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2008-04-04

Entrecard Popular Page Analysis  

Entrecard lists the 30 blogs in its community with the highest Ad Price on the Popular page. Being recognized on the Popular page usually entails receiving additional visitors from the Entrecard community as there is a presumed credibility or worth that attends being ranked as a top blog. And while there is some controversy about the use of Ad Prices to determine the rankings, many Entrecarders seek to make it to the Popular page, for a variety of reasons. I decided to take a closer look at the 30 blogs that were listed on the Popular page as of 6AM Friday, April 4, 2008.

I've specified the time and date due to the fact that there is usually some change each day in the rankings and as such the following table should be viewed as an example and not the current rankings:

RankImageURLLocationAd PriceAlexa Rank
1Internet Business GuideBrazil83856277
2Dot Com MogulUnited States808106708
3Monkey Fables and TalesUnited States734115317
4CK MarketingUnited Kingdom68446173
5Ahkong.netMalaysia67540360
6Personal Finance Management GuideUnited States650101883
7Chalk is CheapSouth Africa64286144
8Fantasy BaseballUnited States636113231
9SiteHoppin'United States62217237
10SaphrymUnited States60744508
11Josh's Unconventional Marketing BlogUnited States599142692
12Turnip of PowerUnited States59854941
13Joan JoycePhilippines59060211
14Reward RebelUnited Kingdom58570773
15Sense to SaveUnited States58484300
16Media MorgueUnited States58285265
17Pandora's CasketUnited States575177709
18Lee DoyleUnited Kingdom57476543
19Blissful WeddingsPhilippines571104363
20Diet PulpitUnited States567142397
21Geek Mom MashupUnited States56098375
22artconstellationUnited States55879359
23New York Nitty-GrittyUnited States550112546
24Momma MuseUnited States54492322
25Bloody Computer!United Kingdom538162477
26malineskyPhilippines534115358
27BiyahiloPhilippines520104945
28My Absent MindCanada515138488
29HulagPhilippines50969630
30Wild Clips ComedyUnited States49883347


So, what does one do to make it onto the Popular page? I can't say that I have the answer for you, but my analysis did turn up some interesting tidbits:

1) 29 of the 30 sites have their Entrecard widget placed above the fold, and usually up high and easy to find. The exception was My Absent Mind.

2) SiteHoppin' has the lowest Alexa rank (17237), Pandora's Casket the highest (177709), and the average ranking is 92796. The 7 sites with the lowest Alexa rankings all are in the top 13 positions on this Popular page.

3) 13 of the 30 joined Entrecard in 2007, 15 joined in January 08, and the remaining two joined in February 08. Diet Pulpit takes the honor as the newest Entrecarder on this Popular page.

4) 16 of the 30 are located in the United States, 5 each are from the United Kingdom and the Philippines, with South Africa, Brazil, Malaysia, and Canada rounding out the group with one each.

5) 3 blogs each from the Personal Diary and Self-Improvement categories, with Making Money Online, Computers & Internet, Parenting and Family, Humor, and Entertainment each claiming two blogs on the list.

6) 9 bloggers on the list are "Drop Masters", 15 "Takes Dropping Very Very Seriously", and one (JoshWhitford) ranks as a "Dedicated Dropper." 6 of the top 13 listed are Drop Masters.

7) Only 13 of the 30 had feedburner info available and Sense to Save had the highest number of subscribers at 525, with Dot Com Mogul in 2nd place with 471 readers, and Hulag in 3rd with 193.

8) 6 of these 30 were also listed on the Top Advertisers page, all 6 of which ranked in the top 13 on the Popular page.

9) 16 of these 30 blogs were on one of the 3 Reciprocative Dropping lists, with only a few being listed on 2 of the 3 lists and none showing up on all three. Lee Doyle's U Drop I Follow list contains 6, as does Arnold's Recipro Group. Ahkong's Reciprocative Dropping Guild contains 10 of these Popular page blogs, including 6 of the top 13 on this example page.

10) 13 of these 30 sites are included on Powerdropping.com's list.

11) 9 of the 30 blogs are hosted with a blogspot.com address, although only 2 of the top 15 are hosted by Blogger.

Making Sense of the Numbers:
1) Widget Placement: If someone has to work to find your Entrecard widget to drop on, odds are you might not get dropped on as often. It's likely that each of these top blogs are committed to the Entrecard community and as such are willing to give their Entrecard widget premium placement.

