Recently Graham Langdon, founder of Entrecard, posted the following question to the Entrecard Community:
“I want to know what you all think that I can do to help you in your efforts to build your blogs.
Do you want to see more blog tips in the blog? Do you want me here more, in the forums, cheering you all on? Do you want me to hold more question and answer rounds?
I’m just trying to brainstorm more ways I can be more of a resource to all of the Entrecarders here that are working so hard to improve their blogs.”
Here is my response:
Funny you should ask that. No we don’t need recycled blog tips from somebody who doesn’t blog. Certainly from someone who has never used Entrecard to promote a blog. Yes, we know you can successfully launch a web product, but that has nothing to do with the average blogger, let alone new bloggers who most need Entrecard.
Now, I am not a new blogger, so my suggestions come from the viewpoint of an experienced Entrecard user, who would like to be able to continue using the Entrecard service.
- Keep people informed as to what is happening behind the scenes, what direction Entrecard is headed in, and how the Entrecard administration feels about sensitive issues facing the EC community. Don’t leave your mods left doing the decision making and having to hope you back them up when you poke your head in the door. A weekly “State of Entrecard” post about anything related to EC would do wonders to ending the rumor mill.
- Swallow your pride and make wise decisions that benefit Entrecard. Not hasty decisions designed to impress your latest online friend or convention buddy. Let’s leave it at that rather than having me spell out each example. This makes it that much easier to defend Entrecard when some B-List Blogger makes a grandstand exit in print.
- Have a real staff and divide the work amongst them if you are not going to do it yourself. Ben may love the spotlight now, but he’s not going to work for free forever. Entrecard obviously needs a queue for new blogs to be checked out before they get into everyone’s inbox.
- Promote your own bloggers. Do you even know the highest page ranked blog in EC? When someone accomplishes something in the EC community, promote it. I know you have used WordPress, because you mention having seen the admin panel. Ever see how WordPress promotes itself, by featuring news related to the WordPress Community?
- You want to run your own business? Then run it! Stop collecting ideas that you never implement, like it’s some kind of stalling tactic. Stalling for what reason, to get the angry mob settled down while you disappear for another month of tales about VC investors? This is your chance to “do it right”, so step up to the plate.
Anyone have their own advice for Graham? Agree or disagree with my advice?
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Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Wow. I love how straight forward you are here. Entrecard could be so much better if suggests that are submitted actually seriously got considered and the good ones implemented.
Tom & Jen: Thanks for the vote of support. Being too straight always made me a flop with the ladies in college. Sometimes the truth isn’t always what people want to hear. But there is a time for business, and a time for flattery. So let’s get down with the business of fixing Entrecard.
Now all you have to do is get him to listen to you. Excellent post, and very succinct!
Great post! I like point #1. I would like Graham et al. to provide more details about where Entrecard will be heading, and what they are working on. I don’t like it when he states something “big” is going to happen and then says nothing about it for weeks or months on end.
If he mentioned what is happening, then maybe he could get some feedback from the Entrecard community, which could make his idea even better.
Coming from a fairly new Blogger, I would like to say “thank you!” I love the straight and to the point answer here. I have already seen a little of what goes on, but yes Entrecard does have enough great points to it to make it worth sticking it out. I guess I could call myself a B-List Blogger for now, while I build my skills, my posts and more. But B’s don’t always stay on that list and I would love to be able to continue using a company that has a lot of potential. Coming from a self-employed, work from home freelancer, I couldn’t agree more. If you want to run your company then run it. If you are going to make a show of asking for opinions, you may actually want to consider worthy answers. If you have no plans of doing so, don’t ask.
Thanks again for writing this!
Very well written, and so true. As always Turnip you seem to hit the nail on the head so to speak. I hope you suggestions, some if not all, are not falling upon deaf ears. Thanks for the post.
Two huge bulbous thumbs up. (actually I have rather cute thumbs, but There is a local DJ that is always giving people a huge hairy bulbous middle finger and I guess it has stuck.)
It would be nice if Grahm Listened to your advice. But Last time I looked , yours was one of about 60 responses. When he starts getting numbers like that, I stop reading the comments. I can only handle so much you know what kissing in one session.
Beamer
Hey Turnip, I do agree with your advice though I probably wouldn’t have put it as harshly as you have but then again if everyone was as soft as fuzzy as I try my hardest to be then no one would ever finish right? (In case, that wasn’t clear I was alluding to the ‘nice guys finish last’ saying).
Here’s hoping he does listen this time!
Fragile, that was kind considering what I left out. Graham is the king of broken promises made to get out of sticky situations. It’s almost to the point where he is like the liar guy on Saturday night live. “Oh yeah, must have slipped my mind! BTW, you guys have any suggestions to improve entrecard?”
I don’t think anyone could describe you as warm and fuzzy, which is why I keep coming back here. To-the-point common sense comments are what I like to read and you have an abundance of them. I just hope Graham does read this post and takes it to heart. I am sick of site owners who say they want imput and then proceed to cobble things up more. Case in point, Gather.com. It has been years and they have slowly gotten their site more user friendly, but they must not be paying their programmers enough.
