The Entrecard Blog recently mentioned how Entrecard celebrated it’s one year anniversary. Largely a fluff piece, it does make some interesting claims as well as hinting about what is to come. As an Entrecard member since December 2007, a month after the launch, I’ve been here through most of these changes. Let’s look at what is addressed in the article.
Fun with math:
Claimed: 5 million visits per month - That’s probably true. However, it’s a large number that becomes very small once examined. 5 million cards dropped a month is only 166666 per day. In my Hardcore Entrecard Dropper Article, Phirate revealed that on average, 260 people per day drop 300 cards. So multiple 260 x 300, and you get 78000. Subtract 78000 from 166666 leaving you with 88,666 card dropped per day by non-hardcore Entrecard people.
Just under half the daily total (78k out of 166k) are absolutely using Entrecard as a link exchange by dropping 300 cards. Of the 88,666 drops not by people dropping 300 per day, how many blogs is that? I have 5 in the system, and others have a similar amount. Judging by the forums, a fair amount of users drop around 100 a day. If you divide 88,666 by 100, you get 886 non hardcore users! The true number of casual users is probably much higher, but nowhere near the 10k-20k Entrecard claims. This is just number play to try and give that 5 milliion figure some perspective. (please don’t tell me how many cards you drop per day)
Claims made by others:
- “this has been done before”- No, not really. It’s true other schemes to get bloggers to visit each other’s sites have come and gone. Blog Explosion was similar, but fell apart despite having many great ideas. Entrecard was unique in that it identified each user through the use of a 125×125 graphic. The same image could then be used for gravatars and favicons, branding your image across the net. Imitators have since tried to duplicate Entrecard’s popularity and failed.
- “this is just a traffic exchange”- It wasn’t in the beginning. It took roughly 2 months for Entrecard to become a traffic exchange. Before the creation of the inbox as we know it, you could only see the most recent people who had dropped cards on your site. So unless you monitored Entrecard 24/7, you never returned every drop. Once the inbox was installed, advertising on the Entrecard network lost all value to other members. Soon everyone caught on and Entrecard became a traffic exchange.
- “this is a fad” – No more or less a fad than blogging itself. People want readers, so they visit other blogs. Is commenting on other blogs also just a fad?
Promises made moving into Year 2
- Rerelease the shop - Right now you have 4 choices of what to do with your credits. Hoard them, give them away in contests, spend them on advertising, or advertise on OIO publishing blogs supporting EC advertising. I got lucky being a shop merchant. So few people looked at the old shop that I didn’t get killed selling t-shirts there. But since I can’t convert the credits to cash, what is the advantage for any merchant to sell anything there?
- Buy and sell credits from your dashboard – As I mentioned above, you can’t attract real merchants without the ability to convert credits to cash. The problem is stopping the influx of spammers and scripters to the system.
- Moving contests to their own forum: The Entrecard blog has been mismanaged from the start. Running a blog by committee isn’t easy. Without contests, I’d expect few if any posts. As any regular Entrecard user knows, Graham has a tendency to disappear from time to time while Entrecard, his 3 blogs, and everything else gets neglected. This is a good move, because now I won’t have to read about this contest crap any more. Did you know an Entrecard admin has to manually transfer the contest winnings? Don’t the admins have enough work without this contest nonsense?
Conclusion: Graham Langdon is an idea guy who never follows through in the long run. Entrecard was a great idea, but a terribly run business. You can’t open shop and then ignore the customers. Did it really take 8 months to get a team of mods onboard to weed out spam, or was that a top down decision to fill Entrecard’s ranks with spammers just to inflate user numbers?
Time to give out the one year grades:
- Executive management: F – Absentee ownership is noticed by both the membership and potential VC investors. Failure to properly monetize Entrecard after one year makes me think the owner was looking to dump it and leave that sticky issue to someone else.
- Administrators: A Minus – Phirate and Ben both worked hard, they make the grade for having to “go it alone”. Some of their decisions may have backfired, but at least they gave it their best shot.
- Mods: C minus - Vanishing from site but keeping the title, then overmodderating when they show up, I’m not going to give each a separate grade. They do their best in an unpaid position. In the past I had direct access to 3 mods, so I could message anyone online when I saw forum violations. These days the forum is so empty I see people responding to spam, and no active mods on my messenger to report it if I wanted to.
- Entrecard itself: B – Despite executive mismanagement, Entrecard earns a solid B. Who cares if it’s a traffic exchange as long as It sends visitors to small blogs. When you made your first post on the Internet all you wanted were a few eyeballs looking at your article. You didn’t care about bounce rate, time on page, or monetizing that traffic.
