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Posted: 28 Apr 2008 05:28 PM CDT

goodbye entrecard

Who would’ve thought it it has already been over half a year since the blogosphere craze, Entrecard, launched and hit us bloggers with a long awaited gold mine. Since the beginning of Entrecard, I took advantage of it by putting down my blog in the money making category, which gave me a small boost. As more and more bloggers caught on to Entrecard, I had to move to different categories to stay ahead of the category. Bloggers left and right and up and down were jumping in on Entrecard’s free advertising opportunities. It’s not just because of free advertising, but cheap people like myself loves to hear the word “free” . With Entrecard’s success, it is starting to pull in bloggers from around the blogosphere, but some still hate the fact of Entrecard’s existence because it is ruining how certain things are suppose to be ran.

entrecard logo Being what I call myself, an avid Entrecarder, I noticed there were many different trends. Depending on this program was a bad thing, but not using it was also bad. What I mean is there’s nothing really good or really bad about Entrecard’s system itself. I have seen blog owners come and go because keeping up with things start to becoming more difficult as each day passes. Just because there is nothing wrong with Entrecard’s system doesn’t mean that it won’t have certain effects on us bloggers

Addiction

blog addiction I guess it is due to the free advertising that a lot of bloggers became addicted to Entrecard. Ever since the limit of drops per day changed to 300, hundreds of bloggers started dropping that amount. I guess before there was a limit, the members didn’t really feel a need to drop as much cards .

Dropping the cards do take time and everyone needs to sit on the computer for a least an hour or more to hit the daily drop limit. If you have a high-end computer with a lot of ram, you should be able to drop 300 within 30 minutes, but it really is a difficult task. Bloggers just became addicted to this free advertising method and most are even glued to Entrecard. Haven’t you ever wondered why your getting visitors when you’re not providing much content?

Not Reciprocating

There are a lot of those reciprocating Entrecard drop lists, where if you drop on a site that is on the list, you would be guaranteed a drop on your blog in return. The biggest list I know of is the one by Lee Doyle, but sadly enough, he hasn’t updated that in almost a month. A lot of Entrecard members are joining the list, but it’s not being updated. There’s always a craze in the beginning and then poof, it’s gone .

A drop on your Entrecard widget means that you have received one visitor, but it sucks how some bloggers aren’t participating in these movements anymore. With the new credit system implementation, there isn’t much need to reciprocate drops or use those “U DROP I FOLLOW” lists anymore. Some of the top members are denying the truth, but I’m not denying it since it is inevitable. I personally have experimented with almost everything I can think of and I am stating that it is an absolute fact that the new credit system has drawn away a lot of actual drops. The only good outcome of this is that the drops you receive now are a bit more organic, which means the visitors are actually interested in your content. Now for the ones that denied this before the credit system change, I’m sure now you realize how you weren’t getting readers, but only card droppers.

Stats Playing

entrecard graph Even though Entrecard served as a purpose of giving bloggers or site owners the chance of “free advertising”, many took advantage of it to mess with their site stats. I mentioned this to some Entrecard members before. If your blog/site was up for months before Entrecard and you received no traffic, what makes it think that people like your content right now?

The main reason why bloggers use Entrecard is because it gives free traffic. I love the traffic that I receive, but it isn’t anything stable. One day I would receive more traffic and the other day I would not. This is because it really depends on if Entrecard members want to drop a card on you.

I simply love Alexa’s new graphs because it really does show who received actual visitors rather than the same visitors each and every day that leave within 5seconds. Although Alexa is still not accurate as they’re still working on the measurements, I can pretty much say that a lot of blogs including myself that had a very high rank had now dropped. Now it may be a bit harder for bloggers to sell their blog after a few months of using Entrecard To the ones that mentioned that the bounce rates don’t matter, I think it is time to say that it does in fact matter. The higher your bounce rate, the more it means visitors just come in to drop a card rather than to read. I started my blog with about 50-60% bounce rate, but it jumped to a soaring 80% as I started to take advantage of Entrecard.

The Result

After all this Entrecard fiasco, I have decided to let go of my account. I’m not going to use Entrecard anymore because I simply don’t want to become one of those type of bloggers that depend on it for some fake traffic. I’m definitely not thinking of selling my blog at this time, so there’s no use for me to try to fake my traffic for others to see.

Since Entrecard is still a fresh program, there will probably be a lot of users, so whoever purchases my account should be able to take advantage of Entrecard even more If selling my Entrecard account is not allowed, I will remove the listing, but I don’t see why not since Twitter accounts are being sold too.

Checkout the eBay auction here and watch as the bids grow as more and more Entrecard members find out about the sale

GOODBYE ENTRECARD! YOU SERVED ME WELL, BUT IT IS TIME TO MOVE ON!