SFI wants to thank you for your visit and participation. Comments, following, adding, tweeting, etc., etc., are very much appreciated and reciprocated. ;o)

Monday, February 22, 2010

If you "Drop" visit a friend of mine ;o)

With the recent hullabaloo over at Entrecard regarding the use of the dastardly and dreaded "Ghost Droppers" lists out there, I want to introduce you to a friend of SFI that feels he has developed the answer to the dilemma facing both groups. One side abhorring the idea of a "ghost list" because the person using it does not actually visit your site yet will still get credit for clicking on your Entrecard Widget. (Which by the way; as the clicked site you still received your credit as well for the visit.) The real harm in this was that if you "regularly" updated your blogposts, your hard work would not be read by the person using the ghost list because they were not actually visiting your site. The other side of the coin were the people using these lists. I believe that the list was used as primarily a time saver. Dropping 300 cards a day can take a long, long, long, time.

The site I am writing this post about is called, Dropzone. You can find it via the following widget;

Dropzone

When you arrive at this site, you will be lead to a series of thirty buttons. The author of this site says that "You will save 270 clicks per day and avoid carpal tunnel syndrome". Who can argue with that logic? ;o) When you click on a button, a total of ten sites will open on your browser (Firefox is the recommended browser) and you will be able to visit and see the most recent post on each site. If your internet connection is good this can be accomplished very quickly using this system. Another thing that I really like about this service is that the sites he includes on is list all place the Entrecard widget "Above the fold" mostly right below the header. No Fuss No Muss.

If I could give some unsolicited advice to this site, it would be to monitor the sites on the list to make sure that the included sites post regularly. In this way, the users of this list will be sure that they are dropping on the sites of active authors who will be interested in participating in the Entrecard program the way it was envisioned by delivering quality traffic to our sites that participate by commenting and dropping. Take care my friends. ;o)

8 comments:

Mike Golch said...

works for me.I'm on my way over to check it out.

Mike Golch said...

works for me.I'm on my way over to check it out.

Don said...

Wow,

Fantastic post David Thanks.

I've been thinking about how to handle aging posts diplomatically and I think the answer might be to use their age for button placement. Blogs that are fresh and current will be on the lowest number buttons and older ones would get bumped to the back of the pack for speed droppers that want 300 drops.

I've got several other features coming soon too as I get the time to incorporate them.

As the list stabilizes, the next feature I plan to add is a mouse over display of sites on each button before you press it.

I do have a link to the list of all the sites on the buttons now but a mouse over view would be a bonus.

We'll see how the tool evolves as time goes by.

Thanks again for the wicked post,

Don
The Dropzone

Unknown said...

I've been on the fence about Dropzone since they started dropping on my page, not because I like clicking until my wrist is sore but more out of seeing if they were one of those sites that drops once and then never again. That hasn't proved to be the case. With your post in support of them, I'm going to give the service a try. Thanks for being the vanguard on the "ghost scandal" -the worst seems to be over and I hope we're all feeling renewed in our commitment to quality posting/dropping/commentary.

Anonymous said...

I was about to leave entrecard when I heard about the Dropzone tool. Late last week my Entrecard stats showed I had 45 drops on my site by around 7am but my sitemeter showed only 20 visitors since Midnight, only ONE of them via the entrecard widget. This was AFTER the Ghost brouhaha.

Next, I read an article by a popular blogger who found EC was "bad" because it cranked up his bounce rate.

I beleive Dropzone will address this issue. BLOGGERS::: WRITE ATTRACTIVE ARTICLES and people will come back to read more... they may even forget to drop an EC if you make your contenet interesting enough!

Melissa said...

It sounds great with one very big problem. I used to drop, and do other things, with several windows open. I also got a nasty virus that way. When you have all those sites open, it is very easy for a suspect site to get the redirect, or dirty download on your computer before you even get to that site. If you really don't have time to visit someones site, and give it the time, then free sites, with exchange type layouts is probably not the site you need. You might just have to pay for advertising, and then you don't have to worry about visiting sites, you either don't have time to read, or just don't care to read.

GoodReadWatch said...

I think if we use Entrecard for it's intended purpose on an individual level, everything will work out. Think of Entrecard as direct sales or telemarketing - you have to connect with a lot of people to make one sale. I'm happy with my results. I've found some good blogs, read some good posts, and made some friends.

David Tamayo said...

Thanks for checking Don out. He is always trying to make his site better for all of the people that use his site. ;o)