Room for improvement? The real value of Entrecard lies in networking and not the traffic. The visitors Entrecard brings are nice, but like Stumble or Digg traffic, it’s fleeting at best. The connections you make with other bloggers who have similar goals, niches, or even personalities are the real treasure. I can’t just go out an strike up a partnership with an A-list blogger. They would laugh me off. But I can reach out to fellow bloggers who have attained an identical point in their blogging careers. Trade links, share ideas, and maybe even form a web ring or advertising collective. If Entrecard would promote itself along these lines, nobody could argue over it’s numbers. If I say the connections I made through Entrecard are valuable, it’s tough for a critic to refute that.
Sadly, Entrecard has a history of ignoring the ideas of its members. In addition, the forums have become the nesting place of annoying gadflys. Hardly a positive place, making it all the more difficult to achieve networking goals. Perhaps instead of a Contests section of the forum they should have a Looking for a Partner to… where you could post in search of people who share your network goals. Whether it be guest posting, contests, link exchanges, or something grander. This is not the same as the old marketing forum. This would be a place for people who want to get together and share ideas. Go ahead, give Entrecard your own grade after one year.
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I used to love Entrecard, logging in almost every day dropping tons of cards. I loved the communal feel and everything. Then over time, it just seemed to turn into a place where it’s difficult to weed through the splog to get to blogs that really matter.
It’s the inbox that changed that feeling. Even if someone got kicked out of Entrecard, their cards still remained in your inbox, even if they linked to porn or a virus. Having a group of members who review every site BEFORE being able to drop cards is what is required.
Some pretty harsh words, but unfortunately they are true. My blog is relatively new and I use Entrecard to gain a bit of traffic. This it most certainly provides. Over and above this I have found some great blogs and made good contacts through Entrecard. My overhaul grade for Entrecard itself would also be between a B and maybe an A-minus.
PS. I just had to look to find out if you made the ‘gadfly’ link do-follow’ or not
Wait. We agree? Wholly cow, Turnip! I think we do. Mostly.
I still don’t get what you have against the Inbox. It’s just a feature. Use it or don’t. How does it hurt?
I haven’t been into the forums in quite a while, and I don’t drop cards as rabidly as I used to. Still, I think EC is a good thing. It helped me find several really great blogs, and I’ve even met some new friends through my EC contacts. Overall, I give my EC experience a B. I’ve put lots of tedious hours into it, but the visitors and especially the few gems I’ve discovered, have made it worthwhile.
I guess it’s like TV. There are hundreds of channels, but only a few that I actually watch, and even fewer programs that I record and never miss. But I still flip through the channels now and then, to see whether something catches my eye. Among the infomercials and junk, there are a few new shows worth watching.
Well, I definitely have to agree with you about Graham deserving an F. Although there is most of the time much talk about listening to the membership, in point of fact Graham has frequently made some Very bone headed decisions (Firestorm immediately and painfully comes to mind) and then flat our ignored private communications. That is no way to run a business.
I have certainly gained traffic and made friends through the service, but I’ve also put a lot of time and effort into the service. For blog users, I give Entrecard a “gentleman’s C”
Carol: The inbox encourages a 1:1 trading of card drops. This makes advertising to other Entrecard members through the system a waste of credits. I want people to bookmark my site, not only come here when I drop a card. Also, when someone stops dropping cards they soon find nobody can find their site, and they don’t know who to drop on either. You can be sure far fewer people would drop as many cards as they do if Entrecard didn’t make it so easy to maximize results, thus reducing server load, and improving the economy as a whole. Remove the inbox and spammers would get nowhere. Who would bookmark a spammer’s site? Nobody, but they will visit a spammer’s site if they find their card in their inbox.
Entre Card has introduced me to a whole new “world” of bloggers – including this one. Your Entre Card did get me here AND got me to subscribe.
For what it’s worth – you got 1 via Entre Card ~
hi turnip,
You should read what slightlydrunk.com wrote about entrecard.
You’d be surprised.
Excellent review, Turnip. I hope EC admins read this and use these review as a basis for improvement.
Blackzero85: You must be new here. Graham only reads the post if you link to Entrecard. Phirate reads it, but will only comment if someone makes a technical error regarding the Entrecard code or servers. Sometimes ideas by members are discussed in private, but don’t hold your breath.
Jenna, If you check slightly drunk’s article, I made the post right above yours there. No, it doesn’t surprise me at all that someone doesn’t understand the reason for the tax.
now, i can’t access my entrecard account. are their servers down again? the entrecard downtimes are as frequent as that of my webhost.
I think you are on the right track with the whole “creating partnerships” thing. The whole point of giving someone your business card is to show an interest in doing business with that person, not to exchange cards for the sake of it.
