I'm so glad you could stop by. This is my personal blog of daily life and my journey through life. You will find a strong emphasis on family and friends as well as finding my ancestors through genealogy. Unlike my other blogs this blog is more of a catch-all so any topic is fair game.
A little over a week ago I removed the entrecard widgets from all of my blogs and posted why I left entrecard on the 16th. The following day after a lot of prodding entrecard removed my cooking blog but refuses to remove my other blogs. In the meantime they spammed my email inbox with 14 messages saying they had removed my cooking blog. Realizing that entrecard was still sending my other blogs traffic even though the widgets had been removed I poked a little fun at them in the entrecard fiasco inviting Graham to enroll in the Behavioural Modification School for Candidates. Despite the humorous component of entrecard refusing to remove my blogs and continuing to send me traffic, many are dying to know what my life is like without entrecard?
I honestly have to say life without entrecard is so much better! I still visit the favourite blogs I discovered through entrecard. Commenting on their blogs allows me to keep in touch and that in itself has made for a much more enjoyable blogging experience. Please keep in mind that I forfeited 17, 463 credits or in perspective approximately 29 days or 145 hours (at 5 hr daily) of faithfully using the entrecard site daily so to Graham who says the credits are free I will tell you right now they are far from free. Earning these credits rob you of time that can be used for promoting your blog in more effective ways than mindless dropping cards. Earning credits also rob you of precious time from your family and friends as well as quality blogging time. Don't forget if you don't have quality content which really does mean quality blogging time then you will not retain traffic regardless of where that traffic comes from! At first I was concerned that I would see a drop in traffic and I would be lying if I said I didn't BUT what I also saw within the first 24 hours of removing the entrecard widgets was a good 10% decrease in bounce rate. Yes, my traffic decreased but those visiting were staying on my blogs longer. Essentially by eliminating the drop and run traffic from entrecard almost immediately resulted in a higher quality of traffic and that was across all five of my blogs. The next thing I noticed was an increase in comments and they were quality comments rather than the fly by thinly veiled spam comments. Finally I noticed something that I didn't think I would notice. I found I was all of a sudden excited about blogging again! I no longer saw that I had to do so many drops to drive traffic to my blogs. I saw that the traffic was going to come if I just kept blogging and that in itself was exciting. In hindsight Graham Langdon founder of entrecard did me a huge favour by inviting me to leave. I fully expect my blogs to have a considerably longer lifespan than entrecard. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that leaving entrecard has made my blogs stronger because the focus is now on blogging where it should be. This will be my last blog post on entrecard.
Garden Gnome
©2006-2009
I'm glad you have more time to enjoy the net. You don't need that rubbish traffic. Clicking yellow boxes saying "Drop yours" is not what blogging is about.
ReplyDeletecorrect me if I'm wrong, but if you still read and comment on blogs you found through entrecard... doesn't that prove that Entrecard works? and doesn't it also prove that some of the traffic from Entrecard is people like you, who read and comment?
ReplyDeleteI think you negated your own argument that Entrecard doesn't work..
Thanks Turnip!
ReplyDeleteNo, I honestly feel that entrecard does not work and that is likely more pronounced for the top droppers. Many do no bookmark any of the blogs they visit while dropping. Most spend less than 30 seconds on the blog and quite often move on before the blog is even fully loaded. Prior to the new ruling for placement of the widget some folks put their widgets near the bottom of their blogs forcing you to scroll down. If I had extra time I would stop to glimpse while scrolling so these tend to be the blogs I noticed and occasionally bookmarked. The new placement ruling will eliminate this as well.
ReplyDeleteThe thing about entrecard is it promotes drop & run without reading or commenting. I dropped 300 daily for my main blog and 50+ daily for my other 4 blogs. So in perspective out of a possible 500 drops daily I may have over the entire time of being with entrecard bookmarked 20 blogs. A lot of the more noticeable bloggers on entrecard are also on other blogging networks as well. So when I see a blog on another network I might be more inclined to visit and comment because I also saw them on entrecard but that is no guarantee. A particular blog might have stuck out in my mind because they always advertised but in most cases the blogs I visit were at one time on entrecard but left over one or more of the previous problems. These were well respected bloggers with excellent blogs all who left because of problems with entrecard. So yes entrecard works if you consider visiting a blogger who had problems with entrecard a positive thing.
I honestly feel that entrecard does not work under its current framework. Entrecard works by alienating members and those who have been on Graham's nasty side do tend to still read each others blogs. That really isn't a good thing for entrecard, is it?
I am glad that it has worked so well for you ...I am gradually winding down with Entrecard for most of my blogs, although I haven't decided about whether I'll use it on one of my personal blogs for a bit yet
ReplyDeletetoday.com reversed their position re: allowing it - bt are no longer going to pay for ANY entrecard traffic... having a hard time figuring out why I would bother ... it's not like dropping for the sake of dropping is FUN
After reading what happened to you and reactions from other bloggers about the new paid ads, I too decided to leave Entrecard. I will be removing my badges this weekend.
ReplyDeleteIn the meantime, rather than wasting my credits, I decided to help flood the EC market by giving mine away. If you'd like to join me in giving our banked credits away, visit my post: Entrecard Quitters Giveaway.
I left too but I've returned to Entrecard. Like you, I enjoyed the time away. I wish I could have stayed away but I do enjoy the traffic and some of my most faithful readers enjoy being able to drop their cards. I'm glad it's working so well for you and, yes, you do have an outstanding blog.
ReplyDelete