The Controversy – Changes to the Dropping Policy
Wednesday I posted the news about Entrecard’s new dropping policy that will be in affect at precisely “soon”. They are updating their algorithm for dropping on Entrecard widgets so you have to somehow interact with every single blog you are dropping on in order to receive credit.
The intentions behind this idea is a good thing. The high bounce rate that comes with using Entrecard is a bad thing. People want more interaction from droppers with their blog.
However, I am against this new change for a number of reasons. I can think of a dozen problems that will result because of these changes. To name a few:
1. If Graham believes the algorithm for detecting who interacts with the blog is going to stay a mystery- then he’s most likely going to be wrong. Case study: Google. It just takes a couple of people and some guessing and testing to figure out how the algorithm works. Does Graham really want to get involved in an ongoing war, having to constantly tweak the algorithm?
2. As I said in the previous post, the bounce rate is one of the biggest complaints made about Entrecard. However, another huge complaint is, well, their inability to handle complaints. Their support system is very weak. I never received a reply from my rant against the Entrecard trade limits, and that was over a month ago! Entrecard will receive an enormous increase in the number of complaints with this new change- people claiming they interacted with a blog but didn’t receive credit. Well people, just don’t bother with that.
3. How do they expect us to interact on old blog posts? This one I saw in comments made by users in the Entrecard blog. If a blog hasn’t updated since the last time we were forced to make a comment on their post, what are we supposed to do? Leave another one? That hardly makes any sense. Which ties into my next issue…
4. Spam comments. That is what we will see from Entrecard users. Just generic, superficial comments left so they can get credit for interaction. Don’t get me wrong, I am not blaming the users here. I personally don’t have time to read the newest post on every single blog I drop on and then write a comment (I’ll get to that next). But as a couple of users who commented on Entrecard’s blog post, I’d much rather have a high bounce rate than fake comments.
5. Expect users to do less dropping. This is a major backfire to this new policy. In the blog post about the new dropping policy, the first sentence under the headline “The Point of Entrecard” says:
The point of participating in Entrecard is to find new blogs you enjoy, and to interact with each other.
But this is completely cutting off the first half of the sentence, and enforcing the second. Interacting with every single blog is going to take a lot of time and personally, I don’t even know if I’ll have time anymore with this new rule to reciprocate all of the drops I receive now, let alone try and “find new blogs”.
My average bounce rate is around 89%. Sure, it’s high, and surely because of Entrecard. However, I receive a lot of interaction with my blog. I receive comments from returning readers and new ones. People sponsor my blog by purchasing ads, and people click on those ads to check out new blogs. What more interaction could I hope for? Sure, I’d like to receive more comments. But, I do not want fake comments. I want people to truly read my posts and have it effect them so they feel the need to comment and voice their opinion. That’s what I like.
With this new rule, I feel like I’m being babied by Mommy Entrecard. I’m going to receive in increase in comments because Entrecard is making people do so. It’s like all the droppers coming to my blog are little kids who were forced to apoligize for being mean to someone. The apology is fake, and only comes because their mom made them do it. To be honest, it’s also embarassing. The users who’ve complained about having a high bounce rate because of Entrecard (though I’m sure some had one before Entrecard as well), finally get what they want even though they know that most of the interaction will be fake.
Is it really that important to have a high bounce rate? There are other ways to improve interaction to your blog, and get REAL comments and results. I’ll provide some tips in another post. Please post your thoughts on this new change, and if you have any tips for improving bounce rate that you’d like to share, leave a comment.
Posted in Rants
I guess I’ve never understood the issue with bounce rate. For ANY site, people are generally going to know within seconds if the site has content they want to explore. If I do a Google search, how many sites will I view before I find what I want? Do I get concerned about the bounce rates of the sites that DON’T have what I’m searching for? This can include information, specific products, etc. Do the site owners only want people to visit who are going to stay on their site for 20 seconds? Kinda ridiculous, if you ask me…..
