5 Rules For Finding Value In Entrecard Advertising

With the wealth of new info available to advertisers in Entrecard, how do you know on which sites to advertise after all the recent changes? Sure, plenty of credit wasters advertise on any site 8 credits and below, but you can get more for your money. I have several simple rules of thumb.

Rule 1: If the 5 day average divided by 5 is greater than the ad cost, consider buying it. Using this rule, the actual best price to advertise on Turnipofpower.com would be below 336ec. Don’t kill yourself on the math, Entrecard does this for you. Here’s how. Let’s take an advertising cost of 16ec since we can all afford it.

Go to the Campaign page and click browser.
Select “Most Popular” and set the maximum price to 16ec. Click Search.
Now advertise on any site with a number in the top right of the card of 80 or more. (5×16=80) This means you are paying one ec or less for each display of your ad. Obviously choose the highest ones first. In researching this article, I purchased a 16ec ad that had a score of 484. That means I am paying 1ec to have my ad viewed 6 times. (484/5) / 16 = 6.0625

Rule 2: Advertising on someone who advertises on many sites gets you more clicks.

Go to the Campaign page and click browser.
Select “Biggest Advertiser” but don’t set the maximum price. Click Search.
Now advertise on any site with a cost out of proportion to those around it. For example, say the top 6 biggest advertisers all cost 1024ec to advertise on, but #7 costs only 64ec. Advertise on the 64ec because they are spending a lot of credits to get their card out there.

Rule 3: Any ad for 2ec is probably worth it, but even better are those that actually have at least two people drop on them.

Go to the Campaign page and click browser.
Select “Most Popular” and set the maximum price to 2ec. Click Search.
Now advertise on any site with a number in the top right of the card of 10 or more. (5×2=10) This means you are again paying one ec or less for each display of your ad. Right now you won’t find many 2ec ads, so just advertise on any you see.

Rule 4: Advertise on anyone new in the Entrecard forums trying to impress everyone. If you can get onto their ad for 64ec or less you probably got a bargain. They will make enough noise to have people add them to their drop lists. I have no trouble spotting these people. Unlike idiot spammers, their first post in the forums is designed to impress everyone and is usually long.

Rule 5: Advertise on anyone who comments on your blog if the price is cheap. These are your loyal readers, and reward them any way you can.

Remember: These rules are here to show you how to get the most advertising value for your credits using the tools given you by Entrecard. This does not mean you cannot use outside info as well. For example, click on any Project Wonderful ad where is says “advertise here”. Look how many visitors the site really has. Most will probably be from Entrecard, but not all. Do not fall for bullshit stumble traffic numbers. Stumbles are routinely made by site owner’s friends and have nothing to do with a sites value. One stumble can bring in 1000 visitors for one day only. If their friends stumble daily, you will see 90% of their traffic is from stumbleupon. Same goes for Digg. Look for “Google” and “Yahoo” search results. See if the search terms they are ranking for is related to their site. If it’s a humor site, are they ranking for “buy Ipod batteries cheap” or “download Hallmark Cartoons”? If so, throw those numbers out.