So Balkhis, Is Entrecard really worth it?
That was all how one of my email read last night. This was in response from my post about 13 ways I used to promote my blog to success. Well, I wasn’t going to write about entrecard. But I realized, I need to do my finishing remarks about entrecard.
Traffic Exchange System
Did you ever hear about this one? Well traffic exchange system is a system in which you visit someone’s website, and they visit your website in exchange. In some scenarios, the ratio is 1:1 or it might 1:24. That depends on how you go about in your strategies.
Its good because it gets you traffic, but majority of that traffic is not targetted traffic. So some numbers in your Stat sheet will look good. Those will be your Unique Visitors, Pageviews, Hits. Whereas others will look bad such as Bounce Rate, and Referrals.
Yes, you will have a high Bounce Rate. Do you want to know why? Other people are doing the exact same thing. They want to drop cards on as many sites and in the shortest amount of time. So most of them don’t really care about reading your blog. They just drop on your site, because you drop back. Now there are some major disadvantages to High Bounce Rate. First, it doesn’t look good on the stat sheet. Second, it affects your Google Adsense Earnings (Decreases). Third, your Alexa will be lowered as well.
Referrals, it doesn’t look very nice if you have a ts25.com ranking at #1 in your referral list. Why? Because it is a traffic exchange site, where you can buy off your visitors. Entrecard is no different, I’ll go ahead and say it is slightly worse. Because ts25.com atleast makes the user stay on the site for a certain period of time. When a user is buying a website, they see something like that, they automatically know that the traffic is not reliable. Once you stop dropping cards, or buying traffic from any other place, it will stop. So it is a turndown for your buyers.
Next disadvantage of any traffic exchange system, is it wastes time. You will be wasting time in making your list to drop on people. You will be wasting one hour, or half hour each day to do your drops. Now out of those, you might find some new readers, but what are the chances of finding alot of new readers? None… And since you are wasting so much time on this, you won’t have time to write quality content. If I have to give up one thing, to improve my blog, than it would be entrecard not my content. Through content, I will always find new readers. But through entrecard, I can bring the readers in, but how many of those will stay?
Now, you might be thinking heck I am getting unique visitors, It is helping my stat sheet. I am not going to stop you. I will say go ahead, try it out and learn from your experience. My experience says it otherwise. Picture says a thousand words, If you didn’t get it, I would like to explain it. You can shine with the exchange for a little bit because you are lighting yourself up. But sooner or later, your fuel will be out, and you will be burned out.
If you are one of those who want to go ahead and try entrecard. I will save you some time by giving you tips that I used when I was trying out entrecard. If you use the tips that I give you effectively, and you have a decent connection then you should be able to drop 300 cards within 30 minutes once you are used to of it.
Hey, I am Syed Balkhi, The guy who is behind Balkhis Inc. I entered the industry back in 2002 not knowing a single thing. I barely spoke English at that time. In the past six years, my language barrier has been eliminated. Aside from English, now I also speak html, and php. Along with the languages I have also managed to master a few arts. Art of web-designing started when I first entered. Messing around with photoshop, I learned how to create my first web design. Now I founded a web designing firm Uzzz Productions. After running numerous amount of websites in various niche, I have mastered the art of web-development. Now I am compiling a resource of what I already know, and what I am learning on this blog. This resource is to help me if I ever need a guide to look back to, and it is help my fellow webmasters.
I’ve been saying for to long that Entrecard is a waste of time. People think its the easy way to get readers. Hell no! Comment on other blogs, that is the easiest way to get readers.
I drop entrecard widgets and comment on blogs at the same time that way I am making the most of my time.
I only comment on blogs when I find necessary … My desire to be in top commentators box of popular blogs are gone now.
I thought of removing entrecard last night as it was not lately so traffic generating, and also had slowed down my blog page load.
And now, your post motivates me to go and remove the entrecard widget from my blog.
Chetan, I noticed the same. I realized I couldn’t spend 30 minutes and more each day dropping cards. Once I stopped dropping everyone else dropping back. People were getting their adverts on balkhis for very cheap. It was hurting the site load time. Therefore I removed it.
You would see my page loading faster from now.. removed the javascript codes, and now removing entrecard although i am not totally satisfied doing so! Still Bye bye Entrecard!
