do better working with the community and making his service the #1 community widget, than catering to the elite bloggers. The beauty of entrecard is that it is all about “Branding”, and not about linkbait.
RSS numbers are a joke. All they do is promote feedburner. People load the feeds because they use google reader on their start page, that’s all. If they had to manually load the feed, those inflated numbers would shink by 90%. Once the feed is loaded, people click “mark all as read” without reading if they can even remember to do that. Too bad nobody cries about a bounce rate on feeds.
Whaaah, you subscribed but don’t actually read!
There’s another problem like you said before, what RSS numbers will be used? Not everyone uses Feedburner, and even if you do use it, it isn’t all that it is cracked up to be.
-Some sites have more than one feed.
-Sites that started out without Feedburner will be penalized. Even 301ing your feed to Feedburner doesn’t work 100%. I have a site with several thousand RSS visitors, but I don’t bother 301ing to Feedburner because it causes problems with some directories and RSS readers.
-Even if a site does use Feedburner, how will Entrecard get the data? I use Feedburner on a few sites, but don’t bother showing the number. Will I be penalized for that?
-And of course like you stated before, what about the inflated numbers? Just because you have so-and-so subscribers doesn’t mean those same people check their feed everyday, hell even every week.
Remember the good ole’ days when blogging was making new friends and putting your thoughts on whatever, in writing so others could read it? Now it’s nothing but numbers, numbers and more numbers. If all the changes being rumored come to light- EC will become just another numbers-gamed social site, which in the long run does nothing for my blog other than send, what? Numbers. Maybe women have a different view but I ENJOY the community aspect and being able to read and comment, without having to worry, “Oh, no, I have to drop a card so others will drop cards on my blog or my blog won’t be popular.” It gets a bit ridiculous -and it’s only been a few months.
A-listers didnt get to where they are without developing an attitude of “im the best in anything”. being in a community where you will lose to someone who in your eyes did not do as much as you did is kinda hurting.
but admit it, turnip. A-listers are being used to promote entre to the “unenlightened ones”… like having a celebrity guest in your bachelor party.
We are 3000 strong now, but we need more. If keeping A-listers a part of the marketing strategy means changing the system a bit to accomodate their blegos, then we should all adjust too.
I agree Woobie, which is why I thing Graham staged the John Chow recommendation contest. To show A-listers how they can still be ranked #1 without doing anything. Rather than bash teh service, learn to work with it.
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