My thoughts on…the Entrecard and SezWho partnership
Hello everyone. Before I start, I’m sure you’ve realised the “Listen Now” button at the top of each of my posts. That’s all thanks to Odiogo. I seriously encourage you to subscribe to my podcast, so you can take my posts with you on your iPod while you’re jogging or engaged in some other form of battle with cellulite, or listen to them while wasting valuable company time. (C’mon. You know you do it.)
Anyways, as you can figure out by the widget in the sidebar, I’m an Entrecarder. Aside from approving ads, I haven’t been very active as of late, so I’m trying to get back in the game. While dropping, I’ve read many blogs talking about Entrecard’s and SezWho’s partnership. Here are my two cents on the issue.
Basically with this new alliance, when bloggers leave you comments, they’ll get Entrecard credits. Simple no? Not so much. The comments that are supposed to be rewarded are high quality comments. There are two flaws with this plan. The definition of a quality comment and who rates your comments. Spam is easy enough to pick out, but you could spend hours commenting ’til your fingertips go numb, but whether your comments are justly rewarded or not is out of your hands. And most of those who comment won’t really be your fans. They’ll just be people looking for a credit. The comments will just be as empty as most of the traffic I get from most blog exchanges.
It also doesn’t reassure me that SezWho has made many partnerships several other companies, especially PayPerPost, whose posts Google knock down with a PageRank of 0, and I’ve worked for nearly three years to get a PR of 4. And forgive me for being cynical, but I’ve been part of most of the major blog exchanges, and they all promised the world, and they did deliver…for a while. I haven’t seen a single one of them that offered me solid, quality traffic. Even with Entrecard, my bounce rate is nearly 75%. But I’m not totally knocking it. I’m just skeptical is all. I’ll just wait and see. But in the meantime, I’ll get comments the old fashioned way. By writing quality posts.
why can’t we just blog freely without obligation and so on?
Well, call me Blog-Challenged, but I really dont know who you are talkin’ bout. Guess I won’t be getting any credits then…LOL…
Mighty Afroditees last blog post..Floetry
75% bounce rate? my god man thats rediculous. I’ve been strugglng to get mine down as well
owens last blog post..The afterlife? (Questions)
Hey Leon,
First off, I’d like to say that I really appreciate your feedback on Entrecard. The service has become what it is today because Phirate and Myself listen religiously to anyone and everyone who has something to say about it.
That being said, I’d like to address the bounce rate. If you were to use the SezWho system, in theory, mant of the Entrecarders who drop would also comment, which would drop your bounce rate significantly.
As for getting quality comments by writing quality posts, I couldn’t agree more. In fact, if you follow the Entrecard blog, I state this on numerous occasions, and advise all our members that unless they are writing quality content, they should not expect to receive any good comments.
So the name of the game is still to write quality content, and receive genuine comments. We’re just trying to grease the gears a little bit, and do what we can to make sure it happens a little more often.
Undeniably, some of this will be empty and not genuine. But undeniably, much of it will be as genuine as it gets. Keep in mind, everyone on Entrecard is a blogger, and bloggers generally enjoy reading other blogs that interest them as much as they do writing them. Our mission is to do everything in our power moving forward to direct you towards the blogs that will interest you, increasing the value of the traffic and the comments.
Cheers
Graham Langdons last blog post..BlogBurst - Syndicate your posts to Big Name Media sites
Thanks for commenting on my blog Graham. I’m surprised that this post caught your eye. As for Afroditee, don’t worry. If you’re not part of the Entrecard network, it won’t matter.
whchu talkin bout willis?
Very valid point Graham. In fact I like the strategy behind writing quality content and then getting comment.
Sezwho just gives visitor an opportunity to gain popularity himself by leaving a quality comment.
Otherwise they didn’t happen to have any benefit of leaving a comment, even if they agree or disagree with the article.
But sezwho at least increases their self centered tendency because in fact they are helping themselves only.
Before sezwho, lots of my beautifully written articles (IMO) went without comments.
I am happy to be a part of Entrecard and sezwho community. But somehow sezwho is not working on my blog with IE. It just aborts opening the page. Trying to figure out issue.
Thanks
Anurag Bansal
http://www.knowliz.com
Anurag Bansals last blog post..Neither Yahoo! nor Live, GMX Mail is wise
Oh in fact, I loved your blog theme.
Congratulation for that.
Anurag Bansals last blog post..Neither Yahoo! nor Live, GMX Mail is wise
I serious thought you had started a podcast hosted by you, i didn’t think it was a robot sounding guy that just reads your posts -_-
This partnership doesn’t affect me really i’ve been participating less and less with entrecard
Jamaipaneses last blog post..Japan Number 1 in Blogging
Well it looks like the fine people at Entrecard have addressed your concerns. That’s good service!
Ricardos last blog post..A Thanks to Urban Observation
The robot sounding guy isn’t so bad Jamaipanese. As long as it’s understandable. As for a podcast made by me personally, who knows? It may happen.
Hey,
Jitendra from SezWho here…Thanks for the mention and the thoughtful post.
Our relationship with IZEA is a partnership for distribution…essentially Izea believes that we can enrich the conversation by providing context around users and enable interesting content discovery. And we tend to agree. The relationship has nothing to do with link backs etc. (actually SezWho had nothing to do with PR as out links are only shown dynamically on demand and are invisible to the crawlers).
Our goal is really to enrich the conversations and to increase community engagement…That is what the EC relationship is about and that is how the incentives are setup.
Thanks, Jitendra
Jitendras last blog post..Mockup of the new profile popup
Anurag, We will investigate and fix the ID issue. Thanks, Jitendra