How to Increase the Cost of Your Ad

One of the biggest goals that most people using Entrecard have is increasing the cost of their advertisement.  When their advertisement cost is high, along with the popularity rating, that their site receives traffic and is an authority in their niche.  It also allows the blog in mention to have more advertising power on other blogs, as they receive 25% of the total cost of the ad (2048 credits/day equates to 512 credits earned/day).

While there are no truly "free" ways to increase the cost of your ad, as all take time and devotion to raise it, there are some quick and easy methods to increase it, gradually over time.

1. Drop Regularly - When you drop your card on other bloggers, it indicates that you like their blog, and they may return the favor, dropping on you or deciding to advertise on your blog.  I have tried this method, regularly dropping the maximum amount of credits on other blogs and was able to get to the first page (advertisement and popularity-wise) of my category.  This is probably the most time consuming method.
2. Substitute Traditional Advertising for Entrecard - Entrecard has proven that you are able to exchange credits for cash at a similar rate to advertising on a blog, so you would be able to remove all your traditional 125x125 advertising and instead ask people to join Entrecard to advertise on your blog.  This method may not be the most beneficial for your advertisers (1 day vs. 1 month+ advertising).
3. Form a Community - A large part of Entrecard is built around the premise that everyone is in a community, able to help each other out.  If you are able to get together with a few other bloggers, possibly dropping and advertising on each other everyday, the cost of your advertisement will likely increase.  For example, if someone advertises on your blog, return the favor on their blog.
4. Create New Content - One of the biggest things that other bloggers and I look for when advertising is new content being produced on an everyday/regular basis.  This is a huge indication as to whether the blog receives a decent amount of traffic, as RSS/feed readers will likely visit the blog when new content has been produced.  A big problem that the previous "quick drop" pages had was that the traffic was limited to only that of the Entrecard community vs. a typical blog with content on it.
5. Gradually Increase the Cost of Your Ad (naturally) - As your blog grows and becomes recognized, the cost of advertising on your blog will, in theory, also increase.  As Entrecard typically features the most expensive blogs first, your blog will become a bigger target for advertisers, appearing on the fist page vs. the 87th page.  Keeping the cost of your advertisement high will also result in more blogs advertising on your site.

Finally, remember that you aren't supposed to do anything against the terms of Entrecard to increase the cost of your advertisement.  These were just a few basic tips to help you increase the cost of your ad using proven, natural, and somewhat time consuming methods.  There are dozens of other methods, but these are some of the main ones that people are using to increase the cost of their advertisement space.  

If you have any thoughts on this or would like to leave a response as to how you have increased the cost of your ad, feel free to leave a comment below.

Entrecard Toolbar Now Available

The big announcement that was posted on the Entrecard site over the past couple days turned out to be a toolbar, which allows you to quickly navigate through not only blog categories, drop cards using the tools integrated into the browser, but access your account and purchase credits.

Enterecard Toolbar (EntreBar)
Click image for larger image.
You must be using Firefox 3 in order to use the EntreBar.

Other features of the browser bar include:

• Quick Account Switching - Quickly switch between accounts, even if you don't have them connected on the site.
• Entrecard Menu - Displays a report of how many credits are in your account, how many you've dropped for the current day, and other quick links to your dashboard, message box, ad calendar, statistics, linked blogs page, and the buy Entrecards page.
• Favorites Menu - You can choose which category you'd like to browse, or add your daily drops to the Favorites menu using the button to the right of the "open ten sites" button.
• Browsing Options - Within the bar, you can also choose whether to browse most popular, newest, cheapest, most expensive, most advertised, or random.
• Jump Buttons - These buttons allow you to open either one or ten sites, depending on the site categories you've previously selected in the "how to browse" and "what to browse" menus.
• One-click Favorites - These buttons allow you to automatically, with one click choose sites that are your "favorite," for easier dropping via the EntreBar.
• One-Button Advertising - Off to the right, there is a button for advertising on the site that is currently open, and it also displays the number of credits it costs to advertise on the particular site.
• Interaction Menu - The final menu in this area is the interaction menu, which allows you to go to the site's Entrecard profile, send message, write recommendation, tip site, or report site.
• Entrecard Menu - (right-hand side of bar) This menu allows you to login or out, go to the Entrecard Blog, the community forum, support forum, the bugs forum, and the help section.