Agreed. There are blog niches out there that I don’t really have an interest in. I really don’t want to be forced to read those blogs.
This whole plan just stinks. I’m not one of those people with thousands of EC credits lying around. If I can’t get credit for clicking so I can buy some ads, what’s the point? I interact with MANY blogs over the long haul. I was reminded in an old post where I got tagged for a game at the beginning of the year that I only knew 6 bloggers to pass the game along to. Now I know dozens, and mostly because of EC. But do I drop-surf? Sure. That’s how I found these new friends.
I totally agree with you. I am getting so frustrated with these silly changes. This latest is pointless, I DO NOT want people commenting on my blog just to get a credit. I am slowly reaching my limit when it comes to EC – they keep trying to implement new procedures when they can’t handle the most basic, fundamental aspects of a website, such as, returning emails. Great Post!
Re support: I have not yet received a reply to a support question from May!
Re criticism: My comments on the Entrecard blog are “still awaiting moderation”! After 10 days, when there are many comments posted afterwards!
I love Entrecard. I love being able to use the EntreBar to visit my favourite sites, and to reciprocate drops. But I do not understand how I am expected to “interact” with every site I visit. As everyone says, if there is no new content, what is there to stay for or to comment on?
The constant changes at Entrecard are getting old. I use the Entrecard toolbar for Firefox and there are so many blogs I visit that have not been updated for months. I also try to respond to any comments made on my blog and I do not want to see a bunch of generic comments so people will get credit. I will see how it goes, but I have already started looking at other traffic building options besides entrecard
Yeah I agree. Try Adgitize if you want traffic, it’s worked great for me.
I can actually see a lot of people leaving because of this. When Today.com said we had to move our Entrecards the first time, I stood up for keeping the ability to use this community. In fact I decided that I rather use this community instead of getting paid for what I wrote. (this was before we were getting paid for the credits) Now I am sort of thinking about leaving. I am not sure if I will, or not. I am getting sort of tired of the constant changes. I can understand it in order to keep users here, and getting more of a population. Seriously though I can not comment on every blog that I read. A blog has to trigger a response, and there are some blogs that don’t do that. I am feeling like the owners of entrecard, doesn’t really know what he is doing with this site. I am starting to feel he is at a loss and desperately clinging to empty ideas. He knows where He wants the program to go he just doesn’t know how to get it there.
I disagree with your arguments. I dont think there is any point of having visitors just come in to drop cards. I think what this will do is to discourage non serious bloggers from just dropping and scooting. I think this move from entrecard will promote more interaction, which is what blogging should be all about.
I understand your point- but how many cards drop on you today? And do you reciprocate them all? Imagine having to comment on every single one of those you drop on every day. For me, I get at least 100 drops that I must reciprocate. I cannot imagine having to interact with every single one of the blogs every single day. I’m sorry but I just don’t have that kind of time.
I guess it’s better if he cut down the daily visits to 100 or 150 drops and give us for this 2 EC/drop.
In this case you have really to select which blog you want to visit and then the quality blogs would shine out of the crowd.
I think he mentioned the cut by one third in his blog post, didn’t he?
The end result if implemented would be more members shifting to Adgitize or CMF Ads.
I agree with you very much, as I’ve also commented in the Entrecard official blog. This is a bad idea with good intentions, as so many of Entrecard’s changes have been. Even if the intentions are good the execution is usually terrible, ignoring any and all advice of actual entrecard users.
I do not put much value in bounce rate myself, for blogs. For a website with many pages it makes sense to take bounce rate into account, but with a blog most people are just going to be reading the front page anyway. Sadly Google does seem to take bounce rate into account.
Hi! I wish this can be implemented. I always making sure I have at least comment once to any entrecard member page I visited.
See you around.
How many do you drop on every day? And how long does it take you?
