The Entrecarder

The party's over for most of my 20 Entrecard accounts. Entrecard changed the rules and it's now difficult to try and work more than a couple of Entrecard accounts at most. The decision was made to prevent "spammers", both current and future, from profiteering from the sale of Entrecard credits earned from dropping cards from multiple accounts. What's that you say? You don't understand what the problem is? I'll try and explain.

It's ok to Powerdrop 300 cards a day on other Entrecarders in as short a time frame as possible. It's also ok to sell any Entrecard Credits (ECs) earned along the way, both from dropping cards and having cards dropped on the Entrecard widget on your site. Assuming that you earned 400 ECs a day and the selling price was $5/1000 ECs, you'd earn a whopping $2 a day for your 30-60 minutes of work. Apparently there was some concern that Entrecard might be propping up the economies of 3rd world countries around the world with such a lucrative payout, the decision was made to cap the total credits earned from drops per day per IP address at 600. And I'm ok with this new limit, although a number of Entrecarders are not. (See survey results.)

What? The guy with 20 Entrecard accounts, most of which were launched specifically to harvest ECs, is ok with this? Yup. You see, I'm tired of dropping cards. It's boring, repetitive and at this point I only can put up with doing it on one blog, this one. Hah! You're one of those spammers and you got busted by the new daily limits! Nope. Since you've read this far, go ahead and check out some of my prior entries about dropping cards for pay and then what happened when I actually did drop cards for someone else. And as far as being a spammer goes, let me tell you what I was thinking when I started each of my 20 Entrecard accounts, and you can decide.

1) Intunique - I've been writing a bit here and there about intelligence and personality for a couple of years now and joined the Entrecard community primarily to promote my Intunique blog. I went so far as to set it up on a domain that I've owned for a while and didn't have much fun installing WordPress. I've used Blogger off and on over those same couple of years and find it much easier to use when getting a blog started. I should be writing more in this blog, but honestly, I'm just not motivated to do so very often.

2) My Internet Marketing Adventures (MIMA)- One can't help but notice that there are a few blogs around that talk about how to make money online. I knew that I couldn't pretend to be an expert, so instead I decided to write a blog about my various online marketing activities. I signed up for a 2nd Entrecard account and started dropping cards like crazy and made my way onto the Popular page, right ahead of John Chow. Before long most of my entries were Entrecard-related and I decided to press forward with more and more Entrecard accounts in order to generate more and more credits. The first ECs hadn't been sold on Ebay at this point and so most of the ECs I earned on the two accounts went to advertising.

3) Affiliate Ads & Referral Programs - One of the first things a new Make Money Online blogger notices is the 125x125 ads that promote affiliate ad programs and the multiple blog entries extolling how great this and that program is and how much money can be made. I didn't want to clutter up MIMA with a review of these programs, so I started a blog to specifically cover them. Awful blog! It didn't take me long to realize that most folks don't make much from these programs and I wasn't going to either.

4) Go, Go, Goyin! - My mom got all excited last year about joining yet another network marketing company and I ghost wrote a blog for her that focused on general advice about succeeding in an MLM. The blog was gathering dust when I gave it an Entrecard account and wrote a couple of new entries. I've worked for a couple of MLMs on the corporate side and stand by what I've written in the blog, but my mother's interest has waned and there was little reason to continue writing in this blog.

5) I've Entered the Contest! - This is a great second or third blog for an active Entrecarder who doesn't want to put all those pesky posts that serve as contest entries on their main blog. It served its purpose and I won some good prizes, including 200 onebuckwiki.com pages from Max (SiteHoppin) and some ECs and a coffee mug from Ken at YouCanLearnSeries.com.

6) Top Blog Communities - I wanted to place widgets from MyBlogLog, Blog Catalog, SpicyPages, etc., on a blog to possibly draw folks from those other communities over to my Entrecard blogs, but I didn't want them to slow down my page loading. So I created a blog and Entrecard account that seemed to be a good idea and that people remembered, but it never went anywhere. Also, it can be pretty revealing when one's BlogCatalog widget shows 2 visitors in the last 24 hours.

7) Where on Earth Am I? - I had fun with this idea. I think Google Earth is an amazing tool and using it for some light entertainment where folks try and guess the location shown turned out to be a popular activity. Sue Hoffman was the most frequent commenter and I might dabble with this blog in the future as a hobby, just not as part of the Entrecard community. When I listed 10 of my blogs with Spottt, this one got the most clicks.

8) Ready Health Products - Another blog & Entrecard account aimed at supporting one of my mom's business ventures. She started Ready Health Products a few years ago and this blog was intended to help market this line of herbal nutritional supplements. She threw in the towel on this business, too (she's now 75), and there was no longer any need for this blog.

9) The Entrecarder - Most of my entries in MIMA were about Entrecard and so it made sense to create a new blog where I could focus on Entrecard, which is what this blog does. It wasn't my goal to create a brand, yet that is what I have done and I'm pretty happy with the result. It's definitely a niche blog, but one that has a built-in audience that hopefully isn't going away any time soon.

10) Reviews for Money & Other Remuneration - OK, so I enjoyed putting "remuneration" into the blog title and address. Again, rather than walk the ethical line of cloaked pay-per-posting, I decided to create a blog where I could blog for money and have everyone be clear as to my intent. You know...big money! Oops, I didn't read the fine print about NOT making it clear that one was blogging for money, and as it turned out, ALL of the reviews I wrote were unpaid and unsolicited.

11) EntreBank - What started as a bad idea (lending out ECs) turned into a useful blog for about a month, up until Entrecard announced its Credit Exchange. There is still a place for 3rd party EC vendors and I believe that it helped to have a centralized location to see what ECs were selling for.


