This Entrecard review is not of the paid variety. I took Entrecard for a major test run and these are my experiment results. If you don’t know what Entrecard is this definitive review may not make sense to you. Visit Entrecard.com for details.

This is the Popular Wealth Entrecard logo, your results will vary depending on the design of your logo so keep in mind that this entrecard review is based on that logo. I’ve also chosen How To Increase Your New Blog’s Traffic as the title for this Entrecard review because thats what the experiment results conclude Entrecard does best.

Entrecard Card Dropping Dedication

To test the limits of what Entrecard has to offer I signed up to the ultra competitive make money online category, talk about some extreme heavyweight competition in the top 10. The limit of entrecard drops allowed is 300 per day, I dedicated time for this experiment and made sure I reached the limit daily.

Entrecard Return On Investment (ROI)

The only investment in using Entrecard is time, the service is free financially. Dropping 300 cards a day resulted in an average of 41 visits a day directly from my entrecard profile and an additional 14 visits a day from advertising. I split the credits evenly with 50% spent towards ads on expensive and established sites and 50% on cheap ad spaces. Sites with widgets above the fold gave me the best returns, otherwise the two groups delivered roughly the same traffic volume in total. My test concluded that my logo delivers 55 visitors per day.

My time is valuable - is Entrecard worth it?
Purchasing 55 TARGETED visitors per day through ppc advertising like adwords would cost roughly 17.50 a day. Since my only cost with entrecard is time and I value that at 25.00 an hour minimum I can afford to spend about 45 minutes per day on Entrecard. But wait - the traffic isn’t targeted is it? No, it’s not. The final bounce rate for this experiment after 10 days was 84.45%, roughly 3 times higher than the site average. Remember that even untargeted traffic has “branding” value and that these visitors may feel comfortable on your site if they recognize it later on. That being said - I’d need to cut my time spent on entrecard to 20 minutes per day maximum to maintain my minimum time value.

Is it possible to drop 300 cards a day in 20 minutes?
Yes it is. Many people click through to websites using the entrecard control panel and then backpage their way to the next site, that takes too long to maintain value. Many people are using some new scripts or services like sitehoppin which are somewhat faster, but those take too long as well. To drop 300 cards in 20 minutes you don’t need to game the system or use fancy services or scripts. Simply using features built into your browser is enough. Heres how.

When you visit a site you like that is displaying an Entrecard widget, simply bookmark that site into a firefox favorites folder. Bookmark 30 sites into each folder x 10. When you want to drop your cards go to your folder and open it in tabs mode, all 30 sites will open at once. Cycle through them all once and your done. If the bookmarked sites have a widget above the fold, like here on Popular Wealth, you won’t need to scroll and it can be done even faster.

Morals and webmaster issues
Is power dropping as described above a good thing? Is it spam? Does the internet need this? I debated this question myself. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s acceptable to power drop your entrecard cards. From a webmasters viewpoint the widget is javascript so it doesn’t affect rankings. From a website owners viewpoint if someone is willing to bookmark my site and return often I have a chance to convert them eventually and at the very least I brand my site into their memory. From an Entrecard purity perspective the site exists to allow webmasters to network, power dropping is doing so in a most efficient manner.

Non entrecard members just visiting your site benefit from the quality of Entrecard itself and HERE is where the morality issues should be scrutinized. Does Entrecard provide access to quality sites only? Does Entrecard promote solid webmaster practices? I personaly am able to get the most out of entrecard by choosing which members I associate with so it’s not an issue for me personaly. That being said Entrecard has recently allowed people to offer services that game other social networks and the negative effects that has may prompt action against its members.

I feel that entrecard offers a solid free advertising platform but I am aware that some practices may cause my site harm if they continue unchecked. The jury is out on the new shop items, I don’t think it will take long before all Entrecard members are affected by the social network gaming services of a handfull of members. To benefit from entrecard risk free, don’t purchase stumble upon or Digg or other social service offers found in the shops. It’s VERY likely that the social network accounts of the people offering the services will be closely monitored or penalized and the accounts of everyone who associates with them are equally at risk. It’s not worth risking all of your accounts so don’t.

Entrecard best use practices
Entrecard benefits new and unknown sites most by opening up a large network of sites to them. Established and high traffic sites can benefit by receiving a lot more card drops naturaly which may be enough to get into the top three for their category, bragging rights have value too. The established sites however risk sending more people away from their site than they get in return. I cut this experiment short at 10 days, some may argue thats not long enough, but since entrecard sets its rates on 5 day cycles I ran through two full cycles while reaching the limit daily. My results WOULD increase in time but only because my natural traffic does.

How high did I get in 10 days of pushing entrecard to its limits? I ranked Popular Wealth as highly as 19th out of 339 “make money online” sites with a peek ad cost of 189 credits per day. I did NOT power drop during the test because I didn’t want networks of power droppers to skew my results by including me. I also ran my widget BELOW the fold for the test to avoid power dropping networks from adding Popular Wealth. 189 per day is a respectable NATURAL result in my opinion for that card. I tried to drop cards on people who left cards with me, I’ll continue to do just that but I don’t think I will continue with 300 a day - I like to stop and read what I see a little too much for that

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