Several posts in the Entrecard forums appeared recently by people who question the Entrecard economy.  They complain they can get the same traffic from Project Wonderful or elsewhere for less.  I won’t be reviewing Entrecard today, but I’d like to address this one issue.  I’m waiting for their official announcement of new changes some time next week before doing a complete review.  For those impatient droppers, I’ll sum up the entire article here in one sentence: Unless you are selling something, it’s doubtful any amount of clicks on a 125×125 ad alone will achieve your goals.

Let’s look at the facts first.  Someone threw out the number of .03 to run an ad for one day on Project Wonderful.  I run ads like this all the time so I have data on results.  My ads were shown 314,164 times, and received 1,596 clicks.  This means my ad has to be shown 197 times to receive 1 click. 

I also have detailed Entrecard results.  To make the results valid, you have to look at clicks “from” my blog and not clicks received.  My Entrecard ad has generated 1771 clicks to other blogs over 58,239 page views.  That works out to 33 page views to receive one click.  Now to throw this all into a chart, along with some other data.

*Google Adwords: Phrase “Social Networking” for the site Turnipofpower.com.  Included to show the ridiculous nature of calculating “cost per click” when dealing with blogs that aren’t selling products.

As you can see, Entrecard produces the best results for receiving clicks from the smallest amount of page views.   Stumble sends you visitors, but they never see your ad and thus lose out on the branding factor there.  The quality of sites on Adtoll, though improving, leave much to be desired.  Many of the sites you can purchase on Project Wonderful are also of questionable quality, and you have to micromanage the system to weed these out.  Not that Entrecard doesn’t have problems.  As with all the systems, click fraud is rampant.  Sites that have few visitors outside Entrecard report 90 clicks a day.  I guess they think I’m impressed by their attempt to deceive me.

So what Entrecard offers is a strong reinforcement of your brand, and good clicks per page view ratio.  Even if a portion of these clicks are “widget surfers”, they are still clicking on your ad and visiting your site.  Which brings up the point, Why Are you advertising? 

• Is it to make money off Adsense??
• Brag to your friends about how many visitors you have?
• Fool paid review companies into thinking your blog is happening?
• To increase your number of quality readers? 

If it is Adsense clicks, Entrecard isn’t for you.  Bloggers don’t click AdSense out of habit, they fear Google even if the ads are targeted towards bloggers.  For bragging rights, simply buy traffic from overseas networks. However, the last 2 reasons make Entrecard’s quality of traffic perform far ahead of all the other sources except for Stumble.  Why?  Because it’s mostly US based traffic.  But at what cost?

Entrecard is trying to value the credit at $7.50 per 1000.  Thus a 2cr ad costs $.015 per day.  I assure you the quality of blog and site placement of a .015 ad is better in Entrecard than in any other ad service.  A 4cr ad is the equivalent of a .03 Project Wonderful ad.  As you increase in blog quality, the chance of finding Project Wonderful on the site is pretty slim.  I keep it only because I run ads there, so I need a constant source of funds.  It’s more efficient for me to run their ads than to transfer $10 a month through paypal.

So bargains can be found in both systems.  A 2cr site in Entrecard is always a steal.  As is any PW ad that costs you nothing.  At 1024cr my site is expensive at $7.68 per day compared to my PW ad.  Is the Entrecard ad worth 100 times the PW ad?  Absolutely not.  Even Entrecard itself had a PW ad selling below the worth of 1000cr until recently.  It has to do with flaws in both systems.

Project Wonderful undervalues almost all websites due to its automation system.  There are very few real advertisers there.  Most people either bid .00 or .01, with certain sites getting all the money.  Those who advertise on my site do so mainly because they can spot a bargain and place their bids by hand, bidding up to $1.30 when challenged by other bidders.  When they don’t advertise by hand, the automated tool takes over and automated bids pay almost nothing.  When you see a .03 ad in PW, you can be pretty sure there is no competition.  When you see a 1024cr ad in Entrecard, you can assume there is competition for the ad.

Entrecard overvalues websites.  People bid based upon Entrecard visitors only and not overall demographics.  Then there is the free factor.  You can click 300 times, receive 300 clicks, and sell an ad on your own site to get those 1000cr it takes to advertise on my site.  Even without buying a single ad, you can get hundreds of clicks from Entrecard.   Most people don’t convert this into “credits per dollar” nor what their time is worth per click.  If they did, credits would cost $10 per 1000 and ad prices would fall to very low levels.  I never buy high priced ads, but many find them valuable.  Especially if you have a niche blog and want other niche traffic sent your way.  What isn’t taken into account here is that Entrecard is a social network, and drives 10x the traffic from dropping than it does from a single ad.

Pretty simple?  It gets more complicated than that.  My Entrecard being on top gets the most clicks.  Pretty much the only 125×125 ad I ever take note of on another site is their Entrecard.  As you go down the page from left to right the clicks decrease.  I’ve seen the top ad on a page go for 10x what ads below it sell for.  Also factor in I don’t mention on the site how to advertise on those PW ads.  As an experiment, I’ll allow PW to show it’s “advertise here for .06″ and see how high the price shoots up.  My guess based upon past experience is it should go up to around .30 per day, which is exactly what DNScoop rates it at.

Will my ad in Entrecard ever sell for 40cr a day?  Nope.  Will PW ever bring in more than $.30-1.30 a day, maybe, but not likely.  Will I remove PW and keep Entrecard?  Most likely.  Flaws in both systems drive prices up and down.   Is dirt cheap traffic really useful if the visitors can’t speak English?  Your best bet for blind traffic is to simply have your friends Digg and Stumble your own posts for free.  But don’t expect to build a following that way.  To do that you need repeat visitors who grow to like your site, bookmark it, and look forward to reading what you have to say.   Only Entrecard offers that option in numbers you will notice.   Unless you are selling something, it’s doubtful any amount of clicks on a 125×125 ad alone will achieve your goals.