Mar
How To Use EntreCard To Grow Your Blog
by admin
First of all let me say that there is no right or wrong way to use EntreCard. People use it for a myriad of reasons, but at the end of the day EntreCard was meant to be a way of promoting your site in order to get more traffic and grow your blog. So, how do you do this?
Content, Content, Content!
Kind of obvious, but easy to forget at times. You’ve got to have something decent for all that traffic to read! The content can take two forms:
- single posts: It’s good to have varied lengths depending on the subject matter.
- Series: There’s nothing like a good topic spread over multiple posts to get visitors subscribing to your blog and turning into repeat visitors.
Before you join any traffic scheme or advertise your blog, have at least five or ten posts of varied size/subject. If possible have some posts ready to be published because you are going to be busy.
Join EntreCard
Well… not yet. Before you join make a 125×125 pixel "business card". You can either use your logo as a brand or it can be an ad. EntreCard do have some default card designs you can use but to be honest, they’re crap. You really are better off making your own or getting someone to make it for you.
Now you can join by visiting EntreCard, enter your details, choose a relevant category and grab the code for the type of widget you want. Note: If your blog is at wordpress.com you CANNOT use EntreCard.
Dropping Cards
At the start, especially if you have negligible traffic, I would forget about dropping 300 a day in order to get reciprocal drops and raise your ad price. I see too many sites that have been around only a short while, a month or so, with a price of 200-300ec’s or even more, often they’re not fully booked and they even have a mass of unused ad space on the page!
Month One
Drop 50-100 cards a day if you can. Pick some sites that you can see yourself working with and drop on them, leave a comment or two - start networking. Let your ad price rise to around 50-75ec.
What will this do?
It will not suck up all your time dropping cards! Instead, you will have time to:
- Create new posts.
- Work on your SEO to get search engine traffic.
- Join other networks like BlogCatalog to build up contacts.
- Submit your posts to BloggingZoom for more exposure.
- Buy 2-3 EC ads per day.
- Comment on other blogs.
Why do you want to do this? So that you don’t depend on EntreCard for all your traffic. You want as many different sources of traffic as possible so that if you lose one you do not lose all your traffic. Search Engine traffic takes time to grow, in the mean time EntreCard and StumbleUpon can boost your totals.
Month Two
As long as you are writing decent articles and giving them some exposure your traffic should be growing nicely. You should also be converting some of them to subscribers and regular visitors. You’re Search Engine traffic should be starting to come in as well. Don’t forget to keep up with the list of tasks above.
As far as EntreCard is concerned, you should be use to the dropping by now, you have a rhythm and it doesn’t take as long so you can start to ramp up to 200 drops a day. I would also up the ads to 4-5 a day as you should be getting more ec’s from your drops and drop-backs. Your ad price should be around 100-150ec’s.
Month Three And Onwards
More of the same except now you drop 250-300 cards a day. You will have more ec’s so you can start to buy more expensive ads, though not to many, maybe one a day or every other day. You should also be able to start saving ec’s if you haven’t already. You can use them to run competitions, bribes or buying other stuff at the EC Shop. Ad price should be around 250-300ec’s, and will grow as more people reciprocal drop on you.
By now your other traffic sources should be showing fruit. If you have been doing everything properly EC traffic should be between 35-45% of total traffic. At all times is it imperative that you publish your posts on a regular cycle. I have noticed in the last month, I have had paying clients to look after and haven’t been able to post as often - result, a drop in Stumbles and other traffic.
Advertising
Advertising is a double-edged sword. Especially with a new blog, you want to get your brand out there, so there’s a temptation to go nuts and buy up all the advertising you can. But then if it’s successful you’re ad price goes up to quickly and nobody will buy your ads. Also, once you are established in EntreCard, i.e. at the top of the Popular pile, to maintain that position you have to buy more and more ads. This takes time and ec’s.
This is why you will never see me on the top advertisers page as I have tried to consistently have only 2-5 ads per day. Just as I do not want to rely on one traffic source, I also do not want to rely on blanket ads to get traffic.
Wrap Up
What I have just described is exactly how I approached EntreCard. Now four and a half months later these are my stats:
Technorati: Authority- 250, Rank 21,189
Alexa: 48,285
RSS: 137 (posts) + 7 (comments)
Back links: Google - 230, Yahoo - 22,231
PR: 3
I have used EntreCard, yes, but not aggressively. I have maybe 2-5 ads per day on average and drop in to the forums occasionally. Not really a lot of "participation" in the EntreCard community and yet I have been consistently in the top 30 popular page for at least the last couple of months so I must be doing something right, and yet EC traffic is still below 50% of total traffic.
