I have been a member of Entrecard for the past two days. So far so good, I am really enjoying the experience. Entrecard is country miles better than BlogRush. If you are on BlogRush, you will not make a mistake if you come along with me to Entrecard. The amount of traffic that I have received on my blog from Entrecard during the past two days is more than all the traffic that I had received for BlogRush for a period of about three months when I had their widget on my blog. Although the situation is like this, Entrecard faces one major challenge traffic wise.
Entrecard traffic has a high bounce rate. Fatkid, a guy whose blog I discovered yesterday courtesy of the same Entrecard, points out that the bounce rate on Entrecard traffic can be as high as 70%. He even asks whether the proper name for this service is Entrecard or Exitcard. Rocky, a great blogger friend of mine, has just missed out on high paying advertizing offer, because the prospective advertiser discovered that his site has a high bounce rate. This advertiser further pointed out to him that he must not use Blog Explosion, Entrecard and similar services to boost your blog traffic. According to Rocky, he does not use Blog Explosion but he is a great Entrecard user. This is further confirmation that Entrecard traffic is characterized by high bounce rates. But why is it like this? Well, in my analysis, I establish that it all boils down to the way Entrecard rewards its users. John Cow was the first guy to point out this problem. In his post entitled the the Last Drop for Entrecard, he writes:
Unfortunately the current system “Effort=Reward” has become unusable since it has been encouraging this form of ‘gaming the system’ and the end result causes a distorted view of how popular a blog really is on the outside world.
The current rewarding system on Entrecard must be changed forthwith otherwise Entrecard will soon be condemned to the deadpool. I suggest that the rewarding system must include the following parameters, besides the number of drops:
- The amount of time spent on a particular blog.
- The number of clicks made to other posts on that blog.
- The number of comments left on that blog.
I hope that this post will help the Entrecard crew to rectify this problem before its too late.
Related posts:
36 users commented in " How to solve Entrecard’s high bounce rate problem "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a Trackback“The number of comments left on that blog.”
I like that one the most. Comments always increase the quality of a blog. When someone visits a blog and it’s got comments they tend to stay longer.
I agree with that.
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Hi Clement,
Thanks for the link love. I’m sure entrecard is doing something to improve the quality of traffic from entrecard users.
Cheers,
Rocky
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Nice piece of information. I am still running the Entrecard at my blog. At least There are some new visitors that can be converted to regular visitor.
Even the bounce rate is 75% I still have the 25% that is browsing.
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Unfortunately all of these systems will be gamed just like Google. Whenever you offers webmasters/bloggers a method of free traffic, their will be those who chose to exploit it.
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@esvl: True.People stay longer on this blog these days simply because the number of comments has increased.
@Bloggingmix: I am really looking forward to the time when Entrecard will improve their system so as to cut down on the level of bounce rate.This aside, I really liked your Entrecard post.Glad to notice that it has generated a good debate via comments.
@Dexter: Great to hear that some Entrecard visitors have become regular visitors to your blog.You have some good stuff
@dealsninja: Good observation. But the architects behind these systems must always strive to ensure that their systems are beyond the reach of those who want to game them. An arms race of some kind here.
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More information i’ve got from your blog, clement. by the way, i don’t have any clue about the entrecard.
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[...] I read the message from my stumbleupon account this morning. The message come from my friend Clement Nyirenda. He was posting in his blog about How to solve Entrecard’s high bounce rate problem. [...]
I agree with you on the quality of traffic from Entrecard. The reward for every one is to drop cards, and the more cards you drop the better, unfortunately the effort to drop more cards equals less time spent on sites.
My statistics show that I do get traffic, much better than blogrush traffic, but the bounce rate is between 93%-100%.
Hopefully you are right and Entrecard is addressing this issue.
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@Haishor Fakhri:You can test it by joining it and come up with your own testimony.The bounce rate issue aside, I generally find Entrecard exciting.
@Czecho:BlogRush will sooon go to the deadpool unless the men behind it come up with an innovative strategy.
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[...] I also found another great South African blogger Clement Nyirenda [...]
Nice article, Clement.
I don’t feel that the high bounce rate is really a problem. What it means is that Entre Card droppers are coming in, dropping their card and not staying around on the blog long because nothing grabbed their attention on the blog.
Another reason for a high bounce rate is if the page takes too long to load. People will close the tab if the site doesn’t display fully within about 10 – 15 seconds. So try to keep your page as light as possible.
Advertisers will cite all kinds of reasons for why they don’t want to advertise. A high bounce rate does not sound like a good reason. If the advertiser runs a top banner advert, every visitor will at least see their advert.
Two ways you can increase comments on your site are to install two useful comment related WordPress plugins:
subscribe to comments
CommentLuv
I use both. Anyone commenting on my blog can subscribe to the comment thread and be updated whenever anyone else posts to the thread.
CommentLuv will automatically link in the commenter’s latest blog post which gives them a bit of a boost, encouraging them to comment more on your blog.
Whether you install them or not, I will be back here, though. You have a nice blog. Cheers!
