Well not really. But it’s pretty clear its not going to save itself. But save itself from what? The problem facing Entrecard is that it has become little more than a Traffic exchange, with the entire advertising system worthless. To fix Entrecard, a solution is required that restores the value to advertising for credits, and monetizes Entrecard. After all, a person doesn’t doesn’t need credits to drop a card 300 times, so why would they ever buy them? Various schemes to force people to advertise also won’t work. Either advertising on the Entrecard network has value, or it doesn’t.
This whole thing became a link exchange the day the inbox appeared. The writing on the wall was there when people started asking about importing the entire RSS inbox instead of the 20 most recent. Too bad the people that made entrecard (programmer and owner) never used the system. In those days we dropped on our friends, and we dropped on those we bookmarked as good blogs. We visited sites that advertised on us, and we widget surfed. Why did it ever become so imperative to drop on a spammer simply because they dropped on us? Because we want to max out our 300 card limit, but there aren’t 300 easily found quality blogs in the system. Sure we all have different values. But I had a hard time finding 20 really good blogs, let alone 300. So everyone takes the easy way out, dropping their 300 cards as quickly as possible just to get it over with.
Dropping cards is no longer a vote, it’s a chore. Like you have a really bad job of picking apples for a living. Your boss says bring back 300 apples. If you were picking them for yourself to eat, you’d inspect them for quality. But since it’s a mindless chore, you shake the lowest branches for the low hanging fruit.
So there we are today, a traffic exchange powered by the low hanging fruit. Change it? Won’t happen. People know the path to Entrecard success is to drop 300 cards. Without the immediate gratification of the inbox, scores of people would quit without something to replace it.
There lies the success and failure of Entrecard in one simple sentence. “We all want people to visit our blog, but we don’t want to visit other people’s blogs”. Now if we have to live with that necessary evil, let’s make it as quick and painless as possible. Entrecard can deliver the traffic, and you learn quickly what it takes to get that traffic. Unfortunately that has nothing to do with credits or advertising anymore. At this point, people are thinking “keep your credits, I just want the 300 people I drop on to drop on me”.
The Solution! Lucky for Graham not everyone spends their days frolicking with sea lions. Below are the steps that must be taken to restore some credibility to the advertising system.
1. The inbox must be removed. Without the inbox, spammers have no way to get you to drop on them unless they advertise. Removing the inbox will cause people to create drop lists similar to those that existed in the past, including mine. However, if Phirate can get the toolbar to work with people’s browser bookmarks, those lists won’t even be necessary. Simply bookmark your favorite blogs, and drop on them. Sure, people will quit, make angry posts in the forum, and then adapt. The inbox creates the link exchange and makes ad prices worthless. Remove it, and we are back to widget surfing, bookmarking our friends and favorites, and restoring advertising to the place it should hold.
2. A premium class of Entrecard User must be created: Dropping 300 cards from the inbox sucks. Dropping 300 cards without the inbox sucks even more, unless you have a nifty list like mine and don’t care either way. But say you paid $5 a month to be a premium user? For that $5, each drop you made was worth 5 credits. So instead of dropping 300 cards, you had a drop limit of 60 cards. You could rush things and drop your cards in 4 minutes, or take your time while reading and commenting without feeling pressure.
In addition, Entrecard could throw in countless little goodies for paid members. Avatars, ribbons, medals, an Entrecard email account, chat rooms, member forums, free advertising, a custom profile page, the list goes on and on. The point is there are a number of users willing to pay Entrecard for improved service. Then there are those who won’t pay a penny to Entrecard even if you gave them free gas for a year.
Happy Blogoversary, Turnip! Hard to believe you’re only 1. You are very mature for your age.
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Entrecard this that whatever
The real problem is to many bloggers
keep their eye on their blog and need to
get out and support other bloggers.
ahh I feel better now
Thanks
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.
