Friday, December 5, 2008

time to end Entrecard participation?

If you haven't already heard, Graham Langdon, entrecard.com's number one douchebag, banned leading blogger Turnip of Power from the Entrecard system after Turnip posted a mildly rude tweet on Twitter. The tweet intentionally Mentioned Entrecard, in order to show the apparently Clueless Langdon why it's Not such a Good Idea to post to your website Everything that Everybody tweets about you, particularly not when you have spent a lot of time pissing off a lot of people. And the reaction to that tweet, arbitrarily and immediately banning one of the site's Top Users over a silly and not very important tweet on another social network, is just so over the top arrogant that I am Utterly disgusted and find myself contemplating a departure from Entrecard.

On the one hand, I hesitate to give up the traffic. I'm certain if I stop dropping (even if I keep the widget) my traffic will drop and my Alexa will go back up and my Google page rank (4 last I checked) may go down. In terms of selling ads, I am getting decent but not spectacular results from Project Wonderful and CMF Ads. I'm not making a lot of money, but I am making money from my site and I have every hope it will grow. But after reading a couple of post (s) I forced myself to really think about whether the time I spend dropping cards (all too often on crappy blogs where my only reason for visiting is to get a drop credit and maybe inspire a return visit and drop might better be spent creating quality blog content and marketing that content through other avenues.

Much as I really have enjoyed getting to know so many great bloggers through Entrecard, I have to admit that my time would be better spent building a better blog and doing more to market it beyond a social networking web site that clearly seems to be on the wane and, much more importantly appears to be run by a meglomaniacal asshole who feels that the normal rules of courtesy and concern for ones customers somehow don't apply to him. And that is just Not the kind of company I really want to be associated with, let alone depend on for a large share of my traffic.

For now, I am leaving the widget up but am not accepting new advertisements at this time. I have nine or ten ads sold so it will be more than a week before I am in a position to pull the plug on Entrecard altogether, and I am not 100% sure if I will remove the widget or not. But my drop 300 per day days are Done and I suspect my time as an Entrecard member will soon be Done too. My sincerest thanks to all of my advertisers and visitors, many of whom I met through Entrecard. I will certainly continue to visit my blog friends and will be working on other ways of marketing the site and hope that I will continue to see you around the blogosphere and over at CMF Direct. If you haven't already go list your blog on CMF Direct. It's free and allows you to accept any kind of advertising and is a great place to find new blogs and connect with other bloggers. It may well be what comes along to Replace Entrecard once Graham drives it over the cliff, so be Sure you are listed.

13 comments:

Cromely said...

This whole thing between Graham and Turnip stikes me as incredibly childish on both their parts. I think it was silly of Turnip to Tweet as he did just to make a point, and I think Graham over reacted. Graham says in his various comments that there were a number of things going on, indicating the Tweet was really the final straw. I'm inclined to believe there's more to it than we have seen. Regardless, there are no winners in this flareup.

I plan to continue Entrecard, but will monitor the traffic closely. I still get good traffic from it. I'm still finding new blogs through it, and reading some of them. I'm still getting new readers and commenters. So there is still value in it for me.

But the future of it will really depend on how many people this issue drives away, and whatever new changes come to the site. This is probably Entrecard's most dangerous time since the performance issues in the Spring.

Anonymous said...

Well, good luck with it Cromley. It's still possible I will change my mind and keep it on but I am pretty pissed today.

And you may be right that there is more to the situation than meets the eye. (That turnip has been busy creating the CMF Direct site and getting lots of listings from current and former Entrecard members it may be a very calculated and considered sort of snub.) But it still shows zero class imho. And sadly this is not the first time by any means that Graham Langdon has led me to this conclusion.

Anonymous said...

I agree with Cromely on the childish part but I can't help but think about what another blogger on Twitter said about the whole thing. Can't remember the exact tweet or who said it but he said something like. Maybe Graham is just waiting for a reason to ban Turnip and he just found one. Is it because of the CMF ad on Turnip's site which clearly targets Entrecard? Was it that he's just having a bad day? I don't really know and I don't know what goes on on Graham's mind but it got a lot of people thinking. Anyway its his Entrecard an he can do anything he wants in there. The only thing is that some of those things are driving people away. Which is not so good for a social networking site.

