The Entrecarder

I first noticed the ebay listing last week. An enterprising Entrecarder was offering their services to all takers for just $120 a month, which was later reduced to $80.

"You have found a Entrecard Professional Droppering Service For Your Site, Simply speaking I will log in as you and Drop every day up to 300 Cards on blogs (roughly 2hrs of my time everyday) for you for 30 days."

Sadly, no one stepped up to hire this professional Entrecard dropper and the auction ended today. Yet the problem wasn't in the idea but in the fact they used ebay to promote it. That and the obvious lack of credibility issues inherent in the ad. For example, Turnip and BendzG, among others, use a benchmark of 20 cards per minute or 300 in 15 minutes for their power dropping blasts. I chuckled at the "roughly 2hrs of my time" estimate used in the same ad as "Professional Droppering." That's so wrong on several counts that it almost made me overlook the "up to 300 Cards" deal killer. I'm guessing that the Professional Dropperinger intended to drop 300 cards a day, but they covered themselves in case they only dropped two. Oops. Good idea, bad ad.

So is there room for professional Entrecard droppers? As of the moment the answer is a resounding YES!

Here's why it works: Nimble-fingered power droppers can grind through 1200 drops an hour. Images off, tabs open, multiple windows open, clear cookies after each set and start over. It's the page loading that slows things down, not the clicking. Once the 300 pages are open it's just a matter of click, tab, click, tab, click, tab, and so on. 60 seconds to clear cookies and log in to the next account and away you go.

Ok, so now you have 1200 ECs, right? Wrong. Make it 2000 ECs with the return drops. Power dropping daily on reciprocative droppers almost guarantees a 50% or higher return drop rate. I've plugged in a 66 1/3 rate because I believe it can be done. So now we are at 2000 ECs for one hour of effort. Now comes the tough part. You've got to sell those ECs to get your cash, less the Entrecard Credit Exchange and paypal fees. So, pick an exchange rate of let's say....$7 per 1000, net of fees. 2000 per hour at $7 net = $14 an hour.

What? That's not enough to quit your day job? OK...then what say you actually charge the blog owners for the increased traffic they are receiving as a result of your card dropping. After all, up to this point all they have had to do is put the Entrecard widget on their blog and you have done the rest. It's proven that Entrecard will improve their traffic numbers and that's got to be worth something, right? Is it worth $1 a day? $2 a day? I know it's worth something...and I guess we'll just have to see. No one jumped on the $80 a month, but I'm thinking that if you threw in some Digging, Stumbling, and Commenting with your power dropping, you might be able to get $50-100 a month ON TOP of what you get from your card dropping. And it's not like there is a shortage of bloggers out there who might want to increase their traffic.

So let's recap: $14 an hour, $1.50 day per client = another $6 an hour, and now we're at $20 an hour. How many hours would anyone want to do this a day? One hour a day = $600 a month, two hours = $1200, three hours = $1800 and so on. Could you be a professional Entrecard Dropper for 8 hours a day and $4800 a month? I doubt it...but I hope you get the point. It's theoretically possible to make some pretty good money from Entrecard every month if you play your Entrecards right.

Of course, there are a few possible glitches that might mess up this grand scheme: 1) There might not be enough buyers for the ECs you (and others) are trying to sell at any price; 2) Graham changes the rules and you don't earn ECs from dropping cards. 3) You develop carpal tunnel from all the card dropping.

No plan is perfect, but what is encouraging is that the Entreconomy has plenty of room for Entrepreneurs who are looking to make some money from this vibrant and growing community.