As most of you have already heard or know, Entrecard has been down for over 24 hours now due to an electrical fire that caused the management team over at ThePlanet to shut down about 9,000 servers. Luckily for Graham, Entrecard was on one of these servers. This situation may not conflict with me as much, but I know it’s killing a lot of bloggers that use EC for traffic.
What I’m trying to say is that some of your bloggers depend on Entrecard purely for traffic and if a site like this is down, you’re totally losing a whole lot of traffic. EC caters to over 5,000 blogs (realistic estimate) and I’ve seen that most of the blogs do use EC a lot.
Although it has only been a bit more than 24 hours since the server went down, a lot of card droppers have no incentive of visiting a blog. Some of you members may still receive traffic, but you should notice a fraction of what you received if Entrecard was online. This proves to show that as a blogger, your dependency on one particular social network causes your blog to fail at times.
I have stressed many times that if you wish to gain free traffic, using only Entrecard is not an answer. A blogger must reach out to many different social networks in the blogosphere. There are some mighty popular ones such as MyBlogLog, BlogCatalog, Twitter, Myspace, Digg, and StumbleUpon. Those are only a few of the hundreds of different networks that could be utilized to receive free traffic.
Of course free traffic means a lot to bloggers because it doesn’t cost a thing. Entrecard came into the blogosphere to provide bloggers advertising on blogs of any shape or size for the price of $0. It totally worked back when it first launched, but the community in EC is now full of splogs, bots, fakes, and me 
.
A lot of bloggers that have highly ranked blogs have given up on Entrecard due to what the community consists of now. I believe that because EC is currently offline, you guys should run out to other networks to start building up your fan base.
Warning – RANT ALERT! RANT ALERT! RANT ALERT!
Some of you may have noticed that I’ve been banned from Entrecard for script dropping. I agree that I did do script dropping, but it isn’t something new to the pros of EC . Anyways, Graham stated afterwards that I was trying to sell him my forum, EntreForums. The only problem with that statement is that I didn’t want to sell him the forum. I wanted to partner up with him and work on it, but he disagreed, so I offered to give him the whole forum + domain for free. Graham didn’t want to take it for free and if he thinks about the current server problem now, I think he should have taken the deal. There’s practically no way to communicate with the rest of the EC members right now since everything was on that one particular server/domain. I opened up EntreForums many months back to help Graham out, but he didn’t want it, so maybe some of you EC’ers could bring some members over to my forums. I mean come on, mine rocks!
This totally brings me back to the point that if there was some sort of backup, Entrecard wouldn’t be in this sort of situation. Even if these server problems are very rare cases, shit does happen. If Graham was to have a separate forum or place for communication, members would be updated with the latest news. The only form of update now is through the ugly yellow background page or ThePlanet’s forum.
The post today was pretty much a rant post, but also a post to point out that if you’re a blogger, you shouldn’t depend on ONE thing to bring the traffic. Once something happens to that particular site, you would be left with nothing except the need to start over from scratch again. Without the use of Entrecard, I’m not able to realize the more realistic numbers of my blog’s ranks and visitors per day.
Remember to sign up for EntreForums and start communicating there if you’re a member of Entrecard.
I just can’t really understand why there are people that rely on just one site for traffic. You are just asking for trouble going about it that way.
I agree that bloggers need to be looking at many different sources for their traffic. There are a lot of sites out there that can bring some very good traffic such as the ones that you listed.
I myself am just getting into the whole social networking/bookmarking scene, but I can definitely see how using these sites can really bring a nice boost to your traffic and possibly garner some readers as well.
My last blog post is..AMR #7 – Almost There
I am cofused. The EC is down but we can still access the forum? hmmmmm
My last blog post is..Win $350 and more from DiggItLive dot COM
Well, I rely on google for traffic and I don’t think the servers of google is going to be down anytime soon.
My last blog post is..Air purifier in Malaysia taxis
yep traffic from entrecarders is down. that’s probably around 30 to 50 visitors, half of the number of cards I normally drop daily.
but my traffic now is not from entrecard alone. the no.1 source recently is google.
My last blog post is..The Masks Bloggers Wear
I cant believe Graham doesn’t have a business continuity plan, how can anybody let their business make or break on something like a fire at at a single data center, where is the redundancy… kind of shows you how much he knows about doing real business… do you think Google or Facebook would fall apart because of a fire at a one of their data centers??? the answer is no… kind of shows you what level he is playing at… still at kiddie website stage…
My last blog post is..Japan Creates the Worlds Smallest Bowl of Ramen
I notice also that Entrecard is down today.. I have lots of pending entrecards today.. but I can’t approved it because entrecard is down..
My last blog post is..Meet Dave Movie Trailer..
I wondered what impact it would have on my traffic – one blog i have seems to be visited by a lot of entrecarders & was down about 90 hits…the other two actually were up on traffic
this explains why the other 2 blogs are more profitable – they are getting targeted traffic
My last blog post is..100 Classic Rock Love Songs
Nice point raised!.
In fact,it’s a lot more easier to get traffic from Entrecard than the other options available!.That’s why it has become so popular.
Now,that it’s so popular,we see no “dumping” of this program in the near future.Problems like this do happen,they can’t beat the success of Entrecard!.
People start using it from the next day and they forget to complain.
And yes! people should keep their options open.They shouldn’t keep their fruits in one basket,they should be using the others too.
My last blog post is..Google gets bored with it’s favicon:changes it !.
I used to depend partially on EC for traffic..but Google provides me with all the traffic. Its the most reliable source by far!
I have a dedicated server that I’m in the process of migrating from at The Planet. I host about 20 other sites (personal, clients) on that server, believe me my phone rang nonstop Saturday and Sunday.
Good thing that I’ve weekend GrandmasterB from EntreCard.
My last blog post is..Month in Review – May 2008
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Yeah its down..I visit it today to approve some but it’s down..All most half of my traffic are came from EC…I wonder if when they were up..:(
My last blog post is..ABADDON(THE LORD OF AVERNUS)
I havent used entrecard as yet. Might try it soon. Hope the site comes back soon
My last blog post is..My Blog Is A PR 4 Now!
Hey Mike!
How much % of your traffic basically depends on Entrecard?
I don’t rely entirely on EC for traffic so I don’t really worried when they say their website was down…
Hey Aryst!
you should really try EC.
It can bring a good amt of traffic
luckily that I was on a holiday when it went down. By the time I got to access the internet, it was already up and running!
My last blog post is..This is Madness!
“Some of you may have noticed that I’ve been banned from Entrecard for script dropping. I agree that I did do script dropping, but it isn’t something new to the pros of EC”
Been off for a while so I just stumbled on this today. You are saying that the pros in EC are also cheating? OMG! O_o
My last blog post is..Be Careful Where You Drop