Viral marketing with Entrecard advertising network

Posted on January 29, 2008
Filed Under Social Networking, Websites, online advertising |

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Recently I created an Entrecard account and I have been using the service for almost a week. I find the Entrecard business model provides an effective platform for small bloggers to advertise their site. For those of you who don’t know about Entrecard, here is a brief summary.

Entrecard is a free social advertising network site for bloggers. It allows you you to create a 125 x 125 advert for free. You then place an Entrecard widget on your blog so others can see it and advertise their blog on your widget spot. If they find your blog interesting, they can drop their Entrecard by clicking “Drop Yours” on your widget. The concept of “Drop Yours” is very much like exchanging business cards. All dropped Entrecards will appear in your Inbox on your Entrecard dashboard so you can take you time and look at the other Entrecard members profile and blog.

Entrecard1

Advertising starts when you find an interesting site and you buy an ad spot on the site by paying in Entrecard credits instead of real money. You earn credits when you visit other blogs and drop your Entrecard using “Drop Yours”. Each Entrecard has a different advertising rate depending on their popularity. When you decide to buy an ad spot, the blog owner will have to approve your request to advertise. If approved, your ad will appear for 24 hours. If the ad spot is popular, you will be placed in a queue (FIFO) until you reach your turn.

From your dashboard you can look at stats in 3D, message another Entrecard member and look at your queues, e.g. who has dropped their Entrecard, people who have requested for ad spot on your blog, ad spots that you have purchase, etc.

Entrecard2

According to the Graham Langdon, the founder of Entrecard, this concept of advertising on blogs using 125 x 125 ads have been quite effective at sending traffic to members’ blogs. (Read Interview with Entrecard’s Graham Langdon). Besides advertising, Entrecard is also an active social network, complete with a forum, messaging system and a marketplace (Entrecard Shop). The Entrecard Shop is the next step forward with the credit economy established by Entrecard.

Here’s Graham Langdon thought on Entrecard Shop:

“Cumulatively, our members are earning thousands of Credits every day, and while it’s nice that you can spend your Credits to advertise on over 1700 blogs, we have a bit of a larger vision. So we’ve opened a shop where bloggers can buy and sell blogging related products and services for Credits. We have people selling exclusive Wordpress themes, Blog reviews, SEO consultations, Blog makeovers, unused domain names, and more. The benefit for the seller is that it dramatically increases the amount of credits you earn, thus increasing your purchasing
power as well. The benefit for the buyer is that now you can buy much, much more than network advertising with your Credits.”

Here’s a view of my stats since I joined Entrecard. The stats are conservative (I joined less than a week ago) but mind you I didn’t do much to receive the traffic. All I did was created by 125 x 125 Entrecard and deployed my widget on my blog.

stats

My views on Entrecard - I think the business model works for small and medium sized blogs. It is another way to drive traffic to your blog. The 125 x 125 graphical image works because it does not take up too much space on a blog and it stands out amongst all the text. The down side of Entrecard widget is, people may visit your blog just to drop their Entrecard and move away without reading your content. If only Entrecard can improve on this but how? I think the widget should keep track of page views and allow people to drop their Entrecard only if they have x no. of page views on the blog.

Any other ideas from you?

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