Entrecard is the new venture of Graham Langdon, the creator of the Million Dollar Wiki. Entrecard brings the concept of exchanging business card onto the Net. In this case, the business cards are 125×125 buttons.
How Entrecard Works
Once you sign up for a new Entrecard account, you need to install the Entrecard Widget on your blog. There are three widget sizes to choose from. I’m running the 250×127 wide widget. The widget allows other Entrecard users to drop their card. You get one credit for every card dropped. Additional credits can be earned for dropping your card on other Entrecard blog and by other blogs buying an Entrecard advertising spot from you.
The Entrecard Control Panel
The Entrecard control panel seems overly complicated but it’s really simple once you get use to it. The dashboard shows information about your account, your ads, sites you bought advertising from and sites that wants to buy advertising from you.
Your ad price is based on how many people drop cards on your widget and how many cards you drop. Currently, this blog is the most expensive to buy advertising from. You will need to build up 97 credits before you can purchase a spot on John Chow dot Com. Even if you have that many credits, the wait time is 13 days.
Before everyone gets all excited about getting a 125×125 button on John Chow dot Com for free, there are a few things you should consider. The first is the button only shows for one day. The second is the button is placed below the fold so it wouldn’t get as many clicks as the normal $500 sponsorship buttons. However, this hasn’t stop other bloggers from lining up for an ad spot.
Good Traffic Source for Small Bloggers
Because credits are build by having members drop their card, EntreCard can be a good source of traffic for the small blogger. Your control panel shows the blog that stop by and dropped their card. This in turn encourages you to visit their blogs to drop your card. This does bring up the question about the quality of traffic. Are people visiting your blog to read it or just to drop a card? In the end, it shouldn’t really matter because a visitor is still a visitor and it’s your job to turn them into readers. If your content is good, they’ll come back even if their original purpose was just to drop a card to build credits.
Since its launch at Blog World, Graham has been busy adding new features to Entrecard. There is a now a review function for people to make recommendations and tell what they like and don’t like about your blog. The stats page has been greatly improved and the help guide has been revamped.
The success of Entrecard will be largely based not on its ability to sign up new blogs, but on its ability to sign up the big name blogs. So far, Graham has been doing a good job. Beside this blog, Entrecard is being used by Shoemoney and Problogger.net. If you’ve ever dreamed of getting a free 125×125 ad on the “Big 3″ then you better join Entrecard now.
Did you enjoy this post? Get John Chow Dot Com updates via email...
Stay up to date with all of John Chow’s tips for making money online and blog posts by subscribing via email. Your email will be kept private and never shared with anyone.
One of the most common complaint (or excuse) I hear from potential new bloggers is they don’t know how to install WordPress. Terms like FTP and CPanel are like a foreign language and setting up a database might as well be setting up the space shuttle for a launch. Because of the technology barrier, many would-be bloggers never start their blogs...