Want to advertise on the John Chow dot Com Entrecard widget but don’t quite have the 259 credits it takes to buy a spot? Well, you’re in lucky! It just so happens I have nearly 7,000 Entrecard credits sitting in my account. Instead of using the credits to buy advertising on other Entrecard sites, I figure I’ll give them away to readers.
Get 200 Entrecard Credits
Entrecard allows me to send any credit amount I want to another Entrecard user. So, the first 35 Entrecard users who writes a recommendation for me will each get 200 credit add to his account. That’s still not enough to buy a spot on this blog but it’ll get you a lot closer. You don’t have to use the credit to advertise on my blog – feel free to use it to buy space on any of the 2,500 blogs in the Entrecard system. In order to write a recommendation and get the 200 credits, you need to be an Entrecard member.
Some New Entrecard Features
There are a number of new features being rolled out for Entrecard. They include news feed for your favorites, seeing which Entrecard members are in your geographical area, seeing other members’ favorites, and an improved shop. I’m actually thinking of offering a John Chow review for 10,000 Entrecard credits. Would anyone buy it?
Entrecard founder Graham Langdon sent me some interesting Entrecard traffic stat: 13,000,000 widget impressions per month, 450,000 daily impressions, and 26,000 clicks sent daily from Entrecard to members’ blogs, and 17,000 clicks send daily from Entrecard widget network to members’ blogs. Ads purchased through the Entrecard network have a 3.6% clickthrough rate. The growth of Entrecard has been quite amazing.
Misleading Credit Pricing
Something that Entrecard needs to work on is its pricing system. For the longest time, I was the most expensive blog in the network. Now I’m not even on page one. This is because of members mass dropping cards in order to inflate their price and build up their credits. The current number one site cost 466 credits per day but has only 72 RSS readers (he wisely removed the FeedBurner count from his blog).
This gaming of the system is making it hard to tell which sites will deliver traffic and which sites won’t send anything. I wouldn’t spend 466 credit to advertise on a blog with only 72 RSS readers but all his spots are sold. People think high price equal quality but for many Entrecard member sites, that is not the case.
Until Entrecard figures out a way to prevent gaming of their system, you should check out the site more to prevent having your hard earned credits wasted.
*Update – That was fast! All 7,000 credits has been given out and members are still writing recommendations. Unfortunately, the credits only went to the first 35 Entrecard users. Anyone making a recommendation after the 35, thanks but I have no credits to give you. 🙁