Okay, with all the talk going on about EntreCard with the high click rates and the forced paid ads, I finally took a look at my EC stats with Google Analytics. Here is the data. Maybe you can help me decide where to go next. I also hope this prompts you to take a look at yours, too.
There is no surprise I am seeing a high bounce rate. In fact, for my EC referral hits and EC ad hits, I am showing an above average bounce rate. However, my direct, Google searched and blogger hits show a below average bounce rate. This shows me that people getting to my blog through following, Google searches and blogger surfing actually spend time on my blog reading it. Thank you to those that make the time I take to write posts worth my while :)
However, those hits coming from EC referral and EC ads are (I am postulating) staying long enough to drop a card and move on. Most of them stay on my site for between zero seconds and 30 seconds. Some of you do read my blog, and I thank you for that, too. But the one's who just drop and go shows. If you dig deeper, it will tell you how much time and how many hits each EC member has. Some of them are consistently zero time. These must be the click farmers. Right? Is this what you are evaluating, Oriental Lodge? Smart guy!
Now, as for total page hits per day, I am getting anywhere between 150-250 page hits a day. 48% of those come from EC referrals, 15% come from ad clicks and the rest are direct, Google, Blogger and other various ways. This tells me that a little over half my visitors are EC visitors which is good. However, as you may recall, EC hit bounce rates are higher than average whereas the rest are under average, so this is bad. Hmmm.
Now, lets figure if it is worth it monetarily for me to have my "free EC ads". Say I think that my time is worth $10/hour (gee, my step-kids get a better pay rate without a college education, making between $12 and $14 an hour at HSBC and $11 an hour at UPS). It takes me about 2 hours a day on average to drop my 300 cards to gain points for advertising. I know this because I start my drops at 7:30am after dropping the kids off at school and get done to start my real work about 9:30 - 10:00 am. This works out to about $100 a week. Therefore, I am spending $100 a week to have ads on a small amount of blogs that only drive my bounce rate up. I do gain some sales from my blog, however, but this doesn't happen very often.
In contrast, I also periodically advertise with Project Wonderful. However, I don't do it often as the money in my account tends to run out pretty quickly (faster than I get money from advertisers). This makes me wonder if the people who host my ad through Project Wonderful create false clicks to drive their payout up. I don't know if you can do this, I have never tried it before to the PW ads on my blog. I haven't had an ad campaign on PW in quite some time, so I don't have the statistics to see those bounce rates. I could dig them up, but that would be time consuming.
So, I guess the question I am asking is "Is it really worth it to get free advertising from EC when time is money?" Consider the high bounce rate where people are not even reading the blog. What is your opinion? What do you think when you look at your own stats? Anyone have experience with CMF (or whatever it is) or any other avenue?
In defense of periodic quick-clickers...I admit that sometimes I do engage in click and run. When I drop, I use the EC toolbar to open up 10 pages at a time. I always read the blog in the first tab while it is loading. After I drop, comment (if I feel necessary) and close the tab, I look at the next blog. Did I already read the post yesterday? I drop and go. Did I get terribly bored after the first 4-5 sentences? I drop and go. If neither of the two apply, I read the post, comment if necessary, drop and go until all tabs are done. Rinse, repeat. If your blog is in my favorites with EC, you can bet I spend time on it. Why else would you be my favorite? Whether you drop on me or not. If I like your blog, I will remain faithful. I figure I spend on average about 2.5 minutes on each blog. However, this is not very accurate. Some blogs that I already read, I drop and go. The rest of them may take me more than 2 minutes to read and comment and then there are the times I go back into our archives, especially if you just became my favorite and I want to check out what I missed. And I also admit that if I have a doctor appointment or some other thing that is going to cut my day short, I drop and go on all of them. I hate doing this because then I have to spend twice as much time the next day to catch up on my reading, especially if a post was written since the last one I read. And there are some days I just simply don't have time to drop. There are so many variables to this.
Okay. I am sorry this post is so long, but if you made it this far, please share your thoughts, experience and advice. I really hate to leave EC. I really want to try to stick it out for the long haul. But we need to ask ourselves if we are getting the most bang for the buck with the free ads we do get, because the bottom line is, nothing is for free.
