I agree with everything you said, but I also think the removal of the inbox would cause riots in the streets of Entrecard.

BTW, nice pic.

I think their efforts should be focused on stability. Who would pay for a site they can’t access?

Good ideas though, but I think they should wait until after a “feature freeze”.

Feature freeze has nothing to do with the current instability. Either they lowered the amount of servers, or they are suffering a DOS attack, I’m sorry, but claiming “heavy use” at 4:30 pm is complete bullshit. More likely they pissed off a spammer who’s trying to get some sort of revenge. Notice the slowness has to do with logging in. Once you pass the login process, the slowness is gone except for the message server.

I’m new to entrecard and apologize if this has been talked to death by people have been around longer. But, I like your idea above because it also would draw in more quality comments.
I’m also a new blogger, and appreciate comments, encourage them on almost every post. But, have been frustrated and upset by some of the comments from entrecard users. For example, I leave a thoughtful, or geniuine comment on a post I find interesting, and have gotten reply, “Thanks for visiting my site, come back,” with an URL. This to me is spam. I’ll stop now before I over comment and spam your comments section. But, your site has been valuable in the learning process.

I’ve never been a fan of the inbox. Good call Turnip!

Gary: heh. No, the database is not “poorly optimized”. It consists of millions and millions of rows of data getting hammered at peaks of over 500 queries per second on a single server. The tables are heavily indexed are carefully normalized (and on occasion denormalized), we make heavy use of triggers to maintain aggregate statistics on insert/update and the database server configuration is heavily customised and runs the majority of the workload straight out of ram.

Unfortunately, at these kind of loads it doesn’t take much to push things from manageable to unmanageable – it is all too easy to saturate our I/O bandwidth since every single drop, credit, advertising click, message etc involves transaction work. Rapidly changing information for accounts, credit totals etc plus the inevitable levels of checking and constraints mean that even a well structured database can be pushed to its limits.

Our ability to cope with increasing load has consistently been a matter of attempting to reduce database dependency while maintaining accuracy – something that ran out of low hanging fruit quite some time ago.

While Turnips observation that 4:30pm is an odd time for heavy load is accurate, load for us impacts across the timeline because of the need to perform garbage collection, vacuum and analyze for database indexes etc on a regular basis to keep the database planner accurate and try and keep the number of active rows down (by archiving off old drop records for example). These are not tasks we can avoid on a day to day basis without risking even worse impact the next day, and at the moment the need to keep things as tuned as possible mean that some of them are executing every 4 hours. These actions impose their own I/O load and our system isn’t smart enough (arguably it couldn’t be since it *must* run) to defer them in this event.

As a result, heavy system load is not restricted simply to peak time – indeed if anything peak time is likely to be better as we try and avoid heavy scheduled work during that time.

Phirate: I appreciate the detailed explanation. So there is a chance a new slowdown can occur every 4 hours when the routines run. And nothing can be done, because stopping the routine would cause even bigger problems the next day.

CEblogger: I still find spammers out there. People slipping in redirects after you close their blog. For some reason they quit dropping cards, but try to monetize the few drops they get using cheap tricks. When I find them I get them banned.

XZchief: Currently, Entrecard traffic is almost all fellow bloggers. Whatever a good blog does, it pays dividends down the road. Likewise, a bad blog can do exactly what a good blog does, and get 1/10th the visitors. Nobody said blogging was fair. Remember libraries? Some books got read all the time, others never got checked out. We all want our blogs to be best sellers. But it’s not going to happen for some people. Entrecard at least gets eyeballs looking at your blog. The question is should that process be mechanical (as in dropping cards), or earned (through successful advertising). Right now the scales have swung too far to the mechanical side.

I like the idea of a premium account with the increased drop value and removing the inbox. It would improve the quality of member blogs, reduce “dropping stress”, reduce spammers and give me more time to enjoy my favorite blogs. But as you have pointed out in the past, everyone’s suggestions seem to fall on deaf ears. So, we can all just continue to drop til we drop.

