The Entrecarder

Three weeks ago I spent too many hours on a post that took a look at what it took to get onto Entrecard's Popular page, which at the time consisted of the 30 Entrecarders with the highest ad prices. Shortly thereafter, Entrecard changed the ad pricing system and the Popular page ceased to exist, replaced by a Popularity ranking number for each blog. There is still value to being in the top 15, 30, 45, 60, 90, or 120 (depending on the Browser tab default) in Popularity, as your Entrecard will be seen by more folks. The Popularity ranking is currently determined as it was before, by the number of drops your widget has received in the past 5 days. I thought it would be interesting to see how the ad pricing system changes impacted the 30 Entrecarders whom I had previously highlighted.

I'm using the same table as before, only I have taken out the Location and Alexa Ranking columns and added current Rank and Ad Price in bold.

Rank	Image	URL	Ad Price
1 2		Internet Business Guide	838 1024
2 6		Dot Com Mogul	808 1024
3 1		Monkey Fables and Tales	734 2048
4 18		CK Marketing	684 1024
5 99		Ahkong.net	675 1024
6 86		Personal Finance Management Guide	650 256
7 -		Chalk is Cheap	642 -
8 11		Fantasy Baseball	636 512
9 129		SiteHoppin'	622 1024
10 4		Saphrym	607 1024
11 171		Josh's Unconventional Marketing Blog	599 512
12 8		Turnip of Power	598 2048
13 15		Joan Joyce	590 512
14 54		Reward Rebel	585 256
15 28		Sense to Save	584 1024
16 48		Media Morgue	582 512
17 59		Pandora's Casket	575 512
18 51		Lee Doyle	574 256
19 72		Blissful Weddings	571 512
20 5		Diet Pulpit	567 1024
21 35		Geek Mom Mashup	560 1024
22 177		artconstellation	558 256
23 10		New York Nitty-Gritty	550 512
24 351		Momma Muse	544 128
25 31		Bloody Computer!	538 512
26 68		malinesky	534 256
27 136		Biyahilo	520 256
28 239		My Absent Mind	515 512
29 195		Hulag	509 256
30 116		Wild Clips Comedy	498 512

First off, let me say that these numbers are moving all the time and since I started this post there have been several position changes in the Top 30, as well as Ad Price changes. I'm presenting this information to highlight trends and am not claiming any precision in the analysis.

I can think of several possibilities for the fact that almost 2/3 of the Top 30 from 3 weeks ago are no longer in the Top 30, and a good number of those are no longer in the Top 100. I suspect that the #1 reason is that they are no longer dropping as many cards as they were before the ad pricing system change. Second, some of them were involved in the U Drop I Follow movement and the new drop stats have weakened the Recipro Groups considerably, as it is easier to see who is actually "Following" your drop. I noticed several blogs who used to have Lee's graphic are no longer displaying it.

There are a couple of other reasons that might explain the shift in the Top 30, like burnout, disenchantment with Entrecard, discouragement resulting from Alexa's changed algorithm, better ad info and cheaper ads resulting in more folks advertising than dropping cards, and maybe fewer overall drops in the system than before. As far as overall drops goes, I don't have access to the numbers, but looking at the Top 10 blogs from 3 weeks ago and the 10 Ten today, we see total drops for 5 days of 17,240 versus 16,524. The difference is not significant enough to suggest that there are fewer cards being dropped over all, at least on the Top 10 blogs.

What is clear is that it costs more to advertise on most of the Top 15 blogs than it did 3 weeks ago for ads you want to purchase right now. The upside is that one lucky person will get to purchase an ad for half of what is currently listed as the Ad Price once the current ad expires. The average price paid for an ad on the Top 15 has likely dropped in the past 3 weeks, but, again, I don't have access to those numbers. Right place, right time (hint: many ads currently expire between 8AM - 9AM ET) and you can occasionally get a bargain...like finding Problogger available for 256EC. :-)

It was my intent to include updated Alexa numbers, but the rankings came out weird this morning and I'm delaying that analysis for a future post.