I agree, in the fact that the number of comments saying “hi just dropping by” will just end up frustrating the hell out of me! For some reason tho my bounce rate is only around 10% even tho I get the majority of my traffic from Entrecard and Adgitize. I admit to dropping 300 a day, but I do take time our to read a good chunk of them blogs, but also feel the need to drop back on people who have visited me. Can’t have it both ways
If they want to reduce the number of credits in the system, so that they have to encash less, why don’t they just reduce the drop limit instead of giving us a load of nonsense about bounce rate and quality.
Judging by the state of most of the Paid Ads they took on, Entrecard would recognise quality if it hit them square on the nose. This bloke Graham has, in the last few months, given a masterly lesson in how NOT to develop a great idea. He’s alread alienated lots of good blogs – looks like it will happen AGAIN.
Unfortunately, this is true.
This is really going to ruin Entrecard for good. If you check out my latest blog post about Entrecard you’ll see that they’ve already lost users three months in a row and the latest drop from May to June was about half a million US visitors!!!
The market they are running is also a complete joke. Buyers aren’t accepting delivery so the sellers aren’t getting paid and the mediation isn’t working at all (never has worked at all).
Entrecard could have been a great service, but they just remove the good parts all the time and implement restrictions of all kinds to make it a pain for the users…..
/Andreas
First, I only drop on blogs that drop on me. My bounce rate is 77% and DROPPING. This technique allows me to be able to comment on most of the blogs I drop on relatively regularly, but not every time I visit.
Second, there’s nothing at all stopping the “everybody’s gotta leave a comment” crowd from dropping cards only on the people who comment on their blogs, which will bring their bounce rate down..duh
Third, Graham’s already seeing another mass exodus from Entrecard and instead of growing a pair by telling the complainers that’s it on them and not him, instead he’s decided to capitulate to them and screw everyone else. Now since Entrecard is now a money making venture for him, this exodus will and probably already is affecting his bottom line. And like you said, we’ve got to be able to drop on blogs before we can “interact” with them. Lowering the amount we can drop defeats that purpose.
Wow. I really didn’t mean to leave a novel. Just saying.
Peace.
Pssh, it’s great you left a lengthy comment. At least it’s real and personal. The comment boxes will be filled with fake, spammy comments if they implement this new policy. I appreciate everyone who takes the time to comment on my posts.
Isn’t the bounce rate calculated as the number (or percent) of visitors who don’t get beyond your landing page? For most blogs who have the most recent entry fully posted on the front/landing/splash page (the page you hit when you first go to your site), would there be a reason to go beyond this? What I mean is, if you have regular, daily traffic and all your regular content is right on your first page, doesn’t it make sense that your bounce rate would be very high? Or is the bounce rate calculated differently?
Besides, interaction can never really be forced. If you look at systems like Blog Explosion, probably the best they can do is make you sit on a page or, like Link Referral, either post inane comments or reviews. Either way, there is still no way to control quality (i.e. ensure that people are actually reading your content). Any changes to this end will be flawed and I think we’ll start seeing those flaws pretty quickly.
Maybe people should start looking at these sites like exposure; billboards along the side of a highway. You can get a hundred people looking/bouncing (100 raw visitors), and 5 people who actually show an interest (probably future repeat visitors). Plus your ranking goes a bit higher on Google and any other sites that take raw traffic into consideration. That’s advertising, folks. That’s the way it works. That’s why ads must be compelling and so must the site they point to. No one can force anyone else to take an interest, and if there’s something that requires people to sit on a page or interact with it more than a casual drop, you can be sure that there will be plenty of ways to get around it.
And yes, I drop back and read the blogs who drop on mine when I can. Seems like a nice courtesy.
Three comments! What do I win?
I enjoy dropping in and reading other people’s blogs, but as others have stated, maybe the particular topic just isn’t one I want to comment on that day or am not really interested in.
I haven’t been with entracard that long, but I know you can’t force people to do something they don’t want to do.
The only way I interact, if I don’t really enjoy the blog, is to go back one page and then drop my card.