I do wished that the tool bar worked with my bookmark favorites. There are multiple times I’ve wanted to re-visit a site only to realize that I can’t see it in my favorites again until the next day because I’ve dropped on it already. Then I have to go through the chore of getting through all my other favorites to see it again so that I can properly bookmark it.
I don’t agree with a pay for play EC. I wouldn’t bother because it doesn’t bring that much traffic. But it DOES let me find new, cool blogs to read and I do enjoy that. I’d like to see the number of drops lowered and some kind of credit weighting for frequent drops on the same pages. If loyalty was worth more then people would spend less time dropping weak cards.
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.
Ted, that is one of the features I do for members of my CFM ad network, which I am announcing tonight, and also what I try to do on this blog. I review and link to sites when I have something to say about them. Even interviewing the personalities behind them.
As for the inbox: “The inbox is the opiate of the blogging masses” You have no connection to these people. If you did, that connection is made in your comments or by them clicking your ads. Someone spending a fraction of a second on your site to drop a card is a fleeting reward. The thoughtfulness assumes these people have thoughts. Some of the drops are scripted. Others by people paid to drop, or a blogger’s kid. While I too track drops, droppers, and other stats, I don’t rely upon them.
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.
In a way, the drop-drop-drop culture at Entrecard is a waste of the extraordinary creativity of that population. A [blogger's] mind is a terrible thing to waste.
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.
This has got to be a record of a post, did you know Entrecard can be found 73 times on this page? Make that 74 now. I am surprised you aren’t ranking #1 for EC. I agree with Griz and think this post was a great way to celebrate your one year mark, congrats.
Those are interesting points about Entrecard…I’m still new and learning.
Thanks for the post and Happy Bloggoversary:)
Bella
I’d have to agree with Grizz here, that the traffic from the adverts are pretty much useless. As I mentioned in my comment on the last post, the real value is finding other blogs that will link back to you and give you google juice.
Of course you really don’t need Entrecard for this type of SEO purpose. However, if they could develop some kind of system which encourages linking via it’s social networking system, then that would be huge! I’m not too sure how to do that thought, but I’m sure if we all put our heads together we can figure out a way.
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
Robyn: Thanks for commenting. Great ideas! Here’s my thoughts on them.
1. Voting always gets gamed as people vote for themselves multiple times and hold vote drives. Unless someone is forced to vote, then a small minortiy controls the voting. Look no further than the old “recommendation” system entrecard used.
2. Giving credits is fine. Would anyone ever give less than the max? Isn’t that an insult? People did this on their own before the transfer tax. Never had a great effect.
3. Hmm, paying to click a widget? Interesting concept. Paying to click ads is a very slippery slope. But I won’t reject this idea out of hand. Requires much more thought from all angles. Some of which I like, and some I don’t like.
4. Decrease drops? Sure, but then you also decrease trafic. Which is why I suggested only reducing drops for those who pay for that benefit.
Some interesting ideas there. Maybe others feel differently? Especially the “paying to click my EC widget”, or as you say “the option to refund it”.
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
Why does anyone (other than a newbie or spammer) drop 300 cards every day? I never do that many and I feel no pressure to return every card dropped on my blogs. I have put EC into part of my blog routine but it is not a focus.
I don’t think the inbox needs to go. People just need to get over the idea of dropping 300 cards. EC is not a religion.
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.
It was mere days after the launch of the toolbar and the inbox that I decided to drop the widget. You are absolutely correct, it completely removed the last bit of value from advertising.
SB
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!
I agree with removing the inbox. I think we should still be able to use the toolbar to browse favorite sites though.
That way us Entrecard users can keep track of decent blogs and drop on them.
NathanKP – Inkweaver Review
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.
Well, I am too new to Entrecard to comment on most of what you said, but DEFINITELY it’s true about the low amount of quality blogs. I like taking my time and looking at blogs that are fun, interesting, unique and not terribly overrun with ads. So, if all that will improve, I’m sure open to new ideas!