marketing

I decided to give Entrecard a test drive a couple of days ago and I thought now would be a good opportunity to post from a newbies perspective and try to provide some insight into the process.

If you are unfamiliar with Entrecard, its an advertising network site predominately used by bloggers. In the sites own words its "...an easy way to network with other blog owners; Get to know your dedicated readers and favourite writers."

The Signup

The signup process is pretty simple. The one thing you should have ready is a 125 x 125 ad image (jpeg or png) as the whole site is based around "swapping" banner ads, just as you would swap a business card when networking. Once you have signed up you will need to place a piece of code on your site to display an ad. You can see an example on the right hand side of my site under Sponsor.

Once Entrecard has verified that you have placed the widget code you will start to receive ad requests from other members to place their ad on your website. Initially your ad space is worth 2ec (2 entrecard credits), this is quite cheap and you will find that you are inundated with requests for ad requests almost immediately.

TIP: I would recommend not accepting too many ad requests too quickly in the beginning (unlike me) and first try to build up the cost of your ad space.

Increasing your ad space rental

Your rental space increases based on the popularity of your site. The more people who drop you a card per day the more your ad space rental will increase. A good way to get yourself known is to drop a card on someone else's site. Dropping a card is not a request for an ad (which is what I thought originally) but rather a way to say "hey I've dropped by". Each drop gives you 1ec to spend on your own advertising.

I've been using Entrecard for about 2 days now and my ad space is now worth about 26 credits per day. So it definitely seems worth waiting a short time to fill your ad spots.

Traffic Goes Up

In my first full day trialling Entrecard I received about 40 new visitors to the site, which is not bad although I also noticed a substantial increase in the bounce rate. I'm hoping over time maybe a few visitors will find the site sticky enough to hang around a bit longer.

I'm currently experimenting with dropping and am interested to see if I increase my drop rate will I see an increase in visitors and reciprocal drops.

Buying Ads

So far I have bought 2 ads which will run on the 22nd February. There's usually a little wait before your ads show, and each ad is shown for 1 day. I'll have to wait and see what effect these ads may have on my traffic - if any.

Interesting Sites

Here are some sites you may find interesting which I have found during my digging about:

Akhong's Above the fold Entrecard list:
This is a great site if you want to do some quick dropping. The first time though I also found some interesting blogs.

OBLife's Reciprocal Dropping tool:
This tool lets you enter your RSS feed from entrecard and then shows you each site that has dropped on you. A nifty tool which could save you getting RSI.

Entrecards Collection:
This site is dedicated to showcasing a full list of Entrecard members. I don't think its quite up to date, but still another great way to find blogs you may never had found before.

Let me know about any experiences you have had with Entrecard.

I'm currently in the process of writing an ebook on the topic of niche market discovery, but like everything its taken a lot longer than expected to complete. I am planning to post some snippets from it over the coming days in an attempt to get the creative juices flowing...

So lets start by defining a niche market, according to Wikipedia:

"A niche market is a focused targetable portion (subset) of a market sector." wikipedia.org

Before we can fully understand what a niche market is we first need to understand the difference between a niche and a market. A niche is a group of people that do stuff and share a general interest, these people can be hobbyists or just passionate about something. They are not necessarily buyers. A market, on the other hand, is a group of people who need or want stuff and usually share similar traits and have common needs, these people are looking to solve some sort of problem. A niche and a market are NOT the same thing.

Therefore, "a niche market simply means a smaller subset of a large market. By combining a market with a niche we hope to find a market that is not being addressed by the big players. The ideal niche market is one where there is an interest from a small but sizable group of individuals (niche market) and no one is fulfilling their needs." Mike Mindel, webventurer.com

Throughout this guide we will use examples where possible to better describe the process of niche market discovery. The niche I have decided to use is "golfing", and the related market would be "people who play golf", "people looking to buy golf clubs or equipment", "people looking to take a golfing holiday" etc.

Stay tuned for the first chapter: Unleash your brain