The Entrecarder: My Strategy on Leveraging Entrecard

2008-01-09

My Strategy on Leveraging Entrecard

Here's what I'm doing with Entrecard as of the moment:

1) Multiple Entrecard Accounts - I have more than one Entrecard account due to having several different online businesses that I am promoting. This account, "My Internet Marketing Adventures" is my main account and is a record of my activities on Entrecard and elsewhere that I combine under the BizBeacon brand. A second account, "Intunique...the art of smart," (the model is my youngest daughter) is designed to build readership of my blog that deals with Multiple Intelligence Theory, personality, and how each of us has specific intellectual abilities that are in the gifted range, even if we don't realize it. My third account is "Madame Goyin", a collection of MLM tips and experiences that I have ghostwritten on behalf of my mother, who has been the CEO of 3 separate MLM companies. (That's her in the 60s when she was a top fashion model, standing there next to the Goyin bottle.) My fourth account is "Tips for Newer $ Bloggers" and is designed to introduce folks to the more common Ad companies like AdToll, Bidvertiser, Widget Bucks, etc.

2) Review, Sort, & Bookmark Entrecard Sites - Thanks to Turnip I started bookmarking sites so I could quickly open them and blast through them in mass card-dropping sprees. I haven't hit his pace yet, but it does quicken things up significantly. My current method is to check the Most Recent sites and drop a card from my "Tips for Newer $ Bloggers" account. Then I either put their bookmark in a folder for Above The Fold (ATF) or Below The Fold (BTF), and occasionally--based on adult content or really slow page loading--I don't bookmark it at all. I have found that my computer works best when I keep the bookmarks in a single folder to 20 or less. I use the right click "Open All" feature in a new window, click the first card and then click the tab of the next card, continuing until all cards have been clicked, leaving the tabs open for the time being. Then I close the Firefox window (which quickly closes all the tabs) and move to the next folder. Am I reading most of these blogs? No...unless the title to the top post catches my eye. However, I have found that it takes my computer a minute or so to load all 20 sites and so I am in the process of placing a blog that I want to read every day as the top bookmark in the folder...if it loads quickly. That will allow me to read it and click through the rest. Initially I thought I would go through both the ATF and BTF groups of folders, but honestly I don't want to spend the extra time to scroll down. To me that says that the blog owner doesn't care enough about Entrecard to make it easy for me and I'm not particularly motivated to help grow their traffic as a result.

3) Purchase Ad Space From The Bottom Up -At first it seemed like a good idea to use my Entrecard credits to place my card on the category leaders' sites. However, that thrill passed quickly and I'm now purchasing ads starting from the bottom of the category and working my way up until I'm zeroed out. I've been shifting credits from my 2nd, 3rd, and 4th accounts to my main Entrecard account to improve my buying power. My goal is to get as many ads running as I can so that my fellow Entrecarders get used to seeing my card and consider me one of the regulars.

4) Recruit Assistants - As I build this system it will become easier for someone else to grind through the 200-300 cards each day. It was fun for a couple of days, but I'm quickly getting to a point where one of my 5 children who are still living at home could do it just as efficiently.

I think Entrecard is a great idea and while it might appear that I am trying to game it, the truth is that everything I do benefits someone else's site, in addition to mine. I still have plenty of work to do to optimize my blogs and I haven't yet gotten into the comments, backlinks, contests, or other good ideas that are proliferating around the Entrecard community. Feel free to point me at your site if you have some good ideas for leveraging my Entrecard experience.