Tuesday Tip: Entrecard

I've recently been introduced to the world of entrecard...I'm not sure how I found it or why I tried it...but somebody had it on their blog and I thought I'd give it a whirl. I vaguely remember that they mentioned in their blog post that they got a lot of traffic from it...well, I've had mine for just a couple of weeks now and already I have to say that YES, I get a LOT of traffic from it! More than twitter, more than facebook, more than them both combined actually!

So, what is entrecard? Well, it's something like an electronic business card and an ad rolled into one.
See there on the left sidebar? That's my card spot. If you have entrecard, you can 'drop' on my spot to let me know you were here. You can do that once a day, every day. Every time you drop, you earn entrecard points.
Every time someone drops on you, you can see who it was--and you have the option to bookmark them (within your entrecard account), to drop on their site, etc.
You can't see my actual card on my own site, what you see is someone elses card that I have agreed to display today--they have paid entrecard credits to advertise with me. Depending how many drops I get in a day, the cost to advertise with me varies--higher for more drops. It's more expensive to advertise on a blog that gets a lot of traffic...but then again, it's all entrecard points, which are free.
Actually, you can also buy entrecard points for cash if you want to--I'm not messing with that at this point though. I'm focusing on dropping. ☺
So where is my card? Well, I drop it on other people of course (and they can see who has dropped on them, and hopefully will come back to visit me and drop their card for me), but also I can place ads with other people. I can browse through entrecard and choose who I want to place my ad with. Some sites cost just a few credits, some cost over 400...it just depends on how busy the site is. Once I choose someone, they get a message saying that I've applied to advertise on their site. They then approve or decline my ad--if they decline, then I can take my credits and go elsewhere. If they approve me, then my ad shows on their site for one day (24 hours). Of course the same applies in reverse--if someone wants to advertise with me, I have the choice to accept or decline them. That's nice because it means that I never have to allow content that I don't want on my site.
I also get credits every time someone clicks on my ad (on someone elses site), every time I feature someone elses ad on my site, and every time I make a blog post!

A tip about using entrecard--put your card near the top of your page. That way it will load first--if you have a lot of stuff on your page, other people may not see the card, or may not wait long enough for it to load (especially if they have a slower connection). If you put your card at the top of your page, they will see it, AND it will load so they will be able to drop on it!!!

Also, you might consider joining a ring (I joined the green ring with eco-conscience blogs, but there are a lot of rings--just look next to other people's cards and see what they've got, then click the link!)

Click here to see my tuesday tip about speedy dropping (or, how to earn a lot of credits fast!)