Paid e-cards find less fans

NEW YORK: Web surfers are not eager to pay to send their loved ones greetings, Jupiter Media Metrix said Wednesday, citing the decline in traffic to online e-greeting card sites after many started charging.

Sites such as Yahoo! Greetings and Hallmark.com that are still offering their services for free saw traffic, or the number of total users who visited the site at least once in a month, increase.

Yahoo! Greetings' traffic rose 70 per cent to 9.1 million in December from 5.4 million in November. Hallmark.com saw a 74 per cent rise to 8.2 million visitors.

Traffic to American Greetings Corp. slipped 10 per cent in December, with traffic to Bluemountain.com -- the largest site within the company's network, falling 22 per cent.

Jupiter said once visitors discovered the new fee-based model at one of the greeting card company's sites, Web surfers checked out other sites to see if they could send their wishes without paying.

Many free sites have started charging for services to offset the protracted downturn in advertising spending.

About 58 per cent of American Greeting's total online ad impressions were targeted at converting users to its paid service. Only about 13 per cent of the site's advertising came outside its own network, Jupiter said.

Hallmark.com's advertising focused on selling flowers, cards and other gifts to those who came to the site to send free cards.