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Richard
I agree with you when you say a high bounce rate does not sound like a good reason for an advertiser to turn down a blog. Based on your opinion on this issue, I now think that a blog that receives a lot of traffic but has a high bounce rate blog is a very great blog to run a top banner advert on.Every visitor will see the banner and since this blog has a tendency of losing visitors very fast, most of these visitors will end up clicking that banner.
On the other hand, many thanks for the two comment plugins. I have added commentluv. I will add the other one tomorrow.
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Hi Clement,
I think people are missing the point with Entrecard. EC is not a social site aimed at providing a way of finding great sites like StumbleUpon etc. EC is a networking site on which you can earn credits which in turn get used to advertise on other sites.
Lots of people are complaining about the so-called chain droppers, but I am still to find a site with a sign saying that one should not drop a card unless you comment on one of the articles. They simply accept the credit and rush off to buy their ads.
If a blogger wants me to comment on one of his/her articles the onus is on them, give me something interesting and I promise you this chain dropper will stop to comment, might even Stumble or subscribe to the feed.
Cheers.
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[...] so far, but nothing to write home about. EntreCard is unique because the people interested in it, aren’t necessarily interested in your blog. They’re interested in dropping their cards and hitting the road. I have only been on the [...]
Thansk Clement for the post!i didnt know entrecard has a high bounce rate!Certainly that is insightul info,hope they rectify it soon
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Thanks for the info, really useful. I totally agree with you about Blogrush. I recently logged into my account and the number of views my blog had received from it was minimal compared to Entre Card.
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Most of the Entrecard will drop and run ,it definitely increases bounce rate of our blog.Well to reduce /solve Entrecard’s high bounce rate,i suggest that we should organize a simple survey among your website droppers through sending message to them such as “What kind of info you want to find out”"What type of topic is the most attract you to read” and so on,so this will save our time to research what type of topics we should post.Secondly,we can build up rapport with other bloggers by exchanging ideas and link or even advertise on their website-This will build up a strong relationship between you and the droppers.It will reduce bounce rate ultimately.
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@Felex: You raise some interesting some interesting ideas. It will be great to give them a try. Are you implementing these ideas already?
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@Jon:Interesting to learn that you are still sticking to BlogRush. In my case, I am now more than five months out of BlogRush. I do not even know if BlogRush is still alive. Entrecard in spite of the high bounce rate seems to pretty cool
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Clement,
Yes i am using this method to build up a network with other Entrecard user,i will say 90% of user appreciate my message and we exchange ideas.At least i will remember who are they.Another 10% -no respond.It is norm because as i mentioned most Entrecard user just drop and bounce,they don’t bother everything.
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@arnold great explnation thanks, clement thank you too for nice article…
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i liked them all except the ‘comments’ one…
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Hi Clement,
I see this post is kind of old but it is still very appropriate topic.
Another consideration of the high bounce rate Entrecarders is if you’re running adsense it will drive your CTR throught the floor. Every time an Entrecarder visits your page you’re still charged an adsense impression with an almost guaranteed non-adsense-click. This will lead to you getting crappy ads and no revenue from adsense.
Of course there are ways around it, but…
Great post.
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interesting. I do see this kind of symptoms. visitors just come by, drop, then leave
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This is the second time around I have read about Entrcard. I am not convinced of any one reason to join. I am still looking for easier ways to get my blogs PR up other than by just blogposting.
Do not get me wrong. I totally love this this stuff. I would just like to someday soon see some real successful traffic increase
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I have found entrecard to be great it has given me a lot more readers a lot of people are just doing drops but some stay to read my blog.
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I agree with author, entrecard sucks, because of rules. I think that taking time, clicks and amount of comments left on blog is a good idea.
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entrecard really sucks
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Does entrecard really work for anyone? There are plenty other blog badge options without having to go through complex credit calculations, right.
Ajith
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Entrecard does result in higher bounce rates, but it can also lead to new members as well.
If your blog is good, then perhaps the dropper will come back and read more posts.
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[...] ipentimento.com/rsshugger/ mymadhouse.org/?p=123 nthambazale.com/2008/02/how-to-solve-entrecards-high-bounce-rate-problem/ paisleygoddess.com/homemade-fabric-softner/ [...]
I agree, the more comments the better. You never know who is going to submit something that can be extremely interesting. I must admit that I have read several comments and been more englightened by the comments, than by the content of the author’s post… but not always..
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Entrecard really sucks. many who use them have already stated this fact. I think it is a waste of time and lost interest two hours after i joined them. I don’t think I missed much.
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Great posts and your improvement ideas do sound credible.
I try to avoid most of the “popular” blogs because I have found that those who drop 300 cards a day spend about 2 to 10 seconds on my blog. That is enough to drop but not read. The smaller blogs or, if you prefer, the buried ones that are “study and consistent droppers” are more likely to read.
Also those “poplar” blogs sometimes do not turn up in in the first or second page results when the blog’s name is the query. I find this a bit odd.
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I don’t think so high bounce rate is a very big problem we should only focus on quality.
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Colleagues:There is a new traffic generating site on the net.It is called Adgitize. You may wish to test it. You can find my preliminary review of Adgitize at http://nthambazale.com/2008/11/adgitize_entrecard_killer/
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