How To Get Traffic To Your Website with Entrecard.com
Posted on December 19th, 2008 in Search Engine Optimization, Web Promotion | 4 Comments »
This is a guest post from Dot Com Dud, a blogger who catalogues his journey towards earning a full-time income online on DotComDud.com. You can also follow him on Twitter.
If you look at my traffic you’ll see that Entrecard is responsible for the majority of the visits my blog gets, so naturally you’d think that I am a huge fan of the service… well you’d be half right.
Entrecard has seen it’s fair share of praises and criticism but as time goes on the arguments seem to be piling up on the negative side. For those who are new to Entrecard, this post aims to introduce you to the service and explain some of the advantages and pitfalls you should be aware of.
What is Entrecard?
The basic premise of the system is this; you install the Entrecard widget on your blog, usually in the sidebar and the widget will display a 125 x 125 ad. Other Entrecard users can ‘drop’ on your widget which will give both you and the dropper 1 Entrecard credit (or EC). You can also go around ‘dropping’ on other blog’s widgets (earning up to 300 EC per day). Once you have accumulated enough credits, you can spend them to have your 125 x 125 image appear on another blog’s widget for a day at a time. The whole thing is simple to set up and easy to use, you’ll be up and running in no time.
The idea is that traffic is generated not only from other blogger’s coming to your site to drop on your widget but also from the readers of other blogs clicking on your 125 x 125 ads. This idea is great in theory but in practice it’s not without it’s problems, when it comes to Entrecard there is both good and bad news.
You Will Get Traffic
This is the good news. Just having the widget present is going to get you some hits, maybe not thousands but traffic you didn’t have before. If you actively drop and advertise then the amount of traffic you’ll get will increase, you can count on that. Still we’re not talking about thousands here (for most blogs) but if you use the service right, getting 100+ visitors a day from Entrecard is possible.
So what about the bad news? Much of the criticism aimed at Entrecard revolves around the actual quality of the traffic rather than the quantity. The fact is that a lot of the traffic you get through Entrecard only come to your site for one reason, to drop & run. This leads to high bounce rates and low conversions, hit & run droppers don’t stick around to read your posts, let alone comment or subscribe.
Is It All Bad?
No, some of the traffic is genuine. If your content is at all interesting then you should get at least some passing comments, maybe even some subscribers. It’s really up to you if the effort in earning credits is worth the results you get but there are some things you can do to improve the situation.
The thing about droppers is that you already know what they want and where their attention will be. I’ve had some success gaining subscribers by giving away EC because it’s much more tempting to win a few thousand EC than dropping for them. Also, by placing things around the widget that you want to draw attention to, you can increase the probability that droppers will be enticed by them.
Is It Worth It?
For new and developing blogs, I’d recommend it in a heartbeat. The amount of effort you put into it is up to you and while you do get more out of Entrecard the more you put in, the return may not be worth the investment. Personally I still display the widget on my blog but I don’t spend much time dropping to earn EC anymore.
However, once your blog is gaining enough traffic from other sources then Entercard might be not worth the effort and eventually it isn’t going to be worth the space it occupies either. These are things you’ll need to address once you’re blog reaches a decent level of traffic though, so you can cross that bridge when you get to it.
To Conclude…
Yes Entrecard will bring you traffic and some of it will be genuine. The rest of it is largely hit & run traffic which you’ll need to get creative with if you want to make them stick around. If you’ve got the space for it out then it’s worth trying out.
