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  • Posted by John Paul on 22 Feb 2010

I know deep down if you are here reading this, at some point  in your blogging life you want to make money blogging.  To do that usually the more traffic your blog gets the better your chance is to make money.

This is maybe the only time you will hear me say “ more traffic isn’t always a good thing”

You may of heard or even tried Entrecard.com, basically you get a 125×125 picture that you use to promote your blog, and you get credits by “Dropping” other peoples card’s on their blogs.

Now I used Entrecard pretty much as perfect as you can…

1.    I did 300 drops a day “daily limit”
2.    I dropped in my niche
3.    I returned every drop I got in return
4.    Any blog PR 3and above I dropped and commented
5.    I placed my add on niche blogs, and had 50-100 ads running each day

Now I got a HUGE amount of traffic from this, But then I started to dig deeper into my stats.

Stats Start Getting Ugly

First I noticed time on my site dropped pretty low from about 6 – 6.5 min to about 2 – 2.5 min.

alexa, make money blogging, make money with a blog

I noticed my bounce rate sky rocket from about 57-58% to about 80%

alexa bounce rate, johnpaulaguiar.com stats

My page views dropped badly from about 4 to about 1

alexa page views, johnpaulaguiar.com stats

Now all this was within a 2 week window. So I decided to drop the entrecard system.

Now Why I did this?  Well I want a long term authority blog with a great Alexa traffic rank and a high PR.

At the rate I was going with entrecard, just my bounce rate would have been enough to keep my PR from getting higher then the PR 2 I have now.

Not All Bad With Ecard

Ok, I will say it wasn’t all gloom and doom with entrecard, I did receive a good amount list signups and my Alexa score dropped pretty far in 2 weeks, and I made a few new connections/partnerships and friends thru them.

But for me and the goals I have for Money Dummy blog, entrecard wasn’t the right fit.

But if you are have a new blog or website “they except websites now” then stats are not that important and it is all about getting traffic and getting your blog seen then ecard is a great fit, also if you have a established blog and stats don’t matter to you, then ecard is a great fit for you too.

Better Ecard System

Few things ecard can do to make it better, is to either except only blogs that are a PR 2 and above, or at least categories blogs by PR and niche.

Monitor the blogs closer, I found many blogs that didn’t even have the drop card widget that you need to be in the system.

Bottom line is if you care about your stats and want to make money blogging long term then stay away from ecard.  If all you care about is traffic traffic traffic then ecard is a great tool for you.

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  • great post and great statistics
    thanks for sharing it with us:)
  • I never used Entrecard and after reading this post I will not use it in future too.
  • Thanks for the comment! Yea with your traffic rank ECard is def nor for you.
  • True i also use entre card but its good only in building traffic people would just search for widget they drop and then they close..... No benefit only traffic from it.....
  • I didn't know this program even still existed. I dropped it a long time ago for the reasons mentioned here. All traffic is not GOOD traffic.
  • Hi Lisa.. Thanks for the comment, I appreciate it :) Yea it is still around and falling apart more and more. I agree 100% not all traffic is good traffic.
  • Hi John,

    A while back I asked about using Entrecard in the Blog Engage Forum area and here's the response from some other members http://bit.ly/bUUCDu
    I'm glad I decided against using it, and most of the other users agree with you about bounce rate.

    I have a question for you, I see that you are showing screenshots from Alexa but do you use Google Analytics to track your site traffic also?

    I hear that many bloggers find Alexa data to be flawed.

    Thanks for the post.
    @Ileane
  • Hi Ileane.. TY for the comment :)

    Yea ECard is fine for very new bloggers who just care about traffic, but if you have a ranking blog, then eCard is a waste of time.

    I use Google Analytics mainly, and Alexa.. Alexa stats work fine once you get into the 100,000 rankings.
  • Good advice there - I stay away from such systems. It may be traffic, but spammers and possibly fake-views bots mean it's usually just low-quality traffic.
  • Hi Anne, Thanks for taking the time to comment :)

    I'm glad you liked the post, now I don't want to beat up ECard to much, because for a new blog or website that "just" wants traffic in the beginning then I think it is a great choice. But for anyone else that care more about rankings and driving 'quality" traffic then yes it is a waste of time.
  • Entrecard to me is a fake traffic...it`s like force people with no desire.
  • Thanks for the comment. I agree the traffic is a waste of time. I did get a few list sign ups, but over all it was garbage.
  • Entrecard is flawed ever since and actually even though they have been working hard on making strides (w/c I appreciate a lot), its still not something that can make a drastic impact on the blogosphere.
  • Het Melvin, Thanks for the comment.

    I agree with you, the idea is a good one, but it needs to be rethought to make it a benefit to ALL bloggers new and experienced.
  • Entrecard is a waste of time, I used it for a short period of time but it does nothing more than kill your bounce rate and god knows most Entrecard visitors never read anything and they certainly don't comment.
  • Hey John..Thanks for the comment.

    Yea I agree 100%, ruins your bounce rate, your page views, time on site. Long term its garbage traffic.
  • Page rank has nothing to do with bounce rate. It's solely determined by the number and quality of backlinks pointing to your website.
    Alexa Rank does appear to be affected by bounce rates based upon my own observations. But how would Alexa measure this? Clearly by those who installed the toolbar, who tend to be fellow bloggers. So I think that much is right, if you are going to use entrecard, you need a method to slow down those who come from there to visit your site. I can think up a few tricks that might prevent them from bouncing, especially if you check which site is the referrer.
  • Turnip, bounce rate does effect your Page Rank. If google sees that people visit and leave your site to fast and or only look at one page per visit that will most def be a negative in google's eyes and your PR will be effected.
  • I stopped using Entrecard almost half a year ago. I think it's a good way to get some exposure but then once blogs are big enough they all leave Entrecard because it's simply not worth it anymore.
  • Yea for new blogs that just wanna be seen then it's great. But for anything else it is a crap service.

    Thanks for your comment.. I appreciate it .
  • grahanurdian
    Hey nice advice, I am glad you tell us soon before it get's to late
  • Glad you liked the post.

    Thanks for taking the time to comment.. I appreciate it :)
  • michelletee
    Thanks for the info. I found it extremely helpful. Thanks for the info on Entrecard. Greatly appreciated.
  • Your Welcome,, Glad it helped.

    TY for the comment, I appreciate you taking the time to comment :)
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