I'm not saying that everyone will leave because of this. Entrecard will have more users coming in. It's a free traffic site and it has a very attractive concept. The thing is there's always someone out there with a better plan thinking of a better service.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for linking to my post!

Look at the people who really make a lot of money... are they using Entrecard or other traffic exchange programs?

No.

They're writing good content and instead of spending their time on those programs, they spend time on properly marketing their blogs.

Nobody on Entrecard makes a living from their blog.

And I'm sorry to report it, but my PageRank indicator plugin shows your site as unranked, not PR4. :-\

So no worries. Read through my post... If I get enough comments asking for it, I will write a great guide about how to invest the time freed up from Entrecard into generating heaps of traffic for one's blog! :-)

Anonymous said...

libdrone.info unranked? I don't think so. (maybe you didn't realize which site I meant). my traffic is way down since I stopped dropping and I am waiting and seeing how this week without drops effects traffic before I make any final decisions.

and if you publish that piece on using the time gained from not dropping on ec to promote your site properly, let me know as I will be all ears.

a

Anonymous said...

I have a slightly more positive view of Turnip and a much less positive view of Graham. It is inappropriate for anyone running a website to try to control, or take action against someone for something they have said on a different website. Full Stop.

EntreCard cannot survive as long as Graham acts the way he does.

That said, it does not appear as if the proper successor has emerged yet. EntreCard is a great idea, horribly managed.

So, I'm staying around, until I find a better place. Plus, I've got a boat load of EC credits.

However, I continue to place EC in a lower and lower priority. I hope a good replacement comes along soon.

Anonymous said...

I wouldn't quit Entrecard over this. These kinds of antics rarely even make it to my zone of awareness, and this one wouldn't have either had it not been Alan posting about it.

But then too, I'm not any definition of an "active" entrecard user. The widget is still up right now, and will likely remain up since it takes more effort to take it down than to leave it up.

Honestly I quit caring about Entrecard when the store was put on hold. If I can't sell stuff in that store, I don't really care one way or another about the whole thing.

crpitt said...

I have been bored with it for a long time, so I have quit accepting new ads for the time being. I have found some great blogs and a lot have made it to my feed reader.

I will keep an eye on what you do and what you find out :)

Anonymous said...

Hi Alan,

Well, I think you know how I feel about GL, and I have always liked Turnip. Besides, GL has done so many more similar things in the past year than this. He is simply really immature.
But, I have no intention of leaving EC at this point. I have never dropped that many cards in a day, and I have cut back a lot recently, so that isn't really an issue for me.
As long as I continue to see traffic from it, and I do, even on Modern Glam where I've only posted a few times since August, I will continue to use it unless GL does something that I can't tolerate such as indicating a racist or misogynistic bent. In other words, unless he becomes completely dispicable, lol.

I hope you don't leave, Alan, but if you do, of course I will still visit you daily! :)

Anonymous said...

well, nicole, I am definitely going to not accept ads and not drop except incidentally until my currently purchased ads run out. At that point I will either turn ads back on or shut down the widget. My advertisers have often done well (in terms of clicks) and I really do hesitate to give up such a good source of traffic.

Vivienne said...

Oh. My. Gosh. I don't dip too deeply into e-card so I was unaware of this drama. I'll have to back track to Twitter and check it all out. The reason I backed off of dropping is the same as what you've contemplated, Alan - it's quite time consuming and I prefer to spend more extra time on my writing.

I'll drop 20-30 times a few times a week and enjoy finding cool new sites. But more than once I've clicked over to a registered blog and bam a trojan downloads right past my anti-virus software. And that is a Real Frickin Pain.

Anonymous said...

Vienne,

LOL. If I remember correctly it was you and the Anti-Barbie (I wonder whatever happened to her; one day she just stopped updating her popular blog and then after awhile it was just gone) who first lured me over to Entrecard. So let me lure you over to CMF. There's now a CMF Promote page which shows the latest post title (via RSS) of every listed blog. It's a great way to cruise through some recently updated friendly blogs without all that dropping on the splogs and sites with viruses and malware.

Anonymous said...

I've only read about these entrecard things happening the other day - I'm unaware of problems and douchebags since I had just signed up.

Seems like everything I get involved with has some internal problems.