I agree with you Turnip that the Inbox should go. But, I don’t like bookmarked lists any better. Bookmarked lists means you are viewing the same sites over and over and over again.

You mentioned the other day that you had over 100,000 Entrecard credits sitting in your account. Today you talk about the drudgery of dropping 300 bookmarked Entrecards every day.

So, you aren’t doing anything with your credits, but you keep doing something you don’t enjoy. Is it time for us to do an Entrecard Intervention with you.

I do agree we need to get back to making Entrecard an advertising vehicle. I used to enjoy the 15 to 20 drop lists and then go off and visit other blogs by clicking the ads.

You’re right about the inbox! Let’s get rid of it!

Okay, I’ll swim upstream.

Here’s why I like the inbox: If someone drops on me, I get a credit. Thanks! I don’t mind dropping back because I get another credit that way. I don’t get more than 40 in my inbox each day, so no great shakes for me. YMMV.

Now, Favorites is another matter entirely. Those are the blogs I drop on because I love reading and commenting on those blogs. I use Favorites as my bookmarker.

I always look at the inbox droppers as potential favorites. And I always look at favorites to see who needs to be removed.

I think every person has their own system of doing things based on what is available. Should Entrecard make changes…even the changes you suggest, Turnip, some might leave, some would stay, new folks will come in, and everyone would adapt.

I have mixed feelings regarding the inbox. Without it, I would not have discovered some of my favorite blogs, and I do use it for “you drop I follow”, when I have the time. I focus my dropping efforts first on the blogs I’m going to be advertising on, then my favorites, then my inbox.

I take my blog pretty seriously and would LOVE to see a higher quality of blogs-there is a lot of crap out there! I would welcome a better method of accumulating credits so I can advertise. I dislike the practice of having to drop 300 credits (which I don’t think I’ve ever hit) to accumulate credits to advertise. I’d prefer to drop on blogs I like.

First of, I love the Photo, nice one! Second, you are right. I have noticed myself, that even I a newbie have become less then eager to even work with Entrecard or many other so called Blog Traffic Exchange / Advertisement programs. It seems to be more down then up, often there are more problems then solutions.
Shrugs the Power of owning your own company, you have the right to make it as good or as unreliable as you want.
For me, I am trying to learn to make money with my blogs, so following rules that don’t seem to go for everyone, being unable to get an entry to my account once I finally get it rolling, just irritates me.

Well, hug your bed partner for me and off I go. Thanks again for yet another great article.

Dropping the inbox would make no problem to me because I never use it anyway. I do see many things on Entrecard that speaking for myself, I could do without.

About charging a fee, Not whining, just making a statement here, if Entrecard ever went to charging people, I’d be out. I’m disabled and make so much a month and do good to pay internet service so I’ll have some kind of a hobby that I can do.

Who knows, maybe blogging is really for the big dogs and I don’t belong on the porch after all.

Great post by the way. Have a good day!

I will visit when I’m not dropping, it’s a bit like Playboy ’round here – I come for the wonderful pictures but stay for the articles

I think your inbox suggestion is really interesting. Although, like Debbie said, it is fun to be able to see who dropped by.

Hmm very interesting points. I was excited when the inbox came out, but I see your point. Before the inbox went back for days and days, I used the EC search to find EC sites or, like you, I used my bookmarked list. And having the toolbar move through my bookmarks would be awesome.

Not sure I’d pay $5 for the perks though, per month. Maybe $5 per quarter. The economy is tough. I don’t buy ECs either, though.

Kex: I’d love to see what a little competition can do. Spott wasn’t serious competition, and the rest of the link exchanges generate no traffic. Let me know when you are ready to release your system and I’ll write all about it.

Turnip thats a good idea…$5 for premium users, and creating more interactivity for all–add a chat feature while dropping as a sidebar, and maybe you could see who is online dropping, and make new friends…anything is worth a try to help EC save itself.