2) An improved Alexa ranking is one of the most referenced benefits of participating in the Entrecard community. I'll leave it to others to cross-reference the sites with Google Page Ranks, Technorati rankings, etc.

3) Learning the ropes takes time and it's not too surprising that over 90% of the top 30 have been members of the Entrecard community for at least 2 months, with 50% having joined at least 3 months ago. Is it possible to make the Popular page in a month or less? I think so...if you know what you are doing.

4) Anyone who has been around Entrecard for long can't fail to see the Philippines connection and the many fine blogs that are created from authors located there. However, the numbers seem to indicate that it doesn't really matter where in the English speaking world you are located, at least as far as making the Popular page goes.

5) I wasn't surprised by the distribution of blogs into the various categories, although I did expect that the Making Money Online group would have a greater presence on the Popular page. What I infer from this is that being the Top 3 in your category is a necessary stepping stone to the Popular page, especially considering that all 30 blogs listed were in the Top 3 of their respective categories. Just as being on the Popular page generates visits due to rank, so does being in the Top 3 of category. The popular get more popular. (Note: We're not really talking about popularity here, but Ad Price.)

6) Whatever Josh Whitford is doing is working, as he is the only blogger on the list that isn't a Drop Master or drops Very Very Seriously. The numbers show that most of your top bloggers on this Popular page are dropping 300 cards a day, day in and day out.

7) Number of readers doesn't correlate well with placement on the Popular page. In fact, it can work against a blogger to have lots of readers from within the Entrecard community if it means that those readers don't visit and drop a card.

8) Does it pay to advertise? The bloggers on the Popular page who were also listed on the Top Advertisers page were ALL near the top of the Popular page. You might not make the Popular page as a result of advertising alone, but if you combine dropping 300 cards a day with buying loads of ads, YOU HAVE THE FORMULA FOR ENTRECARD SUCCESS!

9) While many of the 30 bloggers on this Popular page participate in Reciprocative Dropping, it can be very challenging to track 200-400 cards passing through your Drops Inbox each day. And when you factor out the 3 recipro group leaders (Lee, Deimos, and Arnold) you find that only a couple of other Popular pagers are using Reciprocative Dropping as their main strategy.

10) There is no question in my mind that being included on Powerdropping's list, as well as SiteHoppin's, Hulag's, and the other lists out there that Entrecarders frequent to launch their daily card dropping, is a great way to boost your numbers. I have an Entrecard account that is essentially dormant and from which I rarely drop any cards. It is included on Powerdropping.com's list and gets 40-70 drops a day without me having to do a thing.

11) Maybe having a free blog at Blogger isn't the kiss of death that some would have us believe?

No one activity guarantees making the Popular page, even card dropping. However, having one's widget above the fold and easy to find, dropping 300 cards a day on selected Entrecarders who are most likely to return a drop, and advertising as much as your budget allows (yes, spend real money to buy Entrecard Credits...that's what some of the Big Guys are doing), just might land you on the Popular page. Be sure to take a screenshot!

EDIT - As of the April 7 implementation of the new Ad Pricing system, there doesn't appear to be a Popular page anymore. The rankings still exist for Top 3 of each category, based on the number of card drops received. There is a listing of the 15 most "popular" Entrecarders on the Browser page of the Category page.

What next?

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18 comments: to “ Entrecard Popular Page Analysis

  • Anonymous
    April 4, 2008 at 5:01 PM  

    thanks again for this post! :D, i just finished commenting to your last blog about udro-ifollow, and here you are have another good insight.

    anyway,wow, nice work there. in my case, i think i reached the top30 by dropping 300 a day (specially during a non-busy week). I also noticed when i put my entrecard on top of my site and got a smiley logo,it got more clicks. the design of logo really matters, i think.

    Keep up the nice posts! :D

  • Anonymous
    April 5, 2008 at 12:50 PM  

    This was a very useful post and I'm keeping it bookmarked because I need to research some of the finer points you've mentioned. I blog to promote my business and I've found that Entrecard offers me more and better opportunities to make valuable connections than Stumbleupon ever did. With EC I find people and sites that are more relevant to me, while with SU I found a lot of stuff that was interesting but not at all applicable to me or my business. Further, I could tell that the broad majority of my SU visitors weren't any more interested in me than I would have been in them.

