You could talk about adding blue/red/green stripes on cards in the forums all you want, but that isn’t going to help the economy. Go ahead and add in donations, but again, it won’t help the economy.

@Nihar
Thanks for the comment. I’m doing some experimenting with advertising and watching referrers and unique clicks. I will report on this eventually, but I have seen some sites that click through to me multiple times to make their blog look like it is sending me more traffic.

@John D
Yes, it is free and even if it cost a small monthly fee it would still be worth it for many people.

John Ds last blog post..Stop Buzzing Noise From PC

Nihars last blog post..How to Find out Exact Opposite Point on Earth with Google Maps

Over the past few months, however, I have stopped trying to drop as much as possible (too time-consuming and not really worth it). I now drop first on the blogs I like to read and will comment on, then if time permits I visit my drops inbox. I have become more selective about my advertising and while I still will not pay more than what I think an ad is worth, I do spend more now on quality versus quantity.

Web-Bettys last blog post..I’d like to thank the Academy…

As I think about this more I am thinking about how I go about blocking off sites that I don’t want to see anymore. I use OpenDNS and I actually blocked a few domain names because I have a bad habit of clicking on them and I don’t even want to see them again they were so bad. Maybe they could integrate that into Entrecard similar to the Friends list with a Blocked or “Enemy” list. I might be satisfied with the ranking if I could easily block and not see those sites that rarely updated or wrote garbage.

Integrating the number of friend/enemy flags a blog gets as a variable into the ranking is a potential option. Allowing users to rank sites or aggregating sezwho, etc, and add that ranking into the equation is another option to include some of the human factor. Either has the potential to become too arbitrary and vulnerable to abuse, however. Someone who is opinionated may be treated unfairly – for example political blogs. If they take a stand they are going to make roughly half of the people who would click through unhappy.

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@Greg
Item #2 would be very beneficial. I have a good example of an inequity between Entrecard rank and visitors. Joe Tech doesn’t get a huge number of return drops, but his traffic average is greater than mine. I know because I’ve done some projectwonderful ads on his site.

1000 ECs are only worth $6 when purchased from Entrecard. If it results from 1000 drops on your site then you are actually getting paid for traffic, so in effect Entrecard is paying me $6 to get 1000 page views. Not a bad deal. The 5000 credits that were in my account that I dropped on a contest as an experiment were worth 0 dollars to me because I couldn’t sell them, not that I would have. 2 hours/day dropping on 300 blogs is probably pretty accurate, however during that time I’m also learning stuff, writing comments, getting backlinks, and probably watching some TV. If I was doing it purely for credits then there is no way I would make that investment. I’d sign up to one of those 300 drops in 15 minutes things and be done with it.

What we all really want is high quality traffic, not ECs. So long as Entrecard delivers enough quality traffic to my blog, which they do, I’m satisfied with them. I’ve experimented with projectwonderful, and for 2-3 dollars I can get tens of thousands of banner impressions and at least a hundred or so visits. If I had my choice between buying 1000 ECs to spend on advertising or spending that $6 at projectwonderful, then projectwonderful would get my money because it would go further.

When Entrecard is half of someone’s blog traffic, then dropping for traffic seems worthwhile. If it were 25% or less they probably wouldn’t bother with it. I think that’s the problem we need to solve together, because we need to be able to retain those high end blogs that become successful.

1. Age of last post, maybe deduct x points for each day that has past without a post
2. Organic visitors, members or not, ie count the number of unique visits to the blog (can be done via existing widget)
3. repeat visitors/droppers within x days only counted towards popularity once.

I am sure there are others that have crossed my mind in the past but can’t think of them at the moment.

I do think valuing the credits is harder than we imagine, but I agree something needs to be done, the fact ‘It has also been said that the EC (Entrecard Credit) has too little value. ‘ is one that I am not sure is always the case, to advertise on my this for example as I write this comment is 256EC’s, at the rate EC themselves have set that makes advertising here $1.54 a day yet advertising via projectwonderful.com is just $0.02 or $0.03 a day. This tells me that the EC’s are over valued but on the other hand, someone that spends say 2 hours/day dropping on 300 blogs is earning just $0.90 an hour based on the same EC rate and I for one would value my time far higher making EC’s under valued.

Greg

Gregs last blog post..Welcome to Our first direct advertiser

Regarding the mass dropping, I recently became one of the 300 drops/day dropper. But I still put in a lot of effort in my blog content. I valued quality content much more over virtual currency. The reason why I do 300 drops per day is I wanted to get more exposure to my site. And in my opinion, the real challenge in Entrecard for me is to convert these droppers into loyal readers.

Mass dropping is not always bad, it just depends on how you use the system. Despite that I’m doing 300 drops daily, I do not just drop and run. I will keep a list of the sites I like & is updated regularly, and I will visit those sites and drop back on them regularly. Another percentage of sites I dropped to is the “top droppers” and “recent droppers” on others site. I see this as a way to welcome new visitors to my site. I then return the remaining drops to those new sites who dropped on me. In the process, I take note of their site design and content and learn from them as I go.

I agree that there is much more space for improvement in Entrecard. Like some really good content blogs which are hidden deep down the list with low popularity as you also mentioned. However, one thing that we need to note is it is really easy to note all the changes we want, but implementing it and altering the whole system is more complicated than we thought. Let’s give them some time. I do look forward for some good changes and hopefully it will make Entrecard a better place.

Wysterys last blog post..How I get 300 drops back on Entrecard

Mass-drops are pretty sick too. I was outright flamed few times for saying that spending that much time every day for the sake of getting virtual credits is better spent on something like writing posts.