I recently joined Entrecard a little over a week ago.  The website instantly fascinated me because, as a small blogger, I needed an easy, cheap way to build traffic.  When I realized that you earned one credit for every card you dropped, I started dropping away and aimed for that “hint of addiction” classification.  The more credits I had, the more ads I could buy.

Choosing Where to Place An Ad

Once I racked up 500+ credits over the course of a couple of days, I decided to buy my first adverts.  The choice was between (1) buying a lot of ads on cheap blogs, or (2) buying a few ads on more expensive blogs.  I chose option #2.  I figured that, by placing three or four ads on three or four of the expensive blogs, I would gain much more traffic than by placing 100 ads on 100 cheap blogs.  After all, the most expensive blogs had the most traffic, right??

WRONG!

The Problem With How Blogs Are Valued

My thought process led me to discover an inherent flaw in the Entrecard valuation system.  As you know, the ad price for your blog is based on how many people drop cards on your widget.  (Specifically, it is equal to the average number of drops on your Entrecard per day over the last 5 days multiplied by 2.)

The problem with this method of valuation is that it can mislead others into thinking that a particular blog has a lot of traffic.  A high number of drops on a blog’s Entrecard can create an inflated ad price.  When fellow Entrecarders look at that ad price, they will equate a high level of traffic with the high ad price.  However, that assumption (high ad price = high traffic) is not true.  The Alexa rankings or Blog Juice ratings for most of those expensive blogs are low and don’t support such an expensive ad price.  Thus, Entrecarders are not getting their money’s worth when they pony up 500+ credits to advertise on a blog with very little traffic.    

An Illustration of the Valuation Problem

To illustrate this problem, I picked out two of the most expensive blogs in the “Make Money Online” category.  I won’t reveal the names of those blogs in order to preserve their reputations.  One blog was valued at 687 Entrecards per day (”the 687 blog”), and the other was valued at 596 Entrecards per day (”the 596 blog”).  (Keep in mind that these values change frequently.)  Then, I calculated each blog’s “Blog Juice” using Text Link Ads’ popular Blog Juice Calculator.

(By the way, I like the Blog Juice Calculator because it incorporates four helpful traffic barometers: (1) Alexa ranking, (2) Technorati ranking, (3) number of Bloglines subscriptions, and (4) number of inbound links.) 

The 687 blog had a Blog Juice rating of 2.8, and the 596 blog had a Blog Juice rating of 1.6. 

Contrast those numbers with two blogs from the “Big 3″: John Chow Dot Com and Problogger.  Both John’s blog and Problogger were valued at 217 Entrecards per day.  Their Blog Juice ratings were 8.7 for Problogger and 8.4 for John.

It doesn’t take a genius to realize that paying 596 credits to advertise on a blog with a rating of 1.6 isn’t an efficient or economical marketing campaign.  By comparison, paying just 217 credits for a spot on John Chow Dot Com is one heck of a value.         

The Valuation Problem At Work 

But most Entrecarders don’t realize this disparity.  Most of them make the assumption that a high ad price = high traffic.  If you look at the most expensive blogs in the various categories on the website, the top 5-10 most expensive blogs in each category usually have (1) full ad spots, (2) full ad queues, or (3) long wait times.  This means that bloggers are flocking to the expensive blogs and spending large sums of their hard-earned credits, erroneously thinking that such marketing campaigns will drive a high level of traffic to their blogs.

How to Take Advantage of This Valuation Problem

Since I am an optimist, I think this presents a great opportunity.  You can take advantage of this valuation/traffic disparity by looking at the ad prices for specific blogs and comparing those prices with each blog’s Blog Juice rating.  The blog with the better value (more traffic, lower ad price) is the smarter advertising choice and gives you more bang for your Entrecard buck.  But how do you calculate that? 

I am, by no means, a mathematician or statistician, but I think the following equation will give you some uniform method for comparing the valuation/traffic disparities of different blogs: 

Take a blog’s Blog Juice rating, divide it by its ad price, and multiply by 100.  The result is what I call the Real Entrecard Value:

(Blog Juice Rating/Ad Price) x 100 = Real Entrecard Value (REV)

This equation gives you a single-digit value that you can work with.  The higher the REV, the more valuable the blog.  In other words, you want to advertise on the blog with the highest REV because you get the most traffic per Entrecard credit.

I calculated the REVs for each of the four blogs I mentioned above:

698 blog: (2.8/687) x 100 = 0.4 REV

596 blog: (1.6/596) x 100 = 0.27 REV

John Chow Dot Com = (8.4/217) x 100 = 3.9 REV   

Problogger = (8.7/217) x 100 = 4.0 REV

Among the blogs listed above, the blog with the highest REV, which is Problogger with a value of 4.0, is the one where you would get the most bang for your Entrecard credits.  Buy an advert on Problogger, and your credits go much further in increasing your traffic.  By contrast, the blog with the lowest REV, the 596 blog with a value of 0.27, is the one where you would get the least bang for your Entrecard credits.  Buy an advert on that blog, and you’re essentially wasting a large amount of the 596 credits you spent.

If you disagree with this equation, I’d invite any blogger out there to come up with a better one.  Seriously, I am not an expert, and someone more skilled in mathematics would probably do a better job.  But until that happens, this one should work just fine.   

I know that this independent valuation process takes some work, but creating and maintaining a successful blog requires effort, dedication, and consistency.  This is just one of many ways to achieve your money-making goals. 

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