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7 Months Later: My Opinion of Entrecard
It’s been 7 months since I put the Entrecard widget on this blog. When I first heard of Entrecard, I was skeptical about signing up; when they said “buy an ad with credits”, I thought actual cash would be involved, kind of like what they are doing now, so to speak. After looking closely at the forums, and popular blogs on Entrecard using the widget, I decided to give it a try. A soon as a put the widget up on the sidebar…BOOM! I suddenly get ad requests that eventually filled up the queue in under an hour. Thanks to Entrecard, I made many new friends, maybe a rival friendly adversary or two, traffic increased, and I gained new readers. With a lot happening to the Entrecard community as of late, I decided to let others know of how I feel about the whole situation, and my overall experience with the services, including rejection, and my mission to help out others in the future.
My ad campaigns have been successful with great blogs that fell into my category–and not just on blogs that are about Japanese culture and online gaming. I have never been rejected, until I applied for advertisement on a blog about a popular online game that I play myself. I had high hopes of having my ad displayed on this blog. I was a little nervous as it was solely on this game, and nothing else… Before applying, I did look at the blog that was on the widget at the time, which was also about this game, and a personal blog as well. My ad was accepted the following afternoon–but my feelings changed when I say a red square next to the blog, with a note saying “not relevant”. This was the first and only rejection I have gotten. I was really disappointed by his action, seeing that he accepted my ad, then later rejected it. Maybe it’s because he’s one of those players who complaint about other player’s complaints (Read: Nerd!) and had a different view on game than I do. If he didn’t like what I had to say, he should have just rejected right then. A post written by Turnip of Power, made me feel better about it. Personally, I still think that the person who rejected my ad had agreement problems, just because of this game, and not just the chosen niche of this blog.
Moving on…The recent changes over at Entrecard gave users various opinions. Originally, the more cards you dropped–or the cards dropped on you, including overall traffic to the site–made the cost to advertise sky rocket. Now it’s based on the number of pending advertisements in queue, eliminating the need to reciprocate drops. Despite this, people still return the favor by dropping cards on various blogs. Some just gave up on it and moved on. Smart bloggers have a good reason to get rid of Entrecard right now, if they wanted to; they are a lot of spam blogs showing up and plaguing the community just for the sole purpose to make money. There were also complaints of the ridiculousness of dropping cards everyday, and the fact that the Entrecard traffic is useless because all they care about is getting their own site the very same traffic. If you put a lot of effort into it and provide decent content for your blog and update regularly, then the traffic will have lasting effect, and will get you readers. That’s my success with the widget thus far.
Several popular blogs on the Entrecard network have already dropped out of the program. With the changes, active droppers have dropped back on dropping and started focusing more on content, or the real world. What’s left for me? I still have high hopes for Entrecard, and I’m willing to stick with them for as long as possible, and to help out other blogs (at least in my niche, anyway) in need. The widget is a change from the usual $10-$500 a month you would pay on popular blogs. However, it would be nice to lend a couple (or several hundred) of bucks once in a while. Maybe this is while people are getting rid of the widget, because they want real traffic and $$ instead. If I had a choice now, I could drop the widget, but I said that I would stay just a little while longer. Mike of Bloggin-ads said goodbye to Entrecard not long ago, and his farewell post made me think real hard about whether I should drop the widget as well. Other bloggers who drop the widget (usually within the first week) make long boring posts about why Entrecard sucks and they would do without it. But Mike stayed a long time… and his post really stood out to me; He had a perfect reason to leave Entrecard, but I owe a lot to the service; if it wasn’t for EC, I would have never wrote this post, and I would have been struggling with alternative ways to get traffic for a niche like this. So I’m repaying the favor, and I hope others will look at Entrecard as a small boost for those who don’t have the proper funds or experience to get their site out in the blogosphere. I don’t drop as much as I used to, but I’ll try to drop back. With 3,000+ users, that will be hard to accomplish.
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Tag(s): entrecard
Website: http://centakume.info/
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Thanks for the write-up. I’m considering Entrecard for our website.
Website: http://allshopusa.com
Actually I think entrecard needed and as useful promote our blog, but everyone free for joining or not, it’s depend on their decision. But for me, I’m still need entrecard
Website: http://bloggin-ads.com
Thanks for the mention
I’m glad my post got to some Entrecard members. A lot of them actually bashed me for the post I did, but it’s my own opinion 
-Mike
Mike Huangs last blog post..Newsletters For Blogging Is Winning The Game
Website: http://www.online-internet-marketing-strategies.com
First let me start by saying I really enjoyed this post. I’m actually a fan of Entrecard because getting real humans to anything online is a challenge at best. While I do not know how many, if any, bloggers actually buy from bloggers (see http://www.buyfrombloggers.com hint hint), the traffic alone is well worth the time.
My suggestion would be to NOT get yourself on one of those click and drop lists. I’d much rather have our blogs hand selected by other Entrecard users to visit. Yes, the bounce rate can be incredibly high, but I continue to hold out hope that people will stop and comment (like I am doing now) and add some value (I hope I am!) to someone else’s blog. And by doing so, keep the bounce rate down
It’s amazing how most people miss out on the key reasons to use anything properly on the net. Maybe it’s our current society mindset of “give me mine, and be quick about it!” Maybe it’s just because they lack the education and know how to market themselves effectively? A combination of both, or even several other missing factors?
Anyway, sorry
Getting back on track here, I believe we will be with Entrecard for a long, long time unless something horrible were to happen. It’s working for us!
Dianes last blog post..When Ducking A Guru Might Be The Wrong Move To Make
Website: http://www.centakume.info
@ Hulk vs. Iron Man: I hope Entrecard works out for you.
@ Aliman: Yup. ^^
@ Mike: No problem! Thanks for helping out the EC community!
@ Diane: Glad you liked the post! I do notice my blog being on some of those lists, and many of them have NOTHING BUT Entrecard drop lists, and have way too many advertisements and browser impairing widgets. The ones who have my blog listed without my permission has to go… I’ve thought about lowering the widget slightly below the fold so it would decrease my chances of getting on those lists (and the possibility of getting more readers so they won’t have to drop and run so soon).
Website: http://www.online-internet-marketing-strategies.com
You’re listed on TysBlog and the listed created there, for starters
And, I don’t know about moving it. This is just me, but I like to find the entrecard quickly, drop, and then see what the current (or past) posts are about.
I’m always looking for something to comment on LOL!
Back to blogcatalog and my add for you right back, thanks!
Dianes last blog post..Why Your Two Cents Is Worth More Than It’s Weight In Gold
Website: http://superheroesbase.com/
I got a lot of traffics by using EC,
and I’m not so crazy to dropped
the cards like I used to,
but I’m sticking to EC as long as they
keep giving me visitors,
I consider that there are not many geeks like me
in the blogosphere and EC
really help me with the traffics.
BaseGuardians last blog post..Vol.73 : Dragonball The Movie.
Website: http://www.digitalproductsreview.net/blog/
I dropped the maximum amount of cards I could for a while and then tapered off. I do see Entrecard very useful for getting the word out on a new blog. But like with everything there is a limit of the amount of traffic you can get through one service and with limited time, you must make a decision on how much time you can really spend dropping Entrecards. So, I am in and out now and mainly for my newest blog. I still buy ads for my first blog and accept ads, but only drop for that blog when I happen to be on a site that has an Entrecard.