Entrecard, which started with a great concept, of allowing small fish to hang with the whales, ie. someone with no money to advertise on a big blog like John Chow, (This was originally a John Cow link, but had to be changed since he no longer displays the widget) can use Entrecard credit to do that. The way the system works is like this:

  1. Sign up with EC and place their ad widget on your blog. That widget will display an ad from another blog, as well as a little tab which says “Drop Yours” (card that is ;) ). Similarly, your ad will be showing up on other blogs that you have purchased ads on. You don’t use real money to buy ads, but rather EC credits.EC Ad Sample
  2. Everytime you visit a blog that has that widget on it, and you “drop” your card there, you add credits to your EC account. Also, every time someone advertises on your site, you get EC credits.EC Dashboard

The problem right now is that the entire system is being abused by the “powerusers” and most of them will click the max drops amount allowed per day, which is 300. I myself as you can see above have dropped 212 cards in the last 30 days.

There are a couple ways to fix that system:

  • Set a time limit between drops – that will deter the powerusers. Similar to the postings on forums, where you have to wait for x number of seconds before you can make another post. This will also ensure that the person who is on your site is probably going to read your post, and spend time on your site. Right now, my stats for the last month, my Entrecard bounce rate is 86.4%
    Entrecard Bounce Rate
  • The price of the ad should be set according to the number of outgoing clicks the blog sends to the advertiser. The more popular your blog, chances are that you will probably send more clicks to the advertiser. This would mean that if this program was re-launched, each and every EC account would be on a level playing field. And as time progresses, with blogs with sending out clicks, the price of your ads would go up. Seems very simple doesn’t it. Sure, there will be people trying to game the system with fraudulent clicks etc. but I am sure there are fixes for that too. For starters limit the number of clicks to 1 per person per site.

Do you guys have any better ideas?
Entrecard was launched by Graham Langdon, the same guy that also gave the infamous MillionDollarWiki