Conclusion

I really like the idea of the Entrecard Toolbar, as it makes dropping cards easier than having to go to the site each time and browsing the sites using the Campaign area.  For the most part, the feedback has been positive, with more than 135 comments, and the only drawback that I can see is the fact that it is only on one browser, and there isn't total control over the experience of browsing blogs (changing the number of tabs that open at once, etc.).

I believe that with further releases and other updates to the site, the bar will become an even more valuable part of the whole blogging and community experience that has been building with Entrecard.

You can download the EntreBar through the link in the release post or download Firefox 3 (if you haven't upgraded or made the switch yet).

August 3rd Entrecard Links

While there weren't many updates this week directly related to Entrecard, there will likely be more with the next week, as a "big" announcement will be posted tomorrow (August 3rd), which will likely benefit bloggers - in the form of either profit or traffic/comments.

Graham also mentioned how it is important to have a set of quality advertisers on your blog [post].  As a result of the need to help fellow bloggers promote their blogs, he has decided to slash the price of monthly advertising on the blog to $50 (previously $150) for the month of August [post].

In some musings on the Entrecard credit economy, one of the admins noted some future plans on the direction of the site and the credit system, which is worth reading [forum post]:

The first is luxury goods. We're trying to come up with things that will be worth paying a pile of credits for, to try and get those big credit lots moving without basically being binned at ebay.

The second is general credit sinks. We want to give people more variety in their spending options, because it's clear that not everyone really wants to advertise - one of the more interesting discoveries is that if the price of advertising goes up, the total spend does not increase, despite the fact that there are credits to spare in "savings". These credits are essentially dead for advertising purposes - the holders are not willing to spend them on ads - so we'd like to find ways of shaking them lose in a valuable fashion.

The last is that we are in the early stages of considering removing the "magic" from the economy entirely. At the moment, each day X new credits are generated by dropping, and Y credits are removed via the tax system. When they're removed they're destroyed, we don't store them up or anything.

Quick Entrecard Links for July 25, 2008

Some quick links in respect to Entrecard news.  More tips and resources will be posted shortly.

• Entrecard Growth - An interesting look at how the growth of Entrecard is similar to that of Postie/Pay-Per-Post.
• New Features Roundup - A quick look at the dozens of new features released last week.
• Ask Graham Langdon, Round 1 - You are given the opportunity to ask the creator of Entrecard any question- from blogging to the U.S. Economy.
  

Entrecard Teams up with SezWho

Blogging involves the sharing of content and views, and the main goal of the Entrecard system was to help bloggers receive traffic, in turn leading to more comments on their blogs. To make it easier to comment and reward the people who comment, Entrecard has decided to partner with SezWho, a comment system with advanced anti-spam features.

Why SezWho?
The main reasons for the decision to go with SezWho was that it takes an "industry-leading stance on data rights", and the "system is so robust, so powerful, that your comemtns are leveraged tremendously via their suite of features."

Getting Started with the SezWho System
You can see a demonstration of the plugin here (video).  Then, enter the Entrecard Dashboard and sign up for SezWho, entering your email address, blog URL, and display name.  Finally, add the widget to your Movable Type, Blogger, or WordPress blog.

How the Commenting and Earning System Works
When you leave comments on other blogs and others leave comments on your blog, each party will earn credits, which is in hopes of increasing comments and reduce click through rates on Entrecard blogs.

Earned credits for each comment will range between one and ten, with better comments rated higher, on a sliding reward scale, depending on ow your comments get rated.  Two stars or less merits the comments as "spam."

You will receive credits twenty-four hours after you've left a comment, so people have a chance to rate them.  If the comment is rated higher over the next three days, you may earn extra credits.

The Entrecard Browser now has a checkbox for selecting blogs with the SezWho plugin installed.

You can earn for up to fifteen comments per day, or ten credits for fifteen comments on individual blogs, raising the total number of earnable credits per day to 350.

I believe that this new sytem will help strengthen the Entrecard system, as more people will be leaving comments instead of trying to quickly drop their cards on other blogs.

Other:
In slightly off-topic news, Entreview.com advertised in the dashboard for $25 for a single day, and received a pretty staggering 765 visits during the twenty-four hour period their link was placed there.