I haven’t been blogging about Entrecard or blogging because it really isn’t the type of thing I want my blog to be about, however I do use Entrecard to help bring in readers with the hope that some of them will stick around. Recently the owner decided to try to get VC money, then decided to sell it, and now has decided not to sell it again. This brings up several concerns for me and for many of my fellow bloggers. Mainly that whoever might end up with Entrecard would change it for the worse. I do think some changes need to be made though. Entrecard is unique in that it is both a traffic generator and an advertising mechanism. The traffic generation part, so far, has slid under the radar of Adsense et al. I imagine that it could eventually get noticed enough to kill adsense accounts if nothing changes in the way the traffic generation side works. The flip side of that is that many people who do hit my site also read and comment. I know that I comment on a good percentage of the sites that I read, and I have subscribed to several of them in a reader because their content is interesting. There are sites that I don’t comment on are because they haven’t updated their content since the last time I visited, which sometimes could be weeks or months.

Herein lies a problem for Entrecard and brings to my mind a good feature I think should be implemented. Advertisers should refund or discount the advertising rate based on when the site was last updated. Recently I felt bad for one of my advertisers when I didn’t update my blog in a 24-hour period. That person should have had his advertising bill discounted. In addition, after a set period of a week or two of no updates, blogs should no longer be listed in the campaign tab, nor should people be allowed to drop on them to earn credits. The whole point of visiting every day is to read fresh content, and the whole point of advertising is to help bring more readers to your own blog. If I advertise on a site for 5 days in the future and there are no posts between now and then, then it is a waste of advertising credits.

Here’s an analysis of the current (as of right now) top 5 blogs in the Technology section. I hope I don’t offend any of them, but you can visit them and see for yourself that I’m not saying anything that isn’t true.

1. What a bald guy told me about technology! That’s a great name for a site, by the way. Its last post was September 13 (16 days ago) about Photosynth. It looks like a cool tool, but that’s a long time to not say anything and still be considered the most popular blog in the Technology section.
2. verITableLIFE Another cool name for a site. Its last post was on September 18 (11 days ago) about “Be Nice to the IT Department.” Something I totally agree with, by the way. We don’t get the credit we deserve in many organizations.
3. Technically Easy. This site by another guy named Paul. Good concept for a blog - helping the less computer literate understand computers down to the technical level, not just surface information. This one is regularly updated and should be above the other two in my opinion. Last post was September 26 (3 days ago) about “What is a hard drive.” This reads like a “how stuff works” guide and is very comprehensive on the subject. A well done site with plenty of thought going into the posts.
4. Gadget Space. This one annoys me every time it shows up because it has never been updated since I’ve been a member of Entrecard. The last post was August 28 (32 days ago) on an expensive cell phone. How this one made it to number 4 makes no sense. I perpetuate the problem by dropping on it every day. At least the site isn’t filled with more advertisements than content. Still, looks like someone invested 20 days in a blog and it’s the 4th most popular technology blog on Entrecard. Not saying a whole lot.
5. LiNTEK. Life is Naturally TE(K)hnical. This is my favorite site of the top 5. It is updated multiple times per day recently and I have seen content there that I haven’t seen elsewhere. It looks like he took the weekend off. The last post was September 25 (4 days ago) about Skype for Asterisk but I suspect we’ll get a post today or soon.

So you see, if a limit was set to a week for posts, Technically Easy would be number 1 and then LiNTEK. The other three wouldn’t even display and they would start losing traffic and popularity which in turn should encourage them to post again. Sites that haven’t posted in that set amount of time should also be prevented from dropping on other sites or from being dropped upon.

I don’t know if every category is quite as bad as this one, but I think setting a limit of 2 weeks is probably a good compromise solution that would allow people that are blogging because they like to blog, not because they like to advertise, to get more exposure. Anyway, I hope I haven’t offended anyone, but what I’ve said is the truth, and people who are blogging in a serious way shouldn’t have to sit behind sites that are more there to generate cash than anything else. I know that many, if not all of these sites have other blogs that they write, some of which are updated much more frequently. I’m not doubting that they can blog or write about interesting things, I’m doubting that Entrecard has the best method for determining popularity.

I put Spottt up on my blog last Friday because I’ve seen it on a few other blogs and thought it might be a good idea to try. If it worked half as well as Entrecard for pulling in people to read then it would be worth the space. I read that I would have to wait up to 24 hours for my blog to be approved, so I waited patiently, but when Sunday afternoon rolled around I decided to start looking into the service a little more.

Since I was now looking for the banner, I noticed where most other sites had their Spottt advertisement displayed. Spottt “requires” that the banner be placed above the fold. Their specific definition is no more than 850px from the top of the page. I placed the banner within that limit but then started noticing that most sites with the Spottt banner were not displaying it within the top 850px. Right off the bat I’m disadvantaged because the way it is supposed to work is that you receive advertising on other people’s sites based on how much you in turn advertise locally. People are much more likely to look at or click on an advertisement that is placed above the fold.

On Monday they finally approved my site and started running advertisements. I was clicking through my site to get to the admin page this evening and noticed that there was a scantily clad woman on the ad. I refreshed the screen and up popped a second scantily clad woman. Now TechByPC is not specifically family oriented, but it isn’t anti-family either, and I have no intention of offending any of my guests by displaying a picture of a woman that might offend some. I went over to my wife’s blog and checked it out there as well since I had requested hers be added at the same time. Similar advertising was being shown. Well, they just lost me.

I signed up for Entrecard.com yesterday. See the link on the right. I’ve been looking around the site including many blogs that are part of the network and I have some interesting observations. Most notably, I see a lot of blogs that are poorly written - mainly just filling words like they were after some kind of quota and not saying anything. The craziest thing is their feedburner stats, most of which are over 200. Now I know that there aren’t 200 people interested in reading these blogs since I could hardly get through a single post on them. Is this a more sophisticated version of the spam blog?

I think Entrecard has a neat thing going that has the potential to do very well for itself. It naturally makes advertising on poor quality sites cheaper. Of course at the moment since I’m new my site appears to be low quality. It works by sharing advertising with other bloggers. Unless you want to there is never any cash that changes hands. I have noticed that many of the people I make a connection to will drop by and reciprocate. I’m wondering if that is how they all got their RSS subscriptions as well.

I’m not really into the profit blogging thing, although I wouldn’t mind making some money to help make ends meet here. It just seems like I have a very fine line to balance between trying to gain readership and maintaining the professional image that I want to have. This blogging thing is more complicated the more interested you are in doing things the right way rather than just making a quick buck.