The Entrecarder

Doesn't everyone wake up with an itch to grind numbers and analyze what's happening in the Entrecard community? I started off by verifying that there's a sucker born every day, as evidenced by the fact there were no ads available for purchase this morning for less then 16 ECs. Wake up Entrecarders! Your brilliant strategy of bottom feeding is just a waste of ECs. A glance at the stats of many of the sites available at 16 ECs shows that most have less than 30 drops on them in the past 5 days, which means fewer than 6 Entrecarders are dropping a card on them each day. But hey, cheap thrills and all, don't worry about me competing with you for the cheap ads. I also verified that many of the Entrecarders with the highest Popularity numbers are still advertising like crazy. 4 of the top 15 most "popular" are also in the top 15 Biggest Advertisers.

Just as a high Popularity number doesn't really mean "most popular" in terms of overall visitors or readers, the biggest advertiser rankings are in a constant state of flux, as I suspect most folks go on advertising binges every so often. Drop rankings such as Drop Master and Casual & Relaxed can provide some insights as to how many cards an Entrecarder is dropping in the course of a month, but it can get fuzzy in the middle rankings, especially if someone went on vacation, had an illness, or got busy in life and couldn't make their normal drops. However, never letting lack of precise information stop me from looking for trends and insights, I played around with the data this morning and came up with a list of 11 Entrecarders that you should take a closer look at:

1) Ty's Blog - Casual and Relaxed drop ranking, yet his Popularity number at the moment is 1101, and he's #74 on the Biggest Advertiser list.

2) Josh's Unconventional Marketing Blog - Casual and Relaxed, Popularity number of 1016 and #51 Advertiser.

3) Bloggernoob - Casual and Relaxed, 956 Popularity, #130 Advertiser.

4) Mummifiedtimesfive.net - Consistent - Regular Dropper, 824 Popularity, not in top 240 Advertisers.

5) Roll with Rick - Just here for the view, 871 Popularity, #212 Advertiser

6) Entrepreneurs Only - Consistent - Regular Dropper, 742 Popularity, #174 Advertiser

7) Revenue Robot - Consistent - Regular Dropper, 703 Popularity #24 Advertiser

8) Joe Tech - Just here for the view, 557 Popularity, not in top 240 Advertisers.

9) Hash it Out! - Just here for the view, 474 Popularity, #38 Advertiser.

10) The West Virginia Blogger - Just here for the view, 465 Popularity, not in top 240 Advertisers.

Each of these 10 are doing something right, although it's hard to identify just one factor. My last pick must be doing something wrong:

11) The Path to the Pegasus Letter - Drop Master, 813 Popularity, not in top 240 Advertisers.

It's not my intent to pick on The Path to Pegasus Letter, as there were 4 other Drop Masters with Popularity numbers under 1000. Why so few returned drops? Because it does make a difference who you drop on. I had Drop Master status until a day or so ago and my Popularity number has been around 1500 since the pricing changes. True, I've been posting regularly in the forum, but I don't advertise at all or have a readership outside of the Entrecard community. My point? It pays to pay attention to who you drop on if you want more Entrecarders to visit your blog.

I expect that we'll continue to get better info from Entrecard that will help us decide where (and when) to drop cards. We have another couple of days to go before the dust settles and ad prices should be more closely reflecting market demand.

Consider my itch scratched for today.