I was an un-known blogger since long. But now there are few to many, who know me. Thanks to Entrecard. My blog back-links and number of returning users have increased evidently. May be its not humongous traffic but if you compare the results with past, then it really really makes sense.

Check out my Google Analytics..

The Red circled area indicates the hike in number of unique visits per day. I'm constantly analyzing my reports to better the blog. Look at this now.

I registered for Entrecard on 30th April,2008. And since then, the top most referrer is Entrecard only. This really proves the traffic driving capabilities of Entrecard.

Word of Caution - But Who (what) drives the traffic ?

One thing I observed is, there is no significant traffic coming from Entrecard ADs displayed on various blogs, which one purchases from Entrecard by spending those credits. Traffic from those ADs (which you've purchased in lieu of those hard-earned EC credits) are not promising and hardly counts, So the incoming traffic from Entrecard is only motivated by other registered Entrecard bloggers' who wants to earn point by just droping in your blog. So, do you really think it's genuine traffic ? Well, up to some extent Yes! because it's your blog content which motivates the readers to come back. But I think it's a great effort to build a bloggers' community of its own kind.

Entrecard is losing their core objective here. The purpose of the system, to drive the traffic by Entrecard adverts stays defeated when most of the bloggers visit different blogs, just to drop by to earn that single credit.

Is Entrecard economy worth ?

Well, I really found some critical issues while evaluating the worth of such a credit system. A very important variable which should have been attached with the economy is WEIGHT of a credit.

Consider this..

• The credits earned by a DROP, should not be always a static 1 credit. The more you drop, more should be the number of credits earned by every drop.
• The same thing implies to the blog, which receives a DROP. The higher the number of drops received by a blog, the higher the credits it should earn for every eventual drop.

The static nature of the economy can drive towards very high inflation over credit system.

This mechanism can motivate the droppers to drop more and at the other hand, you gain a parameter to evaluate the popularity of a blog in Entrecard network. It's quite easily feasible to derive a mathematical function to calculate these values. Somehow, I feel the economics of Entrecard are static.

I'm also not in favour of the method that calculates the price (in credits) to buy an advert on a blog. Imagine, there are lot many blogs around, not every blog has same price and you can not just make the function to be a power of 2 for number adverts which are in queue for advertising on that blog.

Final words!

I must say, Entrecard drives good traffic by motivating bloggers droppers to drop by every blog but the system needs lot of improvements and changes. The purpose should be very serious and meaningful. You just don't visit a blog to earn credit to drop by and if so stays the system for long, I predict bloggers will eventually lose the interest.

Thanks.

Ruchit S.