Saturday, October 18, 2008

Turnip of Power's Thoughts on Improving Entrecard

Recently, "Turnip of Power" shared his thoughts on how to improve the Entrecard system, citing that Entrecard needs to switch to a monthly/yearly subscription service, like many other services.

I disagree with some of the points that have been addressed, but I, too, do not have a clear solution to improving Entrecard.
  1. If Entrecard switches to a "pay for subscription" model, I likely won't pay, unless a set of powerful new tools to add value to my blog and build a further community around my blog are released.
  2. The whole point of Entrecard is to help your blog grow, first through more traffic, then through building a community/readership base on your blog.  Decreasing the amount of drops, say below 100 per day, would decrease the amount of traffic you could potentially receive by dropping on other  sites and other members "dropping" on your site.
  3. More high-trafficked sites, or blogs that are a part of networks need to join.  Entrecard would be able to increase their traffic to some degree, but the main benefit would be fore sites with less traffic - the return rates would be higher than many sites that don't receive as much traffic.  However, I don't see this as a viable solution either, as long-term results wouldn't be as great.
Share your thoughts on what Entrecard can do to get the "quick drop" mindset out of the people who use the system.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

What do you think about his idea of removing the inbox?

I think nr. 2 heavily ties in with that, so I don't think you should exclude that in your opinion of the 100 drops per day.

Anonymous said...

@Bas - Istanbul Expat - The inbox causes more people to quick drop and reciprocate on blogs that have dropped on their site. However, it is used too often, and should be used as an additional "small" feature, to occasionally view others' sites. Instead, people should build lists to drop on sites, which would make the system more valuable.

Jamie Sue said...

More sites in general would be great. I'm getting bored with the same old I'm seeing. I'm also prone to looking for the EC widget on other blogs and kind of miss the ability to say "I was here, but didn't have anything to say" that EC provides.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for discussing ideas I raised in my post. In response to some of your points, here are my ideas on them.
1. I hope they keep the free system free. People like it simply because it is free. Nobody would want to pay to receive what they get for free already. If I pay, I want more! What I get for paying has to be worth it, so Entrecard can generate profits from those subscriptions.
2. Decreasing the drop rate would lower the total amount of traffic. Then again, the traffic you do receive might be more awake, more likely to interact, and more likely to have singled your blog out as one they value.
3. Getting better blogs into the system would help everyone, except the better blogs. Unless you pay them, how do you convince someone to waste widget space on something that brings 300-500 visitors a day, when they already get 20k visitors a day? Entrecard needs to provide value for bigger blogs somehow.

Anonymous said...

Hi,

Entrecard seems to be changing their rules on a monthly basis. The users might be upset but Entrecard has grown to BIG to quickly for my liking. When a company grows as quickly as Entrecard, there are going to be problems and complaints.

Anonymous said...

Thank you for all your comments.

While pay-for-membership models won't necessarily work to the full extent, people have unanimously agreed that we need more traffic and higher quality.

On the debate of higher quality blogs entering the network, there are many out there who have the MyBlogLog/BlogCatalog widgets, which add 2-5 seconds additional load time, but don't provide a whole lot to the site, other than displaying people who have "favorited" the site by visiting it and/or joining the community. If Entrecard was able to offer something along those lines (but still with the whole purpose of driving more, targeted traffic, more people would jump on board, even the bigger blogs.

Anonymous said...

I agree completely with your statements. Entrecard has to find a good balance as soon as possible before people start to leave.

About the inbox: I actually don't use it. The RSS feed is published on my blog and that is all I do with it.

Bob Johnson said...

I've only been blogging for a year now, and I'm finding the average blog is in the 20-500 hits a day, I just started with Entrecard yesterday seems to be helping a little but in my category, space, I think I've only found, hmm let me see 1 other type blog so far here.

ps I have booked marked this blog, I found it to be very useful, so there you go, you never know what you might find.