This post is about Entrecard and its potential use as a source of income.
(If you have no clue about what I am saying check out this introductory post on Entrecard.)
Entrecard is a great way to increase traffic to your blog. If you are reading this post right now there is a good chance you came from Entrecard so I won’t really get into the whole thing, if you would like to read more check out Entrecard Tips.
Entrecard Credits and Real Currency
The basis of the ‘Entrecard system’ is the Entrecard credit or e.c’s. The value of advertising on your blog, on any blog for that matter, is represented by an amount of credits. These credits are the Entrecard currency. The amount of credits required to advertise on ones blog is a direct outcome of the amount of Entrecard traffic/drops that blog is getting. In other words, Entrecard credits are directly analogous to traffic. The more traffic you get the more credits you make. The more visits and drops you make the more credits are added to your account. The more traffic/drops a blog gets the more credits it costs to advertise on that blog just because more people visit and drop on it. It’s pretty straight forward…
Entrecard is great because it gives the opportunity to bloggers with less or no traffic and income to advertise and get more visitors for free. In general however, advertising costs money. Sometimes, a lot of money…. Within Entrecard, credits are the equivalent of money. They are advertising dollars, and they are used by the at least 4,000 members to buy and sell advertising. Since Entrecard credits are used for advertising and advertising costs money, it is pretty easy to make the correlation between Entrecard credits and real money….dollars.
Making More Credits/Dollars with Entrecard
What are the ways for making more credits and eventually more money with Entrecard? Well, the answer is pretty straight forward. First you need to answer one question. Ask yourself, what am I selling?
You are selling traffic. When someone buys an ad on your blog they pay with the intent to get more visits. So you as a seller must be able to give your advertisers, your Entrecard ‘clients’ the best value for their advertising dollars. When someone places an ad on your widget for 100 and got 10 visits then they paid 10 credits per visitor. The more visits someone gets when they advertise on you the higher the possibility for them to advertise again; which would mean more credits for you. To make more credits and get more for traffic for your advertisers you need to be active in the community. You need to drop a lot and try and get other Entrecard members to your blog. Being active in the forums is a good way of doing so. The more time you spend on the community the more visitors you will get. Eventually you will learn ways to decrease that time spent, and as you get better in attracting people to your blog the time you spend doing so will decrease.
The best way to accumulate more credits is to remain active. As you use the system credits will rack up.
Drop a lot and drop smart. Drop to get a drop back.
Drop a lot.
Pretty straight forward advice…Visit as many blogs and drop on as many widgets as you can. Ideally, you should reach the daily drop limit of 300 every day.
Receive drops.
Drop on people who reciprocate drops. Keep track of your inbox on Entrecard and drop back on them. Some will appreciate that and always drop back. Get organized, get the RSS feed of your inbox, check it daily. Add blogs that reciprocate drops to your favourites, drop on them daily. Weed out the ones that don’t return drops and keep doing what works best. Also when you get more drops the price to advertise on your blog increases….
Receiving drops is very important in accumulating credits. Just think about it. If you drop 300 cards a day on people who will all reciprocate drops, you will be accumulating 600 credits a day. 600 day x 7, that 4,200 a week, x 52 that’s 218,400 credits a year. Since there is no limit on the drop one can receive, and there are 4,000 possible daily droppers out there, you could be getting way more than just 300 drops on you per day.
Don’t get excited, this is all hypothetical. Even if you drop 300 a day the chances of having those 300 bloggers reciprocate are pretty slim. You can fine tune your dropping over time or rank higher in your category buy advertising and get more people dropping.
Ok, so you drop a lot and you get drops back. That’s great but you are still not maximizing your Entrecard earning potential. Doing so involves selling things for credits in the shop.
The Entrecard shop
There is a shop and you can actually use it. Anyone can. You can sell advertising for more than one day, sell custom logos, capitalize on your writing skills, anything that might have a monetary value, and that could interest a buyer, could be sold. There are several other sellers in the shop that might be selling similar things with you. Don’t be discouraged, be competitive. Sell for less, give more value and you can always count on making a sale.
How much is an Entrecard Credit worth?
Well, how much do you value a visitor? How much would you pay for 100, 200, 300, or even 1,000 visitors? How much would you pay for just over 200 visits? There is no ‘Entrecard Standard’ maybe there should be maybe there shouldn’t be. I don’t know… however, it all boils down to how much you value a visit. Would you pay 500 credits for 500 visits? I know I would. Having 500 visitors in one day can be great. So what if most of them will come here just to drop. Even if I get 20 out of the 500 stick around I and read and two of them actually join an affiliate program or make a purchase through my blog, I could make that 500 credits back ten fold! How about 1000 credits for a thousand visitors? You could get those visitors for less than $10.
I’ll sell you 1,000 credits for $8. Just visit my profile and send me a message.
The way I see it you can use Entrecard to make money in two ways: Directly and Indirectly.
Profit from Entrecard Directly
Make more credits.
More credits mean more advertising for you or for others who are willing to buy the credits from you. People buy and sell Entrecard credits every day. I have bought and sold credits as well. All you need is a paypal account and some cash or credits depending on whether you are buying or selling. The rates fluctuate on a day to day or even a shop to shop basis. Meaning, some days you will find credits for less and some days for more. Supply and demand, I guess… I have bought and sold chunks of 1000 credits for $10, $9 and $8. Depends on the day, the buyer and the seller. If you are serious about getting visitors and potentially readers, spending a few bucks is a good idea. If you don’t want to spend any money from your pocket you can even use your Project Wonderful earnings to buy these credits.
If someone is interested in buying Entrecard credits he/she can post in the Entrecard forums in the promotions and wait for a reply. Once, I sold 1000 credits in less than a minute. Another time I posted and never got any replies, it depends. You can also do so through ebay and wait around for a few days. You might get a good price you might not. It’s up to you. There are people out there that do it on a daily basis. They trade the Entrecard credit. Entrecash and Entrecredits are two good examples. They are in the business of buying and selling credits. They buy low and sell high. When I sell I don’t sell as high as they do but I still get my credits worth.
Profit from Entrecard Indirectly
Get more readers
Entrecard works great in increasing traffic. Small or large old or new, all kinds of blogs can benefit. Ok, most of the visitors that get here drop and move on but there are some that actually read and stick around for a while. If you are interested in making money blogging then you should read about the kinds of traffic and especially about the money making kind of traffic.
So, as I was saying….entrecard works great in getting visitors and potentially readers. If you came from Entrecard and read up till this point just proved that some traffic is of the good kind. If you write a comment, then not only you will get a precious backlink, but you will have proven that not all Entrecard traffic is bad, there is community participation and that the system actually works well. Some of the visitors will turn into readers, some into helpful friends, and some will possibly try out one of your blogs suggestions or links and make you a few cents. More visitors and traffic could mean more backlinks for you, a higher Alexa ranking, a page rank eventually and perhaps when you decide to start writing posts for money you can ask for more.
Aside from all of the positive things of this make credits make money argument there is down side; a counter argument. As more and more people accumulate credits and make them available for sale their price will decrease. Will it decease to the point where it is not worth selling them anymore? Will they decrease to the point where it is not worth using Entrecard? Will it be way to hard to make credits to advertise on the blogs that are expensive, the ones that will bring in the most traffic? I don’t know… For the point being I know that Entrecard credits do have a value, a tangible value. I know for a fact that x amount of credits can get me x amount of visitors. Sometimes a little more and other times a little less. I believe that over time, and if the community keeps growing at the same pace credit value will, to some extent, stabilize.
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