12) What Do YOU See? - Another blog that was meant to be entertaining and was well received by many folks. I used PowerPoint to draw a random figure, copied it, flipped it, grouped it, copied and pasted it into Paint, and cropped and compressed it in Microsoft Picture Manager. The idea was similar to inkblot tests and some of the "guesses" were pretty interesting. I switched things around for the last picture and showed just a portion of a larger image. (vroom, vroom)

13) The Backseat Driver - I wrote the first of these few entries at Hubpages and I believe they are useful and informative. I have a list of 10 tips that I might get around to posting at some future time. The topic will be on my mind, seeing as I have a 15 year old who will be taking Driver's Ed this year.


14) My Favourite 11 Blogs - Why 11? Because that's what was available when I reserved the name. Sure, I didn't use the American spelling of "favorite", but Entrecard is global and in a small way I was acknowledging as much. This blog had good potential and I might include this feature in the Entrecarder on a regular basis.


15) Entrecard Polls - This has been successful and I have already incorporated surveys into The Entrecarder. Entrecard should launch a formal survey section (1 vote per Entrecarder) about new features and changes. (Are you listening, Phirate?)


16) Entrecard Resources - I wanted to have a place where I could list the various resources that are available to Entrecarders to help them build their blog traffic, etc. Other Entrecarders have accomplished as much with a section of their blog instead of an entire blog. Best result of this blog was my post entitled "There's an Elephant in the EntreRoom."

17) I'm Losing 60 Lbs! - At a point where I was looking to start a bunch of new Entrecard accounts, I decided to include one about my weight loss experiences. I have been blogging at ExerciseFriends.com and SparkPeople.com and rolled those entries over to this blog. Alas, just as my motivation to write this blog was going down, my weight was going up again. (Cold outside, too much time sitting down at the computer, kitchen only 10 steps away.)

18) Double Oh Adventures - If Intunique.com is the blog I should be writing, this is the one that I want to write. Mid-life crisis? You bet! Oh, James! Maybe after I'm done with Entrecard I'll have some fun with the 007 in many of us...and I might throw some Jason Bourne in there, too.



19) New Product Ideas - This is the blog that I am most disappointed by its lack of traffic and interest from others. Over the past 20 years I have come up with some dandy product ideas and debated putting them out there for others to read about. Turns out I didn't have anything to worry about, as no one apparently cared. Plagued by bad Entrecard graphics, I decided to keep my pearls to myself for the time being.

20) Biz Beacon Advertising Co-op - Such a great idea! Josh Whitford is the only one who had the vision to take me up on my Co-op idea and I still don't fully understand why other Entrecarders didn't see its value. I was offering to run ads across all 20 of my accounts for a reasonable fee (500 ECs) and then I would cancel their ads with just a few minutes left so they'd get a full refund via the Entrecard system. They got a deal based on my ad prices and I got a deal because I circumvented the 75% tax. As it turned out it was too labor intensive for me not to charge a premium for the service and no one was interested enough to give it a try. I was going to highlight my advertisers on this blog to provide additional value to them, but it never got off the ground. The concept is still a good one and sharp-eyed folks who have gone to my sites recently will see the same ad running on most of them, so the Co-op is working, just not as intended.

21) Entrecard FAQs - This blog was created due to Entrecard's odd neglecting to have a useful FAQ page of their own. The FAQ in this case refers to Forum Admin Quotes and I spend hours copying and pasting Phirate's Forum posts on different subjects that a new Entrecarder might be interested in reading. Awww...who cares?

There's the official 20 + 1! I have another Entrecard account that it would be a crime for me to talk about, and I hope no one bothers to guess what it is, because I won't publish the comment if you do. However, it did make it to Digg's Popular page and had a 1 day Alexa ranking of like 6000. I started another Entrecard account as an experiment on behalf of a fellow blogger, who wasn't impressed enough by my efforts (Alexa - existing 7,400,000 to a 1 week ranking of 251,000) to bother dropping any cards herself. I guess Entrecard is an acquired taste.

Why 23 accounts? It made sense at the time. I earned lots of credits and sold them for over $600 in a couple of months, which is more than many new bloggers will make from their blogging in the first year.

I had some other ideas for blogs that I never got around to developing:
1) EntreNoob - Newest Entrecarders
2) EntreShop - Listings of items for sale for credits.
3) EntreRant - Rant about Entrecard outside of the official Forums
4) EntreTest - Tests for ECs
5) Making Money with Entrecard - Selling my 1 page ebook for $29
6) StumbleBump - Let's stumble each other

There's more subjects that I could have started blogs on and had corresponding Entrecard accounts for had circumstances not changed. The reality is that the payback in ECs is not worth it and so if you're not passionate about blogging, don't bother with multiple accounts!

What now? I'm definitely tired of the card dropping grind. I enjoy certain aspects of blogging, but am not really a marketer. It was fun for a while and I enjoyed playing the game, but I need to move on. As I mentioned above, I'll likely keep Intunique and Double Oh Adventures going, and maybe Where On Earth Am I?. I'm prepping this blog for sale, although something tells me I won't be getting the $50000 that the Cow just got.

I admire those of you who are committed bloggers and have a passion for what you do. It wasn't my goal to become part of a community and yet I've met some decent folks via Entrecard and also some very entertaining ones. (Max & Deimos to name a couple.) I'm hoping I can convince someone to buy the "The Entrecarder" brand and do something with it. I'll devote an entire post in the near future to why I think it would be a good deal.