If there is one thing I would change in the EntreCard system, it is the pricing. First of all I would change how the price is calculated and secondly I would like to have sale periods where I could offer say 50% of for a limited period or maybe have an auction to determine the price.
Some say that EC traffic is rubbish traffic. On the whole, I agree, BUT there are members who are bloggers at heart. They read, comment and subscribe if they see quality posts on a decent theme and it’s those that you need to work on by getting your stuff in front of their eyes by any means possible.
Of course it is not a one way street of gimme, gimme, gimme! You should be doing the same to other blogs and not just those that are inside EntreCard, build your blog and reputation and you can’t but help succeed.
If this post has piqued your interest and you have a blog, why not give EntreCard a try? We have a huge contest and membership drive on right now.
Finally, this is how I have grown my blog by using EntreCard. It is not the only way, it probably isn’t the best way but it is working for me. I think that depending on EntreCard will just make you a slave to EntreCard. Develop other sources of traffic and get into the right blogging habits while EntreCard helps spread the word.
What do you think?
Tags: advertising, entrecard, posts, seo, stats, stumbleupon, Traffic
Category Traffic |
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Excellent post! I love entrecard because I have met so many bloggers. I have been at this full time since December and I have noticed my Alexa traffic went from the high 600’s and is now in the low 200’s. I have some questions if you don’t mind. What is trackback? How do I get people to stumble me? How do I get backlinks? Thanks!
@Etta: I will answer one question here and will post today/tomorrow about the other two, okay?
“How do I get people to stumble me?”
First, look at your own behavior, when/why do you stumble a post? Is it because you liked it, everyone else was stumbling it, somebody asked you?
Really it depends on how aggressive you want to be. For me, I don’t ask anyone to stumble a post and I don’t pay either. I think that if a post is good it will get stumbled by someone. I just don’t feel comfortable asking.
On the other hand, some people continuously ask for post after post to be stumbled, occasionally if I like the post I will but otherwise no. Did you ever see those mugshots on stumble? The first one was kinda funny so I thumbed it up. But now it’s nearly everyday, and it’s taking the mick so I thumb them down now everytime.
The key, if you’re gonna ask, is to ask a good stumbler that will write a review. And of course, it all starts with the post itself, would another stumbler want to read it?
Hope that helps…
Great post… I’m new to Entrecard and will definetely use your advice. I read quite a few comments and posts on dropping 300 cards a day, but couldn’t find the “real” logic in it. I mean, sure, i can see the traffic build-up, but don’t see the quality of that traffic as being very good.
Thanks again for the post !
Great guide, thank you! Going now to browse through the rest of your site for more helpful info
nice posts. im just starting to learn how to entrecard and this post is very helpful..i’ll be dropping by often to learn more.
-Pamps
Nice posts. I haven’t done to much stumbling. I have to figure out how to get the logo thingy on my site. I agree about not just using entrecard for your traffic. The whole purpose is to get people to your site and want to come back. I will never be among the high ad sites. I can’t drop that many in a day and still be able to read posts and make comments like this one. lol
This a very good article. I have a question also what does the “Authority” mean on Technorati?
Nice guide! I’m currently building some entrecard guide series myself for new comers
Content is a core of blog.It just like a shop,if you dont have a nice product ,people wont visit your shop.Content =product,how we improve it is study a lot from other’s website.We have an opportunity to connect to international blogger borderless via EC.
@Pete: Dropping 300 from day one is just crazy IMHO and traffic quality is what you make of it. You have to “sell” them once they’re on your site.
@Carol: What do you mean by “I have to figure out how to get the logo thingy on my site”?
@Beverly: Technorati Authority is simply a count of the number of blogs, not posts, that are linking to you blog in the last 6 months. The greater the number the more trustworthy/popular is your blog.
@Michael: Can’t wait to see them
@Felex: Absolutely, that’s why I mentioned it first, without it visitors evaporate away.
Nice and good advice, I will try and this is hopeful for me, cause I newbie in blogger. Thanks
Andre
Nice guide you wrote up here.
I would to share my experience of EntreCard - I think I am suffering some form of Entre-Fatigue, been spending too much time on EntreCard.
Will try to stop getting obsessed with staying on the most popular page and attempt to focus on networking with others sincerely.
@Deimos: Yeah I think this happening to the “veterans”. I noticed in the forums that fewer of them are talking there.
I have been doing for almost a week now and I am quite happy with the results of my traffic. Although it is not quality traffic as for the moment, it is still traffic and is better than no traffic. I believe that there are entrecade members who are bloggers at heart and stays at someones websites to read and learn. I drop cards at 300 per day. I may not be staying during the time I drop the card but I’ll make sure that I’ll come back to see those worth reading sites, like this one. There are many great blogs out there in entrecard. So I guess EntreCard works for me because I learn a lot more from its members.
