Posts Tagged ‘EntreCard’

Bounce rates have been a concern of many bloggers especially those who use Entrecard. It’s THE biggest complaint surrounding this popular social networking enterprise and it’s one that will continue to haunt it’s users as long as “dropping cards” is the primary focus of the network.

Most other social networks simply use post submissions as driving elements or, like Blog Catalog are a simple catalog of blog sites that you can peruse and visit those that appeal to you. Other social networks rely on site visitors to “vote up or down” a particular post that was submitted. Entrecard is different from all of those with it’s system of visiting sites and “dropping your cards”. You get credits for dropping, credits for being dropped on and credits for advertising other blogs on your website 24 hours at a time.

There are a lot of criticisms of Entrecard’s methodology. Bits and pieces of it are torn apart by it’s users; both proponents and detractors at some point try to rethink the way it works because like any thing else in this world, it doesn’t please (nor can it ever) everyone.

Which doesn’t make it perfect either.

But the goal of this post is not to hash out the pluses or minuses of Entrecard, but rather to address the bounce rate it generates.

I’ve been a member since November of last year and, like many others have run the gamut of beginner, top dropper to now balancing Entrecard with all the other things in life that I must attend to.

Dropping cards takes a LOT of time especially if you’re trying to do the maximum number of drops over more than one blog.

And, to be honest, this is where your bounces come from.

By dropping those 300x cards, you encourage and invite those bounces.

I’ve changed my dropping tactics by a couple of different means. One to reduce bounce on other blogs and the other to help curtail my own bounce rate.

I am only dropping on about 50 sites per day from this blog and those are all in my favorites and are blogs that I enjoy reading and often comment on or stumble posts on. I also, instead of closing each of the pages as I drop, once I’ve finished dropping under one blog account, change to the next in my toolbar, then go back through all the tabs clicking on other articles on the sites which reloads the entrecard widget enabling me to drop for that account. This action should significantly reduce my bounce rates on those blogs I do still drop on. This is difficult to do on some of the blogspot blogs because not all of them show the side bars on the individual posts, but still clicking through to a post and then back should not result in a “bounce”.

My own results from slowing down my dropping and moving the widget show some big changes in my statistics. Maybe this is an anomaly, but going from a 90% bounce rate with an average visit of 11 seconds to a 30% bounce rate with an average visit of 1.36 minutes is a pretty significant change to my way of thinking and that’s how it’s been for the past 2 weeks!  And I WAS going to include a screen shot of my Woopra statistics to show you, but it doesn’t seem to be working right now. If it comes back up, I’ll update the post with a screen shot and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

I know many of you have dropped Entrecard recently. What do your stats show you regarding bounce rate and average times spent on site? Are you seeing improvements? Do you feel like  your visitor count is now reflecting people who are truly interested in what you have to say and show?

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Image by leafar. via Flickr

I’ve been asked to be a moderator for Entrecard. And yeah, that’s certainly crazy on their part! Me — moderator material — LMAO.

Oh, don’t worry, my head isn’t going to swell or anything and I’m not about to mess with anybody just ’cause I’m that way, but I have to tell you something you may not know….there are some flat-out CRAZY people blogging out there!

One of the things I’ve been doing is reviewing new blogs in the system to see if they meet the quality constraints. I’ve read blogs that are entirely (and I mean there were over 100 posts!) posts about different brands/styles of sneakers! Number one, I had no idea there were that many choices — I tend to stick to pretty basic footwear when you’re talking about sneakers, but holy moley!

And there was the one describing her bondage experience — that went on for about 10 posts…Ahem– yeah I had to read them ALL, yannow? ‘Cause well they um….um…. well she had to have a minimum number first off, and then um….um….um….she had to not have any pornographic pictures and um….um…um…Oh yeah! No popups or whole page “skip this” ads and no audio (I kinda hated there was no audio — or video for that matter). And to think I thought the phone sex blog was “out there”…

And there are people who are so totally IN to t.v. shows they are writing blogs about each episode — and not just soaps either! Ghost Whisperer has one complete with paper dolls you can link up with your printers interface to print off for the kiddies. I didn’t see one for CSI, but hey — they’ve been going on for so long you could write about them for YEARS.

And speaking of paper dolls - one site that I’ve been dropping on ever since I joined EC is Paperkraft. I thought it would go by the wayside pretty quickly, but here it is a year later and not only does that blogger post daily, sometimes they have several posts per day! Who woulda thunk there were so many folded paper toys and figuines out there?! Not me, that’s who!

I’m not too sure about some of the templates I saw –of course there were some that were nice but then there are all these PINK ones. Mind you, I have nothing against the color pink but when the background is one shade and even the print is pink, it gets to be a bit much. I would attribute that to something like my granddaughter might have done when she was 6, but these seemed to be young 20-ish ladies.