Loved your comparison to libraries in the comment above. Though even there, I’m afraid the books that don’t get used get weeded and sold off. It’s kind of Always a popularity contest, ya know.

a

I’m pretty new to Entrecard and probably wouldn’t have got the hang of it as quickly as I have without the useful explanations on your blog Turnip – thank you! I have to confess I’ve become guilty of dropping and running, apart from a few comments a day, because it all takes just soooo long and I very nearly gave up on the whole thing with all the recent issues. I’ll stick with it though as it’s a great idea in principle and I watch for developments with interest.

As always, you have some interesting ideas.

I am not one who uses my inbox except occasionally. I drop from a list. I also tend to click on ads that spark my interest. Usually most of the ads I see on my “regular” drop pages are sites I already drop on, so I don’t widget surf that often.

When I started with Entrecard, that was the best way to find new blogs — ad prices were much more reasonable, so you saw a variety of ads on sites and could merrily click your way through hundreds of them pretty quickly and pretty easily.

I did the 300 per day thing for awhile, but frankly, I have better uses for my time. At one time, I had accumulated some 30,000 credits, but have since given most away or used them to buy ads on your site here and on Monkey’s sites as I know my ads will be seen. Advertising on 2ec or even 128 ec blogs gets you very nearly nothing.

I like some of your ideas. Some don’t float my boat but hey, I’m not as into monetizing my site as many others are. I just want readers. I want my ego stroked

You never comment on any of my blogs (that I know of) although I know you drop on all 3 of them every day and they are in your list (thanks for that inclusion). I guess other than that, I don’t rank up there with your top 30 blogs, but that’s OK, I know I don’t appeal to everyone. I’m pretty sure you do click the feedburner widget or an ad when you visit and I thank you kindly for that.

If Graham listens to your advice, I MIGHT even pop for $5 per month to be a “premium” blog. That would certainly be affordable enough for me despite this sucky economy. We would have to see. And then I would have to rate the value received for my $5. As it is now, the value from the hours spent on Entrecard are fast approaching the threshold of what I’m currently paying for it (0).

ê¿ê

One reason why I attempt to drop my max (though I seldom make it) is that it not only gives credits for advertising, but it also the measure of your popularity. The higher up you are in your category, the more likely people blog surfing are going to see and click on your blog.

And, of course, part of the popularity formula is how many people drop on you, but people don’t drop on you unless you drop on them. So you have to get the hamster on the treadmill and play the dropping game just to get a bit more exposure.

I don’t know how to fix the problem except to find another way to determine popularity for the listings. *shrugs* Wish I had a better answer.

Hi Turnip,

We haven’t met but I have been following your career here at Entrecard for the past year. A year ago I noticed you took the lead in promoting entrecard and as an Internet marketer I like to follow trends to see if anything materializes that could be, in my case at least, used to make money online.

That said I retired from using this service long ago for reasons I will get to shortly – suffice to say that in general entrecard offers no value to an Internet marketer (as opposed to a blogger).

I understand the value of this system for those here who simply want a small community of online friends – the social attraction.

As I said my interest lies in making money and as such I need traffic that will buy or click for me. As everybody here is aware by now – social traffic (bloggers, readers etc) don’t spend any money on your blog and they don’t click ads. You need search engine traffic targeted to what you have to make money. Hence why internet marketers are not using this system – only bloggers are. Unfortunately this is also why entrecard has never really taken off and provided you all with the kind of traffic you all talk about (above comments) but haven’t received.

I think you mentioned that there just weren’t any sites worth advertising on. If I may, you probably mean – that there aren’t any sites on here that can send you traffic other than the same 200 or so entrecard droppers so what is the point of advertising and what is the point of having a credit system at all.

There are 1600 blogs in the “make money online” category and I haven’t found one that can send me traffic. Real traffic. Well there is one – mine. I may be wrong but I wouldn’t be far off if I said that my site gets more search traffic each day than all the other 1600 sites combined.

