The Entrecarder

I've had loads of fun manipulating the price of my own ad, largely because people were paying too much for it and so I figured out a way to discourage them for so doing, short of disabling ads entirely. The solution was simple: I bought my own ads from some of my other Entrecard accounts and drove the price up to 8192 ECs for most of the last two weeks in April, although it hit 16384 one day and was a "bargain" at 4096 a couple of times.

Imagine my surprise when someone actually purchased an ad on my site for 8192 ECs! I guess I faked them out because I was sitting in the #1 spot on the Most Expensive list, which was really fun and probably got me some extra traffic. Of course I rejected their ad request and the most anyone ended up paying for an ad was 1024 ECs, with the most common price (before I started buying them myself) was 512 ECs, which was still about 480 ECs too much. (No, I'm not sending out rebates.)(Oh, and for the record, I canceled all of the ads that I placed on my own site and got my 30000+ ECs back.)

April 18th was the last day that I dropped 300 cards and I've only dropped 66 cards total since that time. Also, I had not placed any ads for a long time from this account and I wanted to see how no drops and a few ads would impact the number of cards dropped on me. My stats page shows that the first ad I placed ran on April 24th and the last one completed on May 1st.



I tried to find sites to advertise on that would get me as many clicks for the EC as possible, but I also took a few risks and went with sites whose Entrecard featured pretty girls. Here's the results of my ad purchasing:

Entrecarder.......................................Clicks........Cost.......CPC
Dot Com Mogul.....................................78...............512..........6.56
ProBlogger Blog Tips.............................62...............256..........4.13
Slave to the Internet..............................51...............8............0.16
Fantasy Baseball...................................43...............512..........11.91
Orangeinks............................................40...............128..........3.20
Josh's Unconventional Marketing Blog...23................256..........11.13
EvilWoobie............................................22...............128..........5.82
Entrecard Favorites................................15...............128..........8.53
Joan Joyce..............................................15...............512..........34.13
Stephan Miller........................................12...............128..........10.67
AskTheAdmin.........................................8................32...........4.00
Pretty Girl...............................................6................16...........2.67
Internet Marketing Seminars..................5................64...........12.80
Follow Bec in her quest...........................4................32...........8.00
The Net Fool..........................................4................64...........16.00
Laura Williams' Musings........................4................32...........8.00
Making Mommy Hot...............................3................32...........10.67
You Can Learn Series.............................3................256..........85.33
Billion Dollar Baloney.............................3................32...........10.67
The SEOTree.........................................3................8............2.67
VikingBlog............................................3................8............2.67
Mom Is Just a Nickname......................2................32...........16.00
Liz Harper Fitness.................................2................8............4.00
AndroidGuys.........................................1................64...........64.00
Jackies Biz Blog.....................................1................8............8.00
Online with Michelle.............................1................16...........16.00
Nuda Magazine.....................................1................8............8.00
Internet Marketing Strategy...................1................16...........16.00
MMO with Etienne Teo..........................1................32...........32.00
OrangeBin...........................................0................8............n/a
Pinay and Photoholic.............................0................8............n/a
Hot Asian Actress..................................0................8............n/a
Adware and Spyware.............................0................8............n/a

Totals.................................................417..............3360.........8.06

My apologies for the ugly chart. I didn't want to emphasize any particular Entrecarder so I didn't link to them and I'm not savvy enough to get a table to work properly in Blogger. I did learn a couple of things from my ad campaign:

1) The average number of clicks per ad was 8. I can use that as a benchmark for future campaigns to see how well I am choosing my ads.

2) There are occasional bargains to be found. I didn't pay more than 512 ECs for any ad and was lucky to get ProBlogger for only 256 ECs.

3) Not all clicks resulted in a dropped card. It's true that the subject matter of this blog is going to be of interest to Entrecarders and not many other people. I'm guessing that I got about 30-50 non-Entrecarders to take a look at my blog as a result of the ads.

4) I wasn't "thrilled" by hardly any of the results and likely won't advertise very often. ProBlogger and Slave to the Internet were the best deals I found and while many of the others were acceptable, I don't know that I got any new readers as a result of advertising. Had I spent the same amount of time dropping cards as I did purchasing ads I would have ended up with the same number of cards dropped on me and I wouldn't be out the 3360 ECs.

5) It might be purely coincidental, but the number of comments to my posts dropped significantly during the this experiment. I suspect it was a result of not dropping cards on folks who would normally reciprocate with a visit and a drop, commenting if they had the time and inclination.

No one ad strategy will work for all Entrecarders as we each have slightly different purposes and desires for our Entrecard participation. I'm now trying to figure out whether or not I want to place ads OR drop cards anymore. I'm leaning towards spending my time writing posts, posting in the forums, and commenting on selected Entrecarders' blogs. I won't end up on the Popular lists or accumulate many ECs with this strategy, but I hope it will allow me to stay involved in the Entrecard community and neither wear out my welcome or burn out.