I have received numerous requests via email on how I have gotten my blog to under 1000 IzeaRank in only its first 35 days of existance. I have to say that one of the biggest tools that I use to achieve this is Entrecard. First of all, I want to say that though my visitors to my site are high, I have a high bounce rate of 84%, which means that if I were to stop using these social networks, I would lose 70% of my traffic within 3 or 4 days. I don’t have sustainable traffic yet, it takes about 1-2 hours of upkeep per day to keep this much traffic coming into my blog at this point. I still strive for blog sustainability and I only believe this will happen with time and high quality posts about topics readers want to read about.
Here is an overview of Entrecard.
First you have an entrecard account, I recommend an account for each and every one of your blogs, but you can link them all together (more on that a little later).
You create a 125×125 pixel ad for your blog, make sure you have your blog’s name or URL inside the 125×125 ad. Having a picture with no blog name or URL makes it hard for people to know who you are or what your blog URL is. You want this to stick in their mind even after they see and recognize your entrecard picture.
Once you create an account you will go into your dashboard as seen here:
The biggest thing to note about your dashboard are the following:
- The amount of credits you have (this is your advertising credits, EC’s)
- The amount of cards you dropped today / all time
- The amount of credits it costs to advertise on your blog
- The amount of cards dropped on you today / all time
These are advertiser credits, like online dollars. Each site you want to display your entrecard on costs a certain amount of ECs per day. You purchase advertising in 24 hour chunks for a set # of ECs from a blog site.
The more popular a blog is (the more drops it receives) the more it costs to advertise on that blog.
You get 1 EC for each drop you perform on someones blog, and you also get 1 EC for each drop that is made on your blog. You also get ECs from advertisers who purchase spots on your blog, but these ECs are paid only when the advertisers AD is displayed not at time of purchase.
Dropping cards is one of the best ways to get ECs as well as get your blog visited by other Entrecard users. When you first start out and link a blog, you will use the “Campaign” button at the top and do a search for blogs related to your blogs topic. If you write poetry, do searches for “Poem, Poetry, Writing”…etc and then visit each and every one of these blogs sites and drop on them.
Tip: Hover over the little Entrecard of the Site and hold Control Key and then click on “Visit Site”. This will open the site in a new Firefox or Google Chrome tab. This allows you to mass open a bunch of sites at the same time, then flip to each of the taps with Control - Page Up or Control - Page Down, click the drop, then Control + W to close the tab. This is a little trick which allows me to make dozens of drops very quickly.
Here is another note, look for sites that say “Drop For Life” or “Drop U Back”. You know these people will almost always pay you back with a drop. Secondly, look at blog post before you drop. If you visit a blog that has a last post > 30 days ago, pretty much assume there is a good chance it is a less than active blog. Drop if you like the topic but don’t necessarily expect a drop back.
I always try to read some of my dropper’s posts on their main page before dropping, and I comment where appropriate. This is because even though they appreciate the drop, dropping and running will give the blog a high “Bounce Rate” and though they get the Unique Visits, it shows that their content isn’t keeping people on the site for a follow up click.
After you have done many drops and you notice people start dropping on your site, go to your Drops Inbox as often as possible, at least daily. Remember you can only drop once time per 24 hours, and if people are doing 2 drops on your blog but you are only returning 1, they aren’t inclined to keep dropping as often. Entrecard requires a little bit of work, try to drop on all people who drop on you every day. I set aside 1 hour per day to just perform entrecard drops and advertisements.
The funny thing is, when I was doing multiple Entrecard drops per day, I was losing track of which droppers I was returning the favor on. I now use the “Show only people I haven’t dropped on” drop down menu, to show all the Entrecards of visitors who I haven’t dropped in the last 24 hours. This way if you check your Entrecard several times a day, you know who is left to drop on for that day.
Okay here is the fun part, when you start off a new blog you need to advertise it, but you won’t have very many EC’s so you want to click on Campain, and click on Search, then Sort by Cheapest. But beware, many of the cheap blogs either are decomissioned or have never updated in months so they are cheap for a reason. New blogs sometimes don’t have a badge setup yet. Visit every site before you pay to advertise on the site, make sure the site is up, the site works, and doesn’t have content that conflicts with yours. Also visit their profile and see how often they accept or respond to advertisers, and note what their reject rate is.
When people advertise on your blog, visit their site first before just accepting. Make sure its content is appropriate. Secondly, reject some way off topic advertisers. By doing some rejections, you actually make your blog more popular in the long run as you don’t look like you pander to just anyone. But don’t reject too many or people won’t even try to advertise.
This is one of my favorite parts about Entrecard is the ability to have multiple accounts and link all of the blogs together so you can switch back and forth between your Entrecard accounts. You can only do 300 drops per day on one account, but if you have multiple accounts you can drop up to 600 cards per day. I often try to get 300 drops per day, and I usually do at least 20-30 additional for my secondary blogs for about 400 drops per day.
The switch tab near your email at the top is very useful, this lets you see linked accounts and transfer ECs between your blogs so you can give your baby blogs more advertiser credits. This also allows you to easily switch back and forth between your accounts, to check their dashboards for advertisers, and visit the drops inbox to return drop favors.
Last but not least now I will explain how I use Entrecard.
I always drop everyone who drops on me, and if there wasn’t enough people dropping on me to fill up 300 drops, then I start campaign browsing. Honestly, I sometimes do Random searches, and drop on random people. I always give preference to bloggers who list “Drop U Back” or who list their Top Droppers on their blog, as these people tend to show more odds to return the favor. Secondly I drop on my advertisers, even if they aren’t in my drops inbox, because they advertised with me, I drop them. I also sometimes blog chain, and I can knock off lots of drops this way. This is when you visit a blogger’s site, and open the entrecard ad in their site to another site, then do the same over and over again. Dropping on each site as you go. This causes me to reach out to random blogs, but it also lets me see the blogs who really are advertising like crazy out there. When I see one blog having ten or twenty ads on other blogs I know they are heavily promoted.
I buy advertisments on expensive sites where I can, and cheap sites when I don’t have the credits for the big sites. If I don’t have any ads running in the next 24 hours, I will sort my searches looking for blogs that have no ADs in the queue. I try to have at least 3-4 ads running every day on someones blog somewhere.
I do visit the Statistics page and look at top droppers…etc and I will do a follow up blog on leveraging the Entrecard Analytics.
Happy Dropping my friends,
-Dragon Blogger