I love your post. I now have a much better understanding on how to proceed with Entrecard.
Remi
Thanks for your kind info to me..
I like entrecard too. it’s like door to advertising my blog to other blog. I hope if You can share with me, how to make my blog have rank. thanks for you
Andre
@Pamps: I see you recommend the “site opener”, do you use it? That may be why you have low quality traffic. If I were you I would focus on your category of related sites. As they share your interest there’s more likelihood that you will get some comments and readers.
@Andre: Check out my post Trackbacks, Pingbacks, Linkbacks - huh? That should give you a good start to building rank.
I like to use entrecard to drive traffics to website because it is free yet earn credits,My target is to achieve 10000 credits within a month and sell it!
@Felex: That is acheivable:
drop 300 a day * 31 = 6200
current ad price = 126 so 126/4 * 31 = 976
droppers per day = 126/2 * 31 = 1953
This totals 9129ec’s plus the 2000 you just won = 11129ec’s
So that leaves you with 1129ec’s for buying ads with for the month.
This is assuming that ec droppers do not increase so your ad price stays constant. As long as you write decent, regular content to attract ec readers, droppers will increase along with ad price so you should make more. Good luck
The best post on getting the most out of EntreCard bar none! Thanks for the tips. I’m new to blogging for money but from what I’ve seen out there, your blog is one of the best.
Thanks for writing such a helpful post!
@Brad: thx guy, I appreciate your comment
I got here via EntreCard.
Very good post… I agree that as a whole, most are just dropping and leaving, but you get 1 or 2 out of the bunch it’s a good catch indeed… good post.
@Hank: At the moment it’s about 1-3% of daily ECer’s, which isn’t bad but could be better.
Totally not bad at all I’d say. It still some percentage, which is good, but yea, there isn’t a real good way to get the to stick around, just by the nature of the beast.
Funny, I only have 2 favorites marked on on Technorati and I realized that when I added you as the 2nd one you were also the 1st one too!! That must mean I think you have something to say, huh? Thanks for the information. It’s been very enlightening. The Marketing post too. Thanks! Celene
thanks a lot for all the useful advices
I wish a lot of success to all entrecard bloggers
take care
Hi, I read your post yesterday and your strategy stuck in my mind - I just started using Entrecard and am still learning about it, but I like your approach of keeping a balance. I can’t realistically spend all day dropping cards while doing everything else that needs to be done on my blog, esp. if I’m reading and leaving comments on the blogs I drop comments on.
Thanks for the realistic outline!
Great post, I was feeling kind of lost as to what to do, but I think this is a great game plan.
Just a question - you dont’ get to set your own price on advertising on your site, do you? I can’t manage to find that option. Hehe.
Dropped my card, hopefully you get the chance to visit.
@Herbert: The only way you can ‘manage’ your ad price is by refusing ads, this will lower your price by 50% each time. If you want to up your price then it’s a combination of regular good posts and a lot of card dropping and advertising.
Very informative article. I just started using entrecard. I think I’m scared of it.
I’ve been curious about EntreCard for a while. I’m just now getting around to checking it out and they don’t seem to have much on their site about exactly what EntreCard is. This page helped a lot.
Thanks!
Jason
Great post! I’m new to entrecard so I need all of the help I can get.
I want to thank you for the information in your article. I have just joined and you are actually the first person I have dropped my card with. It’s nice to know that I can start out slow and work my way up. Thanks again for the info:)
Very nice design on the site. Love the tips too. I hope my blog does well on entrecard. I just started today and I must say that I’m addicted!
I’ve literally just signed up to EC about 3 hours ago. It seems a very interesting concept.
I’m not a prolific blogger, and don’t ever expect to be. My query is, why would you want to get traffic to your site? It uses your bandwidth, which costs money! Sure, if you had other means of revenue (shop, displaying adverts for real money, etc), then I could see a benefit (I know you can trade the EC for tangible items) - otherwise, I seem to be missing a rather large chunk of the whole blogging concept, if not to just get a message across (which, as a personal blog, is just that).
BloggingZoom is a complete failure. I just signed up and tried to post my first post only to get some error. Then I tried to use their Contact form, only to have that fail too.
I’m moving on to other sites that actually work. They failed and lost me completely.
Okay so I have Entrecard and I would like to know what the first number in the right hand corner of the widget is when you do a campaign search. I have been looking everywhere for this and have yet to find any information.
@Danielle - The number is the EC popularity - basically, the number of drops on that site’s widget on the previous day. The higher the number, the more people visited that site and dropped their card.
I’ve using Entrecard for about a week.. Your Post was a real useful guide to get a start..