Entrecard musings

Posted on Sunday, March 9th, 2008 in blogging Tags: , ,

It’s now a month since I added that E-marked widget to my right sidebar (having discovered Entrecard via Claire at BeboAuthor, and it’s been an interesting one.

For those who aren’t familiar with Entrecard, it’s a bit of an odd one to explain. Basically, if you have a blog, you can sign up. You add the widget to your site, and you’re added to the directory under a chosen category (mine, not surprisingly, is Writing and Literature but there are a couple of dozen to chose from). What then happens is that other Entrecarders visit your blog and ‘drop’ on your Entrecard – the whole idea was inspired by those boxes found in restaurants into which you can drop your business card to win a free lunch (although I’ve never seen any of those in the UK).
You earn credits from drops on your own blog, and by dropping on other blogs. Those credits can then be spent to have your Entrecard feature on someone else’s blog as an advertisement.

Here are some things that have struck me over the past month:

  1. There are a lot of interesting blogs out there that I wouldn’t have found without Entrecard – I’ve added a few to my blogroll.
  2. It’s really easy to get sucked into reading blogs – although I don’t count it as time-wasting, per se, since the alternative online time for me would probably be playing games on Neopets.
  3. More new visitors (I’m now getting around 90+ hits a day although many are people just dropping and moving on) means more new comments. This is good!
  4. More visitors means I feel more of an obligation to post more frequently. This is good!

I suppose, in summary, that Entrecard can be a good thing for your blog, if you’re a starter or have low readership, and want to drum up readers. It’s not a lot of use for bloggers who gets thousands of hits, really, unless they’re interested in finding new blogs to read – which is something Entrecard is definitely good for. And although I haven’t tried any other advertising methods such as Splottt or Project Wonderful, and nor do I intend to, I get the sense that Entrecard is far more of a community than those, and I like that a lot.

And finally, some love to my top ten droppers from the past month:

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8 Responses to 'Entrecard musings'

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  1. kevin said,

    on March 9th, 2008 at 9:16 pm

    hey! I’m on there! Woo hoo. :) I’ve found entrecard to be interesting as well, and hey, I wouldn’t have found you without it, :D

  2. Relax Max said,

    on March 10th, 2008 at 3:53 am

    What a delightful blog! I also would not have known about you had it not been for entrecard. Thanks, too, for your post on my new blog at britishspeak.blogspot. I think your definitions are the more plausible, by the way. Don’t give up on us–the blog won’t be so bumpy once we find our true direction. I just happened to run across a couple of words that were (unbeknownst to me, since I don’t yet speak the language) a little risque the first time around. Surely they can’t all be like that. (Can they?) Thanks again for the visit.

  3. Francis Scudellari said,

    on March 10th, 2008 at 4:08 am

    Hi Catherine,
    Thanks for the link love. I’m adding your site to my blogroll as well. I’ve had a very similar experience with Entrecard and can easily while away hours reading the dozens of very cool blogs I’ve discovered through it. Making new connections is one of the things I enjoy most about blogging.

  4. Tina Kubala said,

    on March 10th, 2008 at 5:24 am

    Another Entrecard visitor. Isn’t it wonderful?

  5. kml said,

    on March 10th, 2008 at 1:30 pm

    Many thanks for the link! Entrecard is certainly addictive!

  6. Daisy the Curly Cat said,

    on March 10th, 2008 at 7:45 pm

    Thanks for the link! You are in my Entrecard favorites, so I try to visit and drop most days. I have seen a big increase in my traffic, too, since I joined Entrecard.

  7. John Lockwood said,

    on March 17th, 2008 at 9:05 pm

    Interesting post.

    I just started with Entrecard last week. Unlike you, however, I also tried on ProjectWonderful, and today I was able to boost my Entrecard readership by buying a ProjectWonderful ad on the Entrecard blog! That was pretty fun.

    I agree that it’s also a good way to find new blogs, and that’s half the fun of it.

  8. Susan said,

    on March 20th, 2008 at 5:02 pm

    Ah, brilliant…another reason to waste more time internetting (meaning, not writing) and worse, it sounds fun!

    YAY!

    At least, the next time I miss a deadline, I’ll just blame my ol’ sharp-worded friend…

    ;-)