Entrecard is one of the newest blog promotion sites that’s causing quite a buzz around the blogosphere. In short, Entrecard requires no monetary commitment but a fairly significant time commitment in order to provide real benefits.
Entrecard gives bloggers the opportunity to create a virtual business card that looks like a 125×125 ad. As an Entrecard member you’ll install a widget on your blog that provides a place for other Entrecard members to drop off their “cards” when they visit your blog as well as a place for other members to place their 125×125 ads (see the picture above). Members pay for ads with Entrecard “credits.”
You can earn credits by visiting other members’ blogs and dropping off your business card through their Entrecard widget (1 point), when someone else drops off a business card on your blog (1 point) and when someone pays you with credits to place an ad on your blog. Ads cost an amount of credits equal to twice as many cards that are dropped off on the site where you want to advertise each day, so if 100 people drop off cards at a site each day, it will cost 200 credits to advertise on that site. Members can approve or reject ads, which is a great feature, and approved ads run on that site for 24-hours.
It seems that Entrecard is a great way to generate traffic, but how much of that traffic is truly targeted (meaning they’re interested in your blog’s topic). In other words, how much of that traffic is staying on your blog for more than the few seconds it takes to click on the Entrecard widget to drop off their cards then moving onto the next site to drop off another card in order to build credits? Can Entrecard produce meaningful traffic that converts into loyal readers? I understand that the team behind Entrecard is trying to find a way to combat this “drop and dash” behavior, but as of today, it’s still the reality of Entrecard.
Of course, there are tertiary benefits to using Entrecard. Increased traffic can help your blog’s rankings which can potentially lead to advertisers being interested in advertising directly on your blog (possibly paying more to do so than they would have without Entrecard traffic). And it could be argued that each page view could lead to a click-through on another ad on your blog.
In terms of actually placing your own card as an ad on other members’ blogs through your Entrecard credits, this could be helpful to drive a lot more traffic if you save up credits to purchase ad placement on a very popular site (but remember, each ad unit you purchase is only up for 24-hours). Alternatively, it could be very helpful for strong niche sites, where you can specifically target other sites to place your Entrecard ad to drive relevant traffic that is likely to convert to loyal (or at least repeat) readers or to click on related ads.
Is Entrecard right for your blog? That really depends on your goals for your blog. As with any advertising or marketing opportunity, don’t be afraid to test it, track your results through your blog stats and see what works and what doesn’t in terms of reaching your goals. Then tweak your advertising and marketing strategy and try again.
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