Yet another Entrecard dropping strategy. Why is this one any different? To start, Entrecard recently made several changes that make your job on choosing who to drop on much easier. Second, I maintained a constant 600+ec average under the old system. Seems silly to take advice from people that had a 300ec average. Third, Entrecard is my niche, which I routinely examine for more efficient methods of success. Sure there are other methods, some of which I have published already that might be adapted once the chaos around the latest changes wears off, like Entrecard Top Advertiser Strategy. Boohoo to the people that rose to the top dropping 900 cards a day, buying 5000 credits at a time from spammers, and blowing it advertising on the most expensive sites. The cost of credits will be going up and there is now a 600 drop limit per IP address. Ad Prices have skyrocketed. Luckily, today’s strategy works just as well for the casual dropper as it does the powerdropper.
Nature of the problem: If people prefer to drop on those who drop on them, how do you get over 600ec cost? Obviously it requires more than 300 people visiting and dropping on your site. Most serious droppers only drop on my site 15 times a month even though I drop on them 30 times a month. People are questioning why they should drop at all. You have to give them a reason.
What not to do: I don’t suggest using the inbox as your dropping list. Even with the changes to only display cards you haven’t dropped on, what will you do once you have more than 300 cards in there? You also are not rewarding loyalty. Somebody drops on your site 29 out of 30 days, and your not going to drop on them because they missed a day? That strategy ends up rewarding the casual dropper and not the serious droppers.
The Goal: The goal of the strategy is to cultivate as many loyal droppers on your site as possible.
The basics: The first thing you have to do is create a folder for bookmarks in your browser. Inside that folder you are going to create a number of subfolders based upon the number of open tabs your browser can handle. Obviously I prefer firefox.
Next create at least 3 folders. In my case, I use the terms “Top blogs”, Serious blogs” and “Casual blogs”. Currently I have 3 casual folders, 5 serious folders, and one top folder. Top Blogs is for people that drop on me every day. I reward these people by dropping extra cards on them using 2 casual blogs I maintain. That way loyal droppers receive 90 cards a month from me. SeriousDroppers are for people that have an Entrecard Ranking of Serious. These are the people that I want to visit most. I drop on them 30 times a month. Finally there are the Casual Blogs. These are the blogs I drop on last. I divide them into two folders, Mon-Wed-Fri-Sun and Tues-Thurs-Sat. That way if my bookmarks exceed 300 blogs, I alternate days dropping on these people. If you have more than 300 serious droppers, divide them into days of the week as well.
Now, when you go to your Entrecard inbox, begin opening the people who drop on you in tabs, and click the “E” to see their profile. Look at how many times they dropped on you in the last 30 days and what their powerdropper status is. Then bookmark them into the proper category. Tomorrow you can start dropping with your bookmarks, and then repeat this procedure with the inbox. Eventually you will know who to drop on first. After a month, click the “E” again to check their profiles and weed out those who haven’t dropped on you in 30 days. Upgrade the status of those who show loyalty.
After a few months you could end up with a list of 500 blogs. To make things easier, you might just bookmark the serious droppers, and then use the inbox to fill your quota for the day. I find with proper weeding out, I maintain about a 300 blog count average.
- Furthermore:
- Participate in the community so people get to know your personality, post on the Entrecard blog, take part in developer chats, send feedback and suggestions. Now that you know who your loyal droppers are, spend more time reading their blogs, commenting, and participating in any contests they may be running. Get to know them.
- Forum participation leads to many clicks. When one of your loyal droppers post in the forums, say hello and add something meaningful to their threads. Please do not post asinine one liners in an attempt to get noticed. Try to be helpful and give thought out opinions. However, for the time being the Entrecard forums are filled with Chicken Little’s and their “Sky is Falling!” posts, so you won’t be seeing me post there any time soon. Those who need help are welcome to send me a message for support.
- Think of a way to reward those who drop on your site every day. Blogroll backlinks, top dropper widget, sending them credits, entering them in a contest, dropping on them using other blogs, or simply a thank you note might work.
- Drop enough cards that you are no longer listed as “Casual and Relaxed”.
- There are certain important milestones to reach if getting on the “Most Popular” is your goal. Being in the top 3 in your category is most important.
- Don’t worry about the highest priced ads. 2cr ads from the ”newest” category bring the most clicks for your investment. After that, any 2cr or 4cr ad is good.
- Dropping just after midnight EST is the best time because those dropping off the inbox list will see your card there.
- Adding your name to powerdropping lists can’t hurt, but don’t rely on the lists as your drop list. Same goes for the “You drop, I follow” list. Guess what, many of them don’t.
- Avoid contests that offer Entrecredits. The outside world doesn’t care, and the Entrecard world is bored beyond belief with them.
- Finally, post at least 3 decent articles a week. Quality content is good under any circumstances.
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I had bookmarked many of my favourites into firefox(10 in each). And opened the “open all in tabs”. Result: I was penalized -100!
And it was not even recorded in the transaction.
Is there limit on that(as I perceived after that accident)?