Two thumbs up from me too, Turnip. It sure does get frustrating. Until today, I hadn’t been to the forums in weeks because of it. Then, out of the blue, on my dashboard tonight, affiliate ads pop up. Why couldn’t blogger ads show there instead? Anyway, whew, it does get frustrating.
For Turnip to write like this about entrecard, there must be some crises within the community that most of us do not know.
Thanks for this post! But I hope I won’t read another great blog saying goodbye to entrecard.
I love the honesty too, I will admit for a complete newbie almost a year ago Entrecard helped quite a bit with exposure. But I have not used it too often recently, the reasons being stated above.
Thanks for calling it out!
You said it- and FB called it. Watch out deaf ears, somethings going to be falling on you. I hope Graham does something about the fundamental problems instead of trying to add more bells and whistles that are ultimately useless when the advertising network doesn’t work (as in can’t be monetized).
Gary: He’s never said this, but I’ve had the feeling Graham’s been trying to sell Entrecard for some time. Here’s why. It’s easier to say “I have ideas on how to monetize Entrecard, but just don’t have the money to implement the coding”, than it is to actually monetize it and then show someone the books.
An investor who looked at EC would see 20k signups and be impressed. Then looking at the real data, they would see maybe 10k active cards. Looking further, maybe only 3k-5k accounts drop even 1 card a day. Looking even more closely, you see that its actually 1000 people that own multiple accounts doing the dropping. Finally, the investor gets down to the nitty gritty and see’s there are about 400 active members, and a whole bunch of spammer types trying to make a buck from the system.
Now you see why Entrecard hasn’t been monetized. It would embarass him to open the books. 20k registered members, and he made say $75 for the month. Better to leave the potential hanging out there, than to show the truth.
You know Turnip, EC was such a breath of fresh air when it premiered almost a year ago…it’s a shame to see it sputtering to what some are predicting as the last days of Entrecard. Hopefully they can breathe some new life into this dying entity.
It’s still a good thing Teasa. I started a new blog last week, it took me all of 2 days to get over 200 pairs of eyes a day looking at my blog. That’s all I wanted. Nothing more. The problem is all the whiners. Boohoo, nobody read my article, nobody clicked my ad, my bounce rate is up, I can’t monetize my traffic.
If EC didn’t promise magic and accepted the fact it was a traffic exchange, there wouldn’t be any issues. It does what it says it does. The problems arise when spammers creep into the system. Some spammer slips 20 blogs a day into the system that all have autoplay audio ads that make him .03 per play. He makes $.50 per site. Pockets $10 for the day, and feels like the richest guy on the block. He doesn’t care if Entrecard kicks him, as long as he dropped his 300 cards per blog, he’s happy because people always reciprocate.
Suddenly we are no longer on equal footing. The spammer slows down the system, angers us with their cheap tricks, and we take our anger out on the system. What does EC do? Give us new tools to drop cards even faster. Why bookmark a site when we can tell you where to go? But none of that is what we asked for.
We want the absentee owner to get off his lazy ass and appoint some mods who will sort through all the blogs. Ben’s done a great job, but more get in daily. So why not appoint new mods. Because the owner of Entrecard is a little boy. Whaa Whaa, I appointed Lee Doyle and you didn’t like my choice, so I’m not going to appoint any more mods.
Well guess what Graham, you and Lee can go sit in a corner for the rest of your online lives while EC dies around you two. Hey, anyone see Woobie lately? Anyone see Saph lately? I don’t speak for them, but their absense says it all. Ben agreed to train new mods. All that is required is one little surfer boy in California to poke his head into the office for an afternoon and make some decisions. But appoint who? Graham doesn’t know his own community. He might as well pick names out of the phone book. Saphrym suggested some people and 4 months later Graham made them mods. Following that pattern, expect 3 new mods by Christmas.
Don’t hold your breath. I’d rather see Graham sell EC than watch it die.
Thank you for your insight into the staffing issues. It explains a lot about why my suggestions about developing a small volunteer staff over the past month have been met with reticence and “no-can-do’s.”
Unfortunately, your other four suggestions would be beyond exhausting to implement well without sufficient manpower behind the scenes.
Something will give.
Great Shot!
I believe he will read it and think about each and every lines you have written in here and elsewhere.
It is a hard job, but not impossible to weed out noise from suggestions.
I’m one of those relatively inexperienced bloggers that really couldn’t give him any really good advice. Nor do I think I could dis/agree with your advice. But I really respect the way you stated your comments.
Hi Turnip! Your post is very informative. I hope Graham reads it and implements your suggestions. I’ve only been an Entrecard member for about four months so I didn’t know all this was going on.
You have spelled out a very valuable piece of advice that anyone wanting to start their own business should heed. I think the last four are the most important, but specifically #3. I cannot count how many times I have received a drop and went to return the drop just to find out that there is no widget and the page is not even a blog. You certainly give good advice Turnip.