Monday, September 28, 2009

Entrecard: Great Concept, No Business Plan

The underlying concept of Entrecard was genius: To provide a vehicle where bloggers thoughout the world could interact and advertise Free of charge! To accomplish this, a fictitious economy was created, rewarding members for visiting other sites and advertising. In this, Entrecard's success was unparalleled. At its peak, some estimate that over 30 thousand members participated.

To be truly successful, however, it is important to capitalize on one's efforts.

Unfortunately, it appears that Entrecard failed to create a viable Business Plan which would address the methodology of earning income while providing its founding services.

As if in a panic, Entrecard resorted to selling membership ad space and delivering it to the captive membership. This resulted in alienaiting members and losing its base.

Under new Entrecard ownership, the paid ads were eliminated, and membership began to grow again. But, not having a Business Plan, Entrecard is reinstituting their Paid Ad delivery system. It was initially planned to be implemented beginning September 28th 2009, but, this date is now pushed back to the week of October 5th.

The new system will occupy 15% of the network inventory. If, however, a member wishes to opt out, he can pay $50 per year to be ad free.

Reading the comments in their blog, members have mixed opinions about this whole thing. And we did too.

So, we decided to analyze what this means:
  1. Entrecard allows members to receive credits for dropping on 300 sites maximum.
  2. Assuming that a member meets this maximum 300 days of the year, there will be 90,000 ad impressions that one visits.
  3. Multiplying 90K times 15%, the user will be exposed to 13,500 ad impressions.
  4. Since one can opt out for of the 13,500 impressions for $50, we calculate that Entrecard expects ad impressions to cost $3.7037 per 1000 impressions.
  5. We think this is a lot of money!
Another way of looking at this is by membership:
  1. If 1,000 members agree to pay $50, Entrecard receives $50,000
  2. If 10,000 members agree to pay $50, Entrecard receives $500,000
Wow, Entrecard can get a lot of money from a captive audience!

So what do we think? Entrecard will continue to be the sought after delivery vehicle for New Bloggers who are trying to build an audience and learn the ropes.

However, seasoned members will go elsewhere for their primary audience. Why?
  1. As time goes by, followers are developed.
  2. Bloggers begin to willingly purchase Paid Ads on other networks.
  3. As they grow, they will devote more time to their content, and less to dropping.
  4. Most blogs derive income from displaying ads.
 Since a blog's ad space is valuable, why  would one display Entrecard for free?

And, if one already purchases their own ads, why would they want to display Entrecard's for free?

Based on this simple economic evaluation, we believe that Entrecard does not have a Business Plan of their own. At present, they are simply attempting to piggy-back on others. This type of strategy will not succeed since it is simply parasitic.

While we will not be dropping Entrecard from our arsonal, we will be demoting their widgets to less important portions of our blogs. Many others may just drop them flat out. This means that the expected revenue that Entrecard is hoping to get will not be there, because advertisers will not want to  pay top dollar for poor quality ad space!


JL...............

12 comments:

  1. I have to agree.
    I don't know what I will do with my Entrecard, I have been debating about it since they changed the drop to 1 credit for the dropper as apposed to the dropper credited and the droppee credited. But I have to say that I probably will try to find a new avenue for cheep advertising.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks sadermaxx.

    And you're right in trying to find a new avenue -

    Let us know if you find anything, and I'll will as well!

    JL.......

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  3. Good analysis !

    I just DROPPED and QUIT on EC and replace it with other networks. LOL! Your analysis is short and sweet. Thanks ;-)

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  4. I dropped out as soon as they added the cancel my account button to the dash.

    It made it so easy to do. I have had my back and forth with Ec for a while now.

    But, I simply cannot afford it and I will not do it. with the history of this company who's to say they just won't take the money and fold anyway.

    What options would any of us have then that did pay. I am one of those who was dependent on purchasing the majority of my credits due to a slow connection.

    Doing 300 a day was impossible. therefore, to advertise in their system was costing quite a bit of money for us.

    I don't miss them. I must admit during this first week of using adgetize I simply rushed through to get my clicks and wasn't really stopping to read.

    But, now I am and I see a lot of familiar faces but I am also reading many different blogs as well.

    It is a learning experience for me in more than one way: gaining knowledge written on blogs that are to me, taking into consideration exactly how the program can work for you and also paying close a attention to the feel and design of the blogs within this system.

    I am finding, at least for me, I am reading an entirely new genre of blogs.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Great post. It reflects a lot of my thinking on the topic as well. They should really set up user panels and do market research into how people use their product and what would be the most acceptable means of monetizing their service, but that would be too much like a business for them.

    I've been writing a bit about this recently, and gave you a shout out in my latest post post, Post EntreCard Blog Promotion. I think it might be helpful for people trying to find a new avenue.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Really awesome blog. I enjoyed reading review of ""Entrecard: Great Concept, No Business Plan"" etc. I found that you really update
    your site regularly that made me more interesting. I've bookmarked your site for my future use.
    Thank you
    sagar rai
    Blogging Tips\Download Free CSS Templates

    ReplyDelete
  7. Download ...

    Thanks for the kind words and for bookmarking my site.

    I have visited your sites in the past and think that you also offer many helpful tips.

    Hope you keep visiting and that I can think of new topics to write about - so I don't disappoint you and all my other valued readers.

    JL..........

    ReplyDelete
  8. EntreCard has become another manual click exchange with the addition of their referral program. The price of the EC user advertising vs the 15% loss of visibility make EC not worth the value. For me to spend 2 weeks to save 4,096 ECs for a one day ad that will only be seen 85% of the time is insane and a waste of my time.

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  9. get more traffic, get more revenew, hhehehe

    ReplyDelete
  10. i still confuse with entrecard, i can sig in there, even i write right password

    ReplyDelete
  11. i like adgitize , adgitize give more traffic and i can earn some money by just placing ads in my site

    ReplyDelete

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