I guess that no matter what your interests are, you’re likely to find someone on Entrecard who is blogging about it.

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**UPDATE** EATING WORDS AFTER ONLY TWO DAYS!!

EntreCard rolled out a new toolbar addon for Firefox browser. It’s supposed to make visiting blogs, dropping and advertising easier.

I’ve been testing it for the last two days. I wanted to make myself very familiar with it before I wrote anything about it. Sometimes I get excited about something new and write positively and then feel like an idiot when I have to eat part (or all) of my words

Positives:

• It installed easily
• It makes it much simpler to switch between blogs
• it doesn’t let you get logged out every 3 sites
• It lets you add blogs as favorites easily
• It keeps track of your drops as you go along making it easy to tell how many more you have to reach the max.
• It makes it very easy to jump to other areas of EntreCard such as the Blog or some of the Forums.

Negatives:

• It brings up some of the same blogs over and over again
• When limited to the INBOX, it only brings up about 25 different blogs even if you have more in there

Semi-negative:

• It only lets you load 10 blogs at a time. While you can click the 10 button multiple times, you increase the number of duplicate blogs you open.

**EATING THESE WORDS**

• It was supposed to make advertising on the blogs easier, but I can see no difference.
• There is a HUGE difference in advertising on a blog and I totally missed it!! {smacking forehead} If you’ll LOOK at the toolbar, you’ll see that there is an “ADVERTISE” button with the cost of the ad right there. The great big humongous advantage here is that you’re seeing the blog, verifying the widget placement, page rank, Alexa score and ******drum roll****** ta da! UPDATED CONTENT before you spend your credits on a dead blog.  W00T! There’s also this nifty drop down menu where you can click the sites’ profile page to see what it’s popularity and how many drops it’s given you in the last 30 days. Those might be other criteria you use to advertise. At any rate, it’s all there in a click or two. NICE!

**END WORD EATING **

** ADDED STUFF**

Some people are having trouble switching accounts from the link page. Don’t switch from there. Use the tool bar to switch. Just drop down the button to the far left and choose the blog you want to switch to, then next to it, you’ll see how many credits you have on that account and how many drops you’ve done for the day, click on that and you’ll get a drop down menu that includes dashboard, messages, your ads, statistics, linked blogs (that one is redundant IMO) and buy credits. Just click one of those and you’ll go to the relevant account’s whatever-link-you-chose.

Right now, the toolbar seems to be fighting with the main dashboard pages, but if you’ll let the toolbar lead the dance, you’ll do just fine.

** END ADDED STUFF **

My “normal” drop method was to use a list. I have a couple of them and switch between them so as to mix up the blogs I drop on somewhat. I can open 25-30 tabs at a time in FF which makes dropping on 300 blogs pretty quick and simple. I could do one set of 300 along with quickly browsing the newest post and commenting on some in the hour before leaving for work in the morning. Then do a second set at lunch and my last set after dinner. I haven’t managed to do 300 per blog yet with the tool bar although I came pretty close Sunday. It takes a lot longer due to the duplications.

** MORE ADDED STUFF **

Ok, I’ve done an experiment that has worked better than my wildest dream. I opened my list(s) and opened 30 tabs, dropped through those (reading and commenting as I went along) and repeated until max drops were reached on one blog, then clicked another account, and began again. I was done dropping 900 cards in about 2 hours (complete with reading and commenting on many of those blogs!). The toolbar kept track of my drops, so I always new how many I needed to finish and the sites loaded quickly. I was never logged out the first time, was able to report blogs that had lost their widgets or had been closed by google and all was wonderful in my EntreCard world.

** END MORE ADDED STUFF**

So, it’s a great start, but I would say it’s still in Beta testing as far as I’m concerned.

Have you downloaded the EC Toolbar? What are your opinions on it? Is it something you’re going to continue to use?

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Image via Wikipedia

Today marks the day when at long last the announcement of Entrecard’s new partner was made. We’ve been waiting to hear this exciting news and when it broke today I was laughing at my reaction.

You see, the new partnership is with SezWho. I installed SezWho about a month ago to help me improve my comment system. That makes me on the cutting edge of something!

I know — I’m being silly, but I am excited to be a part of both communities. This can only be a wining combination for any blogger to have in their toolbox. Sorta like having a premium steering rack to keep EntreCard members headed on the road to bigger and better things. Graham Langdon, EntreCard’s creator, mover and shaker has worked diligently to move this community to the forefront of blogging. Bewteen his ideas and Phirate’s coding, this social networking community has brought a lot of positive things to the people who have stuck through the hard times and kept on blogging.

So, if you’re not a part of the Entrecard community and you are a blogger, it’s time now to join.

If you ARE part of Entrecard, now it’s time to add SezWho to your blog to turbocharge your readership and commentators.

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