Entrecard: So Far So Good
On the first of this month I gave my initial impressions on Entrecard, an online ad exchange network. I’ve been using their service for over a week now, and I feel obligated to let you all know how well this service is doing for this Website.
My Performance
I’m pleased as punch. This is one of the first services that I jumped into to breath life into Truebluetitan and it’s really working. Since joining Entrecard, Truebluetitan has risen to become one of the top 5 sites in the Make Money Online niche. Imagine how surprised I was to see my blog sitting across from some of the top sites out there today. In addition to that, Truebluetitan is currently #13 #12 out of the top 30 most popular participating sites. Not too shabby for a young fella just getting started!
When it comes to traffic, Truebluetitan.com hasn’t set any world records, however, the site has benefited from a consistent flow of traffic from my advertisements. To date, I have received 236 visits from Entrecard.com, and 56 visits from my advertisements on other sites. Now that may not seem like a whole lot of traffic, but several of my advertising requests on other blogs are not being displayed until this week or next. As a result, I expect to see the number of visitors from my advertisements increase pretty dramatically, especially with my advertisement appearing on Problogger on December 11, just in time to wrap up my Nintendo Wii contest.
I’m also proud to say that Truebluetitan.com is helping to generate traffic for other blogs out there. To date, there has been 81 clicks from this site to others in the Entrecard network. Because of this, I’ve had the opportunity to exchange emails with some very amazing people participating in the network. I’m always impressed at just how easily the Internet can bring two like-minded individuals together.
New Members
Since my initial review, the Website’s community has been expanding steadily each day. New members are joining the site constantly which is giving me an opportunity to explore new blogs as well as place bids to advertise on their sites before their prices start to climb drastically. I was actually lucky enough to snag a spot on Problogger’s blog when he first signed up for Entrecard. At that time, the cost to advertise was only 3 credits, whereas the current daily advertising cost is 119 credits. Get ‘em early!! It’s also great to see heavy hitters in the blogging industry, such as John Chow, Tyler Cruz, Nate Whitehill, and the previously mentioned Problogger get into the mix and support this new advertising venture.
New Features
In addition to the new users joining the site daily, the staff at Entrecard also seem to be frequently adding features. Since joining the site they have added a forum, blog, and statistical analysis section.
Forums: I spent 15 minutes browsing the forum and was quite surprised to see the amount of participating and feedback from the users. The members of this community are very active. On the flip side, its also incredibly evident that those who have a hand in developing the site are also very active. I can certainly see myself spending more time here. My only qualm with the forum is that it doesn’t have the look and feel of the rest of the site. Basically, it hasn’t been polished yet.
Blog: The blog is a new feature that was just added today. The blog was developed using the WordPress platform, which is also the brains behind Truebluetitan.com. As a result, there are a couple of things that I would like to see implemented on their blog to increase it’s SEO friendliness. In the upcoming days I will have a whole post dedicated to SEO Best practices for blogs, but for now I would recommend getting rid of the way that they are displaying URLs each of their posts. Currently, they look like this: http://www.entrecard.com/blog/?p=123/. I prefer to see the URL displaying the category and the post title instead. The fix is very simple and can be done in a few minutes through the WordPress administrative interface.
To celebrate the launch of their blog, Entrecard is running a Blog Kick-Off Contest. The grand prize is a month free advertising on the sidebar of the blog; prime real estate for anyone looking to boost their site’s traffic. I’d love to win that prize.
Statistics: The statistics section has also proven to be informative. Here you can see tons of information regarding your advertisements performance, such as cards dropped on your site, clicks on your advertisement, and clicks from Entrecard.com to your site. The charts have a very iWorks ‘08 feel to them. Very well done. I would love to see a more in-depth breakdown of my performance though…it feels like something is missing here.
Recommend Me
If you’ve advertised on this site, or signed up because of one of my Entrecard write ups I would greatly appreciate it if you would write me a recommendation on the site. I’d love to see my advertisement continue to climb up that segment as well!
Join Now!
So if you haven’t got the hint yet, join Entrecard now. It has surprised me, and I think you’ll find that it will do the same for you!
Hey Rob Great Post. You have an error in the link to Nate Whitehill’s link, you have extra h in his url.
Whoops! Thanks Dave, I fixed it.
I also use Entrecard and it’s great..
Rob, did you make this theme on your own? Its beautiful.
@ Netvestor: Yep. I started with the Sandbox theme and then built it from there. Thanks for the compliment.
I was thinking of making it publicly available. What’s everyones thought on that?
Yes definitely. Not only you will give something to community but you will get free exposure.
Cheers
I’m having great results from Entrecard as well.
Great review on Entrecard Rob. It’s a great idea and it’s not only bringing traffic - but really helps to create some new blogging communities for the members. And it’s an easy way to find some great, new blogs I might not have found otherwise.
I like entrecard as well, I mean, come on, free advertising on sites like John Chow, Problogger and TylerCruz? Sweet deal, in my humble opinion ;)
Tyler
I like your review and I have to say that entrecard is a very good idea. Most interesting thing about it is finding blogs that I would never have found. I mean you type make money online and you are led to problogger.
No wonder some of the very big guys don’t like it, it could actually drive their traffic to other blogs that are yet to be discovered.
congrats and good luck
There’s a bad review for EntreCard? I like to read that.
I’ve been using EntreCard for a week and the result is astonishingly good. I can’t imagine anyone say anything bad about it.
I Found your site via Entrecard. I agree It seems a great way of getting your site “out there”.
[…] Rob’s review on his Truebluetitan blog. […]
I signed up to entrecard because of this post :P
yup, some blogger said that entrecard only encourage people only to click rather reading the content..
so, what do u think?
@ Keira: I’m happy to hear that. Stop back and let us know how successful (or unsuccessful) the program was for you.
@ lankapo: It’s been a little over a month since I wrote this post and I’m still enjoying the traffic AND user participation that the program has generated for my site. While I would always love more users to participate, I cannot complain. It’s still a worthwhile program, IMHO.