I open 50 in tabs at a time and have never received a penalty. Occasionally I will receive an “invalid” message, and simply reload that site. Penalties normally result from dropping speed, not page loading speed. Now if you opened the cards only and not the page, that’s not really anyone’s problem but the guilty party.
These are great suggestions – I just started trying to build a loyal droppers list of my own last week using results from my inbox. I am really glad that Entrecard added the feature where we can see how many times drops are reciprocated.
One thing I did a little differently was add a list of blogs that have commented on mine. In my grand scheme of things, they are currently above those who drop on my blog every day, since they are most likely to be loyal readers.
Best of luck on getting those drops!
You use a similar strategy to myself I have 30 folders with 10 entrecard folders in each and update them regularly with the non droppers being removed and good reciprocators added. I take time to read and comment on some of the blogs I visit.
Very good advice… I’ve never gotten round to the scientific approach myself, although I try to reciprocate to my loyal droppers. (Some of whom are actually readers, yes…) That list in my head keeps getting longer, though, so maybe I should make a proper one.
Bloggers are a fickle lot, though – trying to predict their actions and reactions is something I quite happily leave to you, Turnip.
I’m using Turnip’s dropping list. hehe. Great list I must say.
Great Advice, I think i need to change my way of dropping, i first reciprocate then follow you advice make my own list of loyal dropper, commenter etc…i think now is the time where we need to change the strategy of dropping aswell as advertising.
Thanks for commenting on my blog, turnip.
Great advice! I tend to drop out of my inbox and then will go into different catergories to try to get new people dropping on me. I’ve never figured out if this works or not. But, I read a lot of different blogs this way.
And, I always drop on you turnip. lol
moneyloveandchange: Thanks to my “top commentor widget”, I can set the number to 60 or 100 and get a ranking of every commentor. I offered that list for download not too long ago.
Louie: I’ll update the bookmarks today. They’ve changed greatly since the recent Entrecard changes. However, my list is an excellent starting point even if its outdated.
As I posted in another thread. My test to include casual bloggers on my list is to drop on me at least once in the last 30 days, and to have updated their content in the last 30 days. As always, let’s try to keep those widgets above the fold. Not too hard to qualify.
One thing that I haven’t done is build lists of blogs to drop on. I think I’ll build similar lists and see how it goes.
I’ll say one thing, your definitely put in the effort.
How many cards do you need to drop before you lose the casual and relaxed status? I admit I am not consistent in my dropping and visiting, or advertising, for that matter (and with the changes just instilled, my ads may differ).
Good post turnip. I was a chain dropper until I realized the goal wasn’t to drop 300 in 40 minutes, the goal was to get drops back and network.
I spent the past week developing my own database that tracks who is dropping and when. I drop back on almost all. I then compare that with a traffic download from my site showing who is dropping straight from their inbox. This shows me who I have to drop on to get a drop back. Anyhow, it’s working pretty good and I can see who the real droppers on my site are.
Entrecard made some good progress with tracking data, but not enough for this analyst!
Hey Turnip, I just started a top dropper list the other day, but I read you all the time, I get your feed.
Anyway, I find your writing to be clear, concise and straight to the point.
It’s a joy reading your blog.
Thanks for the information! I’m going to try your method and I’m going to subscribe to your feed!
I started a few weeks ago, but it seems like forever that I have been dropping. I think i drop on you from my 3 blogs almost daily. Some of the things you posted about in your post I have been wondering about, so you just made things more clear for me. I certainly need to get more organized. I also randomly use your bookmark list, but my browser freezes up a lot so I can’t open many tabs. Thanks for all your great help, really appreciate it.
Hi,
Actually, I am doing this folder thing and somehow it is the same as your strategy.
However, if you are a member of Sitehoppin, I think it is better if you put tags on your chosen blog and presto, you have a folder that adds visitors instead of browser only.
Hope that make sense.
I’m not a member, and I have no interest in their “beer stocks” either.
Wow – I sure hope I make it into your Top Folder – I could use the extra drops.
I check around the 1st of every month now. In theory the top 150 droppers can get in my top dropper folder. That number will exceed 100 soon, as I prepare another blog. But the reality is I don’t like to load more than 50 at a time, so thats probably the cutoff. That means I would soon drop 4x for each time you dropped on me. Pretty good, I’d say!
excellent suggestions. Thanks for cutting through all the crap for us.
Excellent information. I’ve been trying to come up with a plan and now, thanks to this post, I may have one. I’ll also subscribe to your blog.
I find this very informative. I’m new to the site, and just figured out advertising and dropping are two different things. I’ll be bookmarking you. And, thanks for the Free Ebook!
Is there a way to make it so the page you’re opening your favorites on stays on top? Im trying your methods but its bugs me that the favorites window always closes.
Regretful, that’s a browser setting. In firefox my tabs always open in the background, in IE7 they open stealing the screen focus. To stop this behavior in IE7, go to Internet options. Then on the first page it says “tabbed browsing settings”. Uncheck the “always switch to new tabs when they are created” checkbox.
[...] day I have a plan and I work my plan. Thanks to Turnip, A Common Sense Approach to Entrecards, and a few other tips from Lynne @ The Sewing Mom, I’ve been able to devise my plan and work [...]