I bring this up to make a point. There is no incentive for sites like mine to join this system. If I place the widget above the fold it would bleed off clicks from my money links. That would cost me money. Therefor why would I want to send my traffic elsewhere for nothing. The fatal flaw with Entrecard is that it was for the little blogger” and where “everybody would be treated equally” which is certainly noble but doesn’t work as a business model. If Graham Langdon paid me to put my widget above the fold then the people advertising on my site would suddenly get a shot of search engine traffic looking for “make money online” terms.

If Entrecard paid a number of other high trafficked blogs in multiple niches then everyone on here would start seeing real traffic from the search engines who are looking for what their blog offers. Not just random bloggers out for a read or drop.

This may seem heretical for a lot of you who are quite happy using entrecard as a small social site and I’m sure most feel that entrecard has helped them. To you I mean no disrespect – we all have our reasons for being online and not everyone is here just to make money. I just thought I would share my perspective about why I think entrecard hasn’t really blossomed from a “money making” point of view.

Let me ask, would you (Turnip) like a spot above the fold on my blog just to see what targeted traffic is like?

I suppose my real point is that this might be something you should all consider if trying to “save” entrecard. I just can’t see this growing without having sites that can produce traffic for the smaller blogs and high traffic sites will have to be compensated for lost revenue due to lost visitors.

Yes it does mean someone will have to pay. The thing is people using this system are looking for free traffic and you get what you pay for. You will never get real numbers of traffic online for free. People who have it just don’t give it away for nothing.

My apologies for rambling on but having read a few of your posts and following the comments I thought I might throw in a few pennies if for no other reason than to say hello. In any event I do hope something can be salvaged from the system as I know it has meant a lot to many of you.

Good Luck Turnip and let me know if I can be of help (or if you’d like a link above the fold).

Griz

What Grizzly said.

I’ve always been happy with Entrecard but clearly there are plenty of people who aren’t and it seems to be getting worse. It sounds like changes do need to be made but I worry that if things become too complex, it might turn more people off. Two reasons why I like Entrecard is that it’s 1) free and 2) simple, so whatever changes they make, I just hope they keep the system easy to use.

A paid option sounds fine to me, as long as it’s kept as an option and you can still use the regular service for free.

Happy Blogoversary, Turnip! Hard to believe you’re only 1. You are very mature for your age.

ê¿ê

Some great ideas here. I never use the inbox and just drop on a list like you. My problem is although I drop 300 a day I very rarely get 300 back. If as you suggest there was a premium service for Entrecarders with 5 credits a click I would get a better return for my money and not lose so much of my valuable time dropping 300 for dissapointing results.

Instead of removing the Inbox, which I found to be a valuable feature, I think Entrecard should limit the number of drops allowed to perhaps 40 per day. This would serve two useful purposes: it would increase the scarcity value of credits, and it would increase the thoughtfulness and quality of dropping. It would certainly increase the number of comments made while dropping.

There is another very useful and valuable thing Entrecard bloggers can do for each other — write posts about each other’s blogs. Posts are valuable in terms of PR rank, and they’re very useful. You learn a lot about your blog and the attendant opportunities when another blogger takes the time to write a post. Entrecard should extend their card dropping to post dropping.

The number of people who drop 300 cards a day is small and always changing as people burn out. They will yell, but probably not go anywhere because they are desperate for any sort of traffic.

The VAST majority of people in the system drop zero a day. The widget just sort of sits there collecting few credits because they get hit with the tax, not the people doing the click spamming.

They get rid of the inbox, do it quick, get it over with, and move on. As they keep putting the U DROP I FOLLOW in the blog, I don’t see this happening.

Like a junkie, they keep doing the unhealthy thing because the pain of withdrawl is too much.

Oh, Grizz, I like your blog. Post more.

That it is Ted. But so are the people that spam “Nice Post” on a hundred blogs a day hoping for backlinks or visits. New bloggers do what it takes, even if it doesn’t really help. If your blog has real content, people will eventually notice, one way or another.

