How does Entrecard Works
Entrecard is an advertising network of blogs and websites where each member is given the chance to increase his traffic from other members by actively participating in their program by visiting other blogs and websites. Each member, during sign up, submits his card or Entrecard image, a 125×125 ads which you will you use to advertise your site. They will first check if you blog complies with their guidelines and after approval they will provide you a code that you will place in your site.
Once you place the code it will start displaying ads, this is what they call Entrecard widget; it will display ads from Entrecard, premium advertisers and ads from the members. All members are required to place this widget in their site, unless you are a premium advertiser where you will pay Entrecard a fee only to display your image ads for a limited number of impressions. When one member clicks (also called drop a card) on the widget displayed on another members’ site, he will be taken the website of the advertiser. When a member drops a card two important things happen.
First, he will earn a credit by doing this and secondly his card or image ad will be displayed on the Entrecard dashboard of the site he visited. This in turn will give the advertiser to return the favor by visiting the blog of the member who visited him and again earning a credit when he drops (clicks) a card. These credit points can be used to purchase available ad spots on the widget of other website. So if you don’t drop a card (visit) on the site of other members, you earn nothing and you won’t have any traffic because other members won’t know your presence. In short to earn credits and to increase your traffic you have to drop your card and in return other members will drop their card to yours; you visit my site and I’ll visit yours.
Based on the Google AdSense Program Policies
Traffic Sources
To ensure a positive experience for Internet users and Google advertisers, sites displaying Google ads may not:
- Use third-party services that generate clicks or impressions such as paid-to-click, paid-to-surf, autosurf and click-exchange programs.
As quoted from one of the AdSense program polices stated above, click-exchange or traffic exchange is not such a good idea to use when promoting your website. Entrecard is very similar to traffic exchange programs where members are actively exchanging visits to each one’s blog and website. Although visiting the website which visited you is not mandatory, you won’t earn credit points and your traffic will not increase because you are not actively participating in their activity. In my understanding, this program that promises increased traffic to your site from the network of Entrecard by exchanging visits is prohibited by the AdSense program policies as mentioned above.
Invalid Clicks and Impressions
Clicks on Google ads must result from genuine user interest. Any method that artificially generates clicks or impressions on your Google ads is strictly prohibited.
Quoted above is another AdSense program policy, advertisement is not a bad idea to generate clicks and impressions to your AdSense ads. But if your advertisement will generate artificial impressions like what is happening to the Entrecard network, I visit your site and you visit mine, again in my own understanding is against the AdSense program policy.
Based on My Experience
When I was actively participating in the Entrecard program, which I still do to some of my websites which doesn’t display any AdSense Ads for certain purposes other than to acquire artificial traffic. I discovered one thing. I was never interested to all the websites I was visiting aside from a few blogs that share the same interest that I have. I never earned so much from AdSense although the impressions brought by the traffic exchanges rose dramatically. Then I soon realized that targeted traffic is important when you want to earn from Google AdSense and not from artificial traffic brought by traffic exchanges. After learning that using traffic exchange is not recommended by Google and is not in compliance with certain AdSense program policies, I immediately pulled out my Entrecard Widgets to sites where I monetize them with AdSense.
Having discovered this hard earned experience I told myself to divert my energies in increasing my organic traffic. Instead of using my precious time in clicking, dropping cards and visiting websites that don’t interest me to increase my traffic, I used them for more productive activities. Artificial traffic will not stay permanently, once you stop doing the activity that produces them then your traffic is over. So I ventured in doing SEO instead and focused on link building which will give the best traffic provided by search engines. And soon enough my earnings from Google AdSense improved and increased.
Based on My Opinion
If you will observe carefully, all AdSense gurus in the Web will tell you to acquire targeted traffic preferably organic traffic (brought by search engines) in order to earn decently from Google AdSense. When we say targeted traffic, it means visitors who will visit our site because they need information which we provide. And because AdSense is a contextual ad, meaning it shows ads relevant to the content of the webpage it is placed, the people who will visit our site will have greater chances of clicking them because of their genuine interest to the information provided by our site.
The Google AdSense Team is not composed of millions of employees that will guard all sites and disable those who are in violation. Almost all penalties given are automated, like click fraud. But once you start earning and once you reach a certain threshold like earning $100 – 200.00 a day, your site may be reviewed manually if you are in compliance with their program policies. So that is the reason, in my opinion why Entrecard users are not being penalized, because I doubt if anyone of them are earning decently from AdSense for their site to be visited and reviewed by the AdSense Police.
Can I use traffic exchange programs?
While traffic exchange services may help bring traffic to your site, we don’t recommend using them, as they may lead to invalid clicks or impressions and result in your account being disabled.
…However, please understand that we’re unable to comment on any particular third-party service.
The question and answer quoted above came from Google Help. Although the last sentence above is quite safe, reading between the lines, Google is saying stop using traffic exchange when you are using AdSense and I think the big G is not kidding when he said that.
Depending on your purpose, Entrecard is a great way to increase your traffic and to meet other bloggers and site owners. But keep in mind the traffic that you acquire is only temporary and artificial. Although you could pay Entrecard to show your image ads for a limited number of impressions, still the traffic that you may acquire does not provide quality traffic that would increase your site’s conversion. Most of the times the people visiting your website has no genuine interest as much as you do to their site. If you want to acquire real and genuine traffic especially the one provided by search engines, it’s not easy and it takes a lot of work but trust me once you get there your earnings will pay more than what you were expecting.
So before I end this article, well I hope no stones will be thrown, everything I wrote was disclosed properly based from what the big G said, my experience and my opinion.
