05:02 by FoxTwo
Leveraging Entrecard To Get More Traffic
So anyway, I was a little surprised to see an email coming in via my Entrecard inbox. Well, I've been getting alot of emails from Entrecard because I just put my fitness blog up on Entrecard, so I have been getting advert approval requests. However this is different - this is an email from a real human :)
Well, before I get to the email, let me just say that Entrecard finally added the ability to add multiple blogs to one account! YES FINALLY! Therefore you don't need a separate email for each blog you want to register there now. Seeing this new function, naturally I added my fitness blog. After all I don't need an extra email address now, so it's very convenient. Plus, Entrecard just naturally draws traffic in.
But, to really increase traffic from Entrecard, you need to give it a little "boost". You don't just sit back on your laurels and "watch it happen". To this end, Bogdan Ionescu from Learniacs.com has written a nice little PDF e-book. Click on the picture on the left, or here, to grab the book.
I tried to get it, but apparently the site is now hit by a high load of traffic or something (perhaps trying to grab this free e-book), so it's unavailable to me right now.
However, I'll still be trying to get it. After all, who doesn't need/want more traffic for their blogs? Even if the blog isn't really a money-maker type (like mine).
Update: Ok finally got the book. What I can tell you is, Bogdan writes in a no-nonsense way. Eg - You want this? Do this. No running around in circles telling you stories of when he was a kid and what he did . And did I mention I just added my 3rd blog to Entrecard? Using the tips Bogdan has in his e-book should prove useful and probably will draw traffic in much faster than my original blog did when I first joined Entrecard last year.
We now return you to your regular programming of useless stuff, nonsense and ramblings.
20:41 by FoxTwo
A couple of weeks ago, Entrecard rolled out their new pricing structure. Prices were crazy back then.
Now, they've stabilised, and thus far, the most expensive I've seen right now across all categories, is just 8192 creds. Not too bad, like the crazy prices of 2 weeks ago, but still, it'll take 2 weeks for anybody to drop enough cards to make 8000 credits just to advertise on the blog.
Pricing aside, Entrecard is one of the better traffic-generation systems available actually. The moment you put a blog onto Entrecard, you get a surge of incoming traffic. I've only been in Entrecard for 4 months, since about December 2007, but in that time I have seen Entrecard steadily providing traffic. So much so, that it overtook my Singapore statistics and made USA visitors become the predominant incoming traffic to my site instead (not much, about 2% more, but still, more).
Lately, since I'm jobless, I've also been (finally!) looking around for a new template for my other blogs. Just the other day, I found a pretty cool-looking one via yet another Entrecard blog, GosuBlogger. Looked nice enough for me to spend 1 whole day yesterday just re-doing my gaming site, Shades Of Twilight, up.
Now that I've gotten the gaming site up and running on the new blogskin, I thought I might as well put it up on Entrecard too, and see how well it fares there.
It's only a matter of time before I get a new template for my 3rd blog, I'm Such A Loser, and get it up on Entrecard too! :)
Labels: advertise, Entrecard, internet
08:55 by FoxTwo
I Don't Like The New Entrecard Pricings
I don't know how many of you noticed, but Entrecard just rolled out a new pricing structure for people to advertise on your blog. You can read the details here at their official blog.
On the surface, the structure looks good. It "reflects the popularity" of the blog by having a higher price to advertise on it if it's popular, and a low price if it's unpopular. All very capitalist-like, ie high demand, high price. Just like how an economy would work normally.
However, the issue here is HOW the price is calculated. Like a computer, the price works exponentially in binary - 2 raised to the power of X, where X = number of ads you have waiting to be run.
So, if you have no ads running, the price to advertise on your blog is 2 credits. If you have 6 ads in your queue, the price to advertise on your blog is 2x2x2x2x2x2 = 64 credits (2^6). Since each ad runs for a full 24 hours, the example above means you're sold out of ad space for the next 6 days. Unlike in the old system, Entrecard now doesn't have a "max cap". Previously you could only have like 7 or 10 ads in your queue at maximum. Now that limit has been removed.
And I have seen some crazy prices at some blogs now. A few more "popular" ones are sporting figures like 131,072 credits to advertise on their blog, as shown in the picture above. Notice that he has his ad space sold for the next 2 weeks!
Now, even if you're a super addict, dropping 300 cards per day, it will take you more than a YEAR (4 days to earn 1,200 credits just by dropping cards) to earn that amount to advertise on that blog!
Now, someone please tell me I'm wrong in my calculations, because I sure would like to be pointed out that I'm in error.
While I may agree that IN PRINCIPLE it is a good indicator of how popular a blog is by having a higher price to advertise on it, it is a bad idea to double the price for every ad placed on the blog.
10:37 by FoxTwo
Entrecard Gets More Traffic For Your Blog
First of all, let me just say this blog isn't really popular. My page rank is 0 (ie a pr0n site *grin*), my Alexa rank is over 1 million etc. This blog was originally meant as my ranting outlet. For me, something as insignificant (to you maybe) as having 3.2 pageviews per unique visitor is alot for me.
It's now just about 30 hours since I joined Entrecard. A quick check of my website statistics show that for yesterday, Entrecard sent 38% of my total traffic, while ping.sg provided about 15% which is pretty typical for ping.sg (unless my blog title has a sex-related word in it like NAKED or NUDE, in which case ping.sg will send like 80% of my traffic for the day).
It's also worth noting that yesterday was the official launch party, so there's actually less people from ping.sg surfing the net, all were busy at the event.
Looking at the preliminary figures, I'm actually quite excited about Entrecard. Blogrush really needs to rename itself to BlogTrickle.
Labels: advertise, Entrecard, internet
02:55 by FoxTwo
Entrecard - What Blogrush Should Have Been
I joined Blogrush too, and although I do get a few clicks and and there from Blogrush, it's not exactly a "rush" of traffic.
If you look on my left sidebar, right under the "Crazyhamster.net" graphic, you'll notice a new "adspace". Technically it's an ad, but it's also a "business card" for blogs. The best thing about it, is that it works 1000 times better than Blogrush. It's called Entrecard.
Here's an example. I saw this on Merdurian's blog, approximately 1.50am Singapore time. By the time I signed up and created a widget, and put it on my site, it was about 2am. By 2.30am I've gotten 6 "business cards" from other blogs/websites wanting to post their graphic up on my blog here. That's an average of 1 request every 5 mins!
And, keep in mind, these figures are just for when people actually click to drop their "cards"! There is also traffic where they do not drop their cards (hey I can't blame 'em... can't please everybody all the time).
How does it work? Well you sign up, FREE. You make a widget (and you can put in your own graphic too), and then you post it up on your blog. When people come by your blog and like it enough to want to "advertise" on your blog, they "drop their card" by clicking on the yellow bar at the bottom. It gets routed to your inbox at Entrecard where you can approve or reject their ad request.
Or, you can click the big graphic and visit the advertiser's site.
Simple eh?
In the time that it took me to write this post, I've gotten FOUR more ad requests, and I took only like 15 mins to do this post up! Maybe in a few more days I'll put up some screenshots of website visits to see how well Entrecard worked.
So, talk about "rush". Blogrush should have worked like this.
Labels: advertise, Entrecard, internet