Those are interesting points about Entrecard…I’m still new and learning.

Thanks for the post and Happy Bloggoversary:)

Bella

Hello,

I doubt you know I read your blog all the time. I don’t drop my card all the time because you are too busy or discerning to drop on mine; either way that is fine. I visit my favourites weekly and usually drop on them.

I always reciprocate drops because it is a chore (and I like to repay the favour for those that have taken the time to perform that chore) that is necessary in many of the ways Jodith points out above.

It would be great if the advertising system were more effective, I totally agree. But I don’t know if getting rid of the inbox is the way to do that. I think that would just encourage more of the drop-generators.

I don’t like the idea of dividing into paid and free users – though would certainly pay if that was the case and think you’d find that almost everyone else would too.

Here are a few ideas I’ve been mulling over – and forgive me they are not taking into account the complexities of creating such systems.

1. Create a popularity rank based on votes for blogs (voting either positive or negative earns no credits)

2. Give the blog owner the opportunity to award credits 1 – 5 EC’s (from their EC account) for comments.

3. Allow the blogger the option to give up the EC gained from the drop and “refund” it back to the dropper for clicking on the EC advert widget.

4. Decrease the max number of drops per day.

I suspect some of these are perhaps too complicated to set up – but think they’d go a long way to solving some of the EC problems.

Now, I have to add this…

Everyone seems to be afraid to admit to using Entrecard to get as much traffic as possible. When did it become such a bad thing – when they started getting called “Drop Spammers”?

I believe there are some real benefits to reciprocal dropping (even the drop and run kind).

Nice post
Robyn

I think you can get around some of the objections you rightly raise as follows:

1. You can’t vote for yourself – just like you can’t drop on yourself. What if when you dropped you clicked a thumbs up or thumbs down EC Drop Card to get your EC but it must be one of the two?

2. Absolutely its an insult, if you make a ‘nice post’ type of comment you get 1 EC if that. If I like your blog/ your comment (you’ve thought about it for a second or two at least) etc you’ll be getting closer to 5.

3. Agreed – requires more thought.

4. I don’t think its the best idea either – though think it could come down to 200 or 150 and still be very worthwhile… I think the masses would pay also and therefore reduce the effectiveness.

Cheers,
Robyn

Thinking about EC credits more. Why don’t we just eliminate the drop credits totally. But give everyone the full credits they earn from the ads they run on their blogs. Yes, that would give people with popular blogs a ton of credits to spend on more ads. But isn’t that kind of realistic?

For me it doesn’t matter. I don’t fully rely on EC for traffic and traffic is hobby for me, not essential to why I blog. I have more EC credits to spend on ads than I use. Usually I forget to buy ads for awhile then notice I’ve got a build up and splurge all at once.

I do think it would be great if card droppers could be discouraged, those that drip rather than drop. The droppers that matter are those who come back and leave comments now and then. Those EC people you get to know by reading their blogs too.

I didn’t understand all that you said but I got the gist of it. I use Entrecard to network with other blogs.

There are some crap sites~ and I don’t aplogise for that comment, it is frustrating to be surfing for quality and finding so little (not my site of course

However, I do like the linking with other blogs, even those that do not seem related to mine. I am sure we each have traffic that shares both our interests. And for those that are aligned with my site~ I now have an abundance of Guest Bloggers!

Hey there. I don’t use the their tool bar and I rarely have more than 10K of credits on my account. I don’t see the value of holding on to credits if you are not going to use them for advertisements on quality blogs.

I’m not so sure that the premium class would work, well at least your reasoning. It’s great that each drop is work 5 credits but you would want to expand your readership and if you’re only keeping tabs on 60 or so blogs, you’re not really getting your material to the masses.

I think that the idea of entrecard is a good one, but it’s executed poorly.

I like the reward of credits for comments, as suggested by Robyn. That’s a great way to encourage quality comments instead of quick 2 word comments. Later.