  • Anonymous
    April 5, 2008 at 2:06 PM  

    Notice something else? Almost all of the blogs on the list have real content. Not just some video they saw somewhere else or some lame opinion piece that makes no sense. Great analysis though. Sometimes I hear "Most Popular" is fixed and I just laugh. I spent 2 weeks in the hospital not dropping and went all the way down to 300 ec and under. 2 weeks after my return I'm almost to 700ec at my peak.

  • Jena Isle
    April 5, 2008 at 6:44 PM  

    Thanks for the interesting observations. 300 drops per day! That's amazing! I hope I can make it there too. Happy blogging.

  • Robin Boland
    April 5, 2008 at 7:14 PM  

    Hi,
    Thank you for sharing this information with us. A lot of work went into this post. I found it to be interesting & useful information. Keep up the great work! :-) Robin

  • Laura Brown
    April 5, 2008 at 8:10 PM  

    I drop on nearly all of those blogs every day. That's likely why they are in a popular list, people go and drop cards on them. Maybe they are really good at return dropping or maybe they just have something posted to read each day. A variety of reasons I go to them myself.

  • Anonymous
    April 5, 2008 at 9:17 PM  

    Very interesting article. You certainly did your homework. Thanks for taking the time to research everything so thoroughly.

  • BoBo
    April 5, 2008 at 10:01 PM  

    Thanks for the analysis and the tips. You put a lot of hard work and research in to this and wanted to let you know it did not go unnoticed and is very much appreciated!

  • wildfxp
    April 5, 2008 at 11:30 PM  

    The lower the Alexa number, the higher the rank of the blog...

    SiteHoppin has the highest rank, not lowest.

    -Mike

  • Iris
    April 6, 2008 at 12:31 AM  

    Thanks for a really great content, your observation helps a lot of droppers to understand more of how entrecards works, one thing that i like that you emphasized is that the 3rd world country philippines and non-english speaking country have a potential to excel and compete in the big English crowd...even the mentality of the people toward bloggers that are using free hosting such as blogger, no it is not a kiss of death, i prefer to use the free hosting not because i don't have $10 to pay for domain, not because i don't want professional looking site...it's just that at the moment i am happy with my free hosting I don't see any problem with that. it's the content that is more important and at least work with the template to have more professional looking site other than that free hosting is fine (That does not mean, i won;t stay longer either)

    Sorry i commented a really long comment, anyway, Keep it up...i am always looking forward of what your next post would be. two thumbs up.

  • Anonymous
    April 6, 2008 at 12:49 AM  

    nice one.. very interesting and well researched. :)

    Keep those nice posts coming!

  • Anonymous
    April 6, 2008 at 8:10 AM  

    very nice post and thanks for the shout out. I have no idea about rankings and seo etc so it was very interesting to see my alexa ranking (what ever that is)

  • danandmarsh
    April 6, 2008 at 9:38 PM  

    Very interesting post, thanks!

  • eöfm<ömf
    April 8, 2008 at 1:07 AM  

    Thanks for having me in your Top 30...

  • Anonymous
    April 8, 2008 at 4:47 AM  

    This is a nice blog. :) I should read more of your posts since I'm still new on Entrecard. :)

  • Anonymous
    April 8, 2008 at 6:49 AM  

    this is really a very helpful analysis on being an entrecarder, thanks for the link love biz ;)

  • Anonymous
    April 8, 2008 at 10:48 AM  

    It's good to see what it would take to join the top 30.

    Great list of items.

  • Anonymous
    April 8, 2008 at 10:30 PM  

    Alexa is a search engine just like Google and Yahoo. The ranking calculated in Alexa is called Traffic ranking. Alexa is a search engine that ranks Web sites according to site traffic it collects through the Alexa toolbar. Alexa computes traffic rankings by analyzing the Web usage of millions of Alexa. The traffic rank is based on three months of aggregated historical traffic data from millions of Alexa Toolbar users and is a combined measure of page views and users (reach). Alexa computes the reach and number of page views for all sites on the Web on a daily basis. The main Alexa traffic rank is based on the geometric mean of these two quantities averaged over time. Reach is expressed as the percentage of all Internet users who visit a given site. Page views measure the number of pages viewed by Alexa. Multiple page views of the same page made by the same user on the same day are counted only once. Alexa traffic rank shows if a site is a winner or not, if a site is worth looking or not, if a site is worth partnering with or not.

 
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