Without a doubt - one of the real bad effects of entrecard is the insane load times it can take when your dropping. Especially when it cycles to the new day. The servers for entrecard must really get pushed to the limits then.
Your tips for entrecard dropping are a bit outdated though as it does not take into account the new entrebar.
yes my tips are a bit outdated, but I won’t be writing any more tips regarding entrecard because I am through with it
Well, Entrecard is not a 100% waste of time for a small blog like mine.
It’s because of Entrecard that I:
- Went from Alexa Rank from 1,000,000 to 70,000 now in 6 months
- Gained early loyal readers and commentators
- Knew lots of good bloggers
- Came across to your blog
I agree that once your blog goes to medium/large size, then it’s probably a good time to leave Entrecard. But I won’t ever forget what Entrecard has done to my blog during my struggle in the old times
I actually found, that my alexa dropped even more when I ditched entrecard altogether. It was mostly from microblogging sites like twitter and plurk. Not EC. There were multiple days when I had a good chunk of EC drops, and alexa (N/A) and days when I had 17 drops on E/C and Alexa at 25k (daily). Conversion rate wasn’t high at all. I was surfing 300 sites, and was getting 600 in return. in which 90% was bouncing…
But everyone have different experiences from E/C.
I agree that there are benefits to entrecard. like most things with the benefits come some negatives too.
I have had a look at entrecard but really hate the idea of surfing for credits - I would much rather comment in blogs I like or post in forums
It seems lower traffic blogs are the main users of Entrecard. Many of the blogs that have grown in popularity are ditching Entrecard altogether.
I second Michael on the use of Entrecard. Though I’m not a power dropper myself, the only thing EC has done for me is push my Alexa to close than 100K within a period of 2+ months.
Yan
[...] may want to also read a very good post by “Syed Balkhi” about his reasons of dropping Entrecard, which he explains things in more [...]
ya its true.. It seems lower traffic blogs are the main users of Entrecard.
Traffic exchange is probably the biggest waste of time on the planet, BUT if you visit linkreferral.com and register your sites, you don’t even have to participate in the traffic exchange, but you do get a nice backlink from them that really counts with Google.
I am using entrecards but have never really received any traffic from it. I am going to use all of my credits to drop today and then we will see if this really works!
I’ll check out you site Anchor IM
Well I think that entrecards is not worth it. but is only my opinion
It has been almost four days since I removed the Entrecard widget from my blog and my drop rate has gone down almost 5%. In my opinion, the drive-by-droppers will kill Entrecard at some point in time.
It will go down even more Steven just watch. I think you are absolutely right about the statement on killing entrecard.
I have had two Affiliates turn my blog down because they felt that Entrecard doesn’t deliver quality traffic. And since a very high percentage drop and run, it really cheapens Entrecard.
I asked a while back that there could be a way that a person could filter the traffic which drops on a person’s widget. I believe that would actually help, because then you could manage the type of traffic you wanted to drop on your blog.
Entrecard does deliver traffic, just the wrong type for way too many of us.
yup thats why google adsense payout decreases as well with entrecard.
i was a huge user of entrecard, iu even regularly dropped 300 cards a days. but not idon’t use it that much.
the only benefit i had besides the added traffic count, was that from time to time a dropper would read my content and actually take part of the discussion
I don’t like the Entrecard system much since it can easily gamed. And Entrecard often doesn’t deliver the right type of traffic.
i’ve been tempted to try this service out, just so i can watch my stats improve.
but i do know that really, any gains are merely superficial.
Had heard a lot of good things about Entrecard; now i got to see the other side of the coin as well. Thanks for a very informative post.
Some time ago I thought I should try entrecard but never had time for that. Thanks for your tips and your opinions.
[...] wrote a great blog post on whether or not entrecard is really worth it. I have never used entrecard but read this post and see what you [...]
Entrecard is pretty useful if you use it wisely !!!
EC can be sold for $$. you can build your campaign with EC !!
Lot useful
I would hate to disagree. But I do disagree with you. EC are worth what ?? $5 ?? Really that is not the type that will get you anywhere …
I’ve been debating lately on whether I should continue using entrecard on my blog. After reading your post, I am definitely leaning more towards removal of it.