As you said, if entrecard moved more in this direction, to foster relationships, I think it would help a lot.
I discovered many new blogs as a result of my term with entrecard. I will always be grateful for that.
The forums are what sent me away.
As long as EC is still evolving in some way, still interesting I will stick around. I’m not a rabid card dropper, I just play catch up once or twice a week now. I was using the favourites as my drop list but it has become useless with blogs which left that I can’t remove on my own. So I don’t use it any more.
I’d like to see EC do more with the categories, let EC bloggers find others in their interest area and geographic area. Other than that I don’t think EC is going to have much to offer me as a personal blogger mainly. I know yourself and others are focused on MM and SEO and such. But just because I’m not doesn’t make me less of a blogger. I won’t get interested in any of that until it really can make some money. So far it is far too much work for a few pennies. There are loads of crappy jobs that don’t pay much out there. I want my blog to be different, free and creative and useless in general.
Some people live and die by entrecard, it is a good way to network with fellow bloggers but don’t expect much if you are looking to convert on your advertising.
Well Entrecard has been an experience so far. I think I will follow your lead in a little while. I know that if you can easily lose your Entrecard account if you don’t agree. That happened to me on the first go.
I know that in my case my Blog is there to make money for me. In various sections. Granted, I am still learning and am trying to make mine better, but perfect – no I am not.
Entrecard used to deliver some traffic to me, but unless I have the time to sit and surf 300 Blogs each day, which with all my other venues going at the same time I don’t, it becomes fairly hard to keep up with.
So Entrecard, just another traffic Exchange program? Maybe, I would rate it as such.
Thanks Turnip as always for a wonderful topic.
Well, I don’t have much to add beyond what Turnip said and what has been discussed in the comments.
I participated in the forums for a little while, but found much of the chatter useless and inane, so I’ve stopped going to the forums.
I still take dropping “very, very seriously” to use the language of the site.
It does seem as if there are many different ways to drop; from the inbox, from favorites, from popular sites, by following ads from one blog to the next, by creating personal customized drop lists, and many others.
Personally, I glance at the Inbox from time to time, but mostly follow ads from one to the next. It seems to give me better diversity, which is what I seek.
I do believe that EntreCard is a very good idea, just poorly executed. Hopefully the next year will be better.
Thanks for the info, Turnip – was just “dropping” by
After almost a year in Entrecard, I’ve taken the widget off my sites.
I just don’t see the point anymore. As my site grows, Entrecard becomes less and less important.
My bounce rate from Entrecard is over 90%. My bounce rate from SumbleUpon is 40%, and I get hundreds of times more traffic for a fraction of the work, and it takes up zero screen real estate.
I’d be willing to stick with it if maybe the forums were useful, but even that has nothing to offer anymore.
I gave it more than a fair chance.
Since I got rid of the Entrecard widget, my traffic has gone “up”. Go figure.
“Who would bookmark a spammer’s site? Nobody, but they will visit a spammer’s site if they find their card in their inbox.”
The only thing about that is you can substitute “spammer” by “great new blog” with the same result. How do you find great new blogs? I find bookmarking leaves things very static, apart from the ones that stop or trail off. There is no easy way of finding new blood to replace them.
On the whole though, I’d agree with your grading.
A: See my post today about CMF DIRECT. I am adding a new way to find great blogs.
I give EC a C. I have harsh feelings toward them since I had high expectations. I mean, it’s such a great idea but there seems to be no drive behind it. I know, I know, they are underfunded, undermanned, underwhatever, but some things they could do are simple.
Turnip, you are a real eye-opener, very well written as usual, I am more into this as a way to keep me off the streets so I don’t usually keep up with the inner-workings of EC, but I do see where you are coming from, and agree with 99% of it, what’s the 1% I don’t agree with? The B- you gave to entrecard as a whole, I think it is just an average social networking site as it stands and think a C would be more appropriate, other than that spot on, the value of my Turnip of Power shirt just doubled!
Had Entrecard continued the way it was going, it would have earned a C or lower grade. But Ben’s efforts alone raised the bar with the TOS rewrite, the removal of both spam forum posts and spam blogs in the system. He also got the support queue up to date. If fact, he pretty much ran the place for a few months while Graham was working at Starbucks or sleeping on the beach somewhere, out of touch as usual.
Thanks Turnip, but I can’t take all of the credit for the removal of spam blogs and for doing the deleted mailbox. Once she got up to speed (which didn’t take long), Robin’s Woods and I both worked 5+ hours every day on anything that needed doing around EC. While I did a lot before Robin’s Woods joined, we both worked closely for a solid 5 weeks. I may have left sooner if she hadn’t come on board.