Need some free advertising for your blog? Go and get a free business card for your blog! What? Don’t worry, I am not asking you to print some business cards. I am telling about Entrecard, a free service for blog promotion. It is very simple to use and needs a small space on your blog to start! You can see my entrecard on the sidebar. I have tested it for more than one month and the results are very positive. So, I would strongly suggest Entrecard for your blog.

What is an Entrecard?

Entrecard is a widget-based, free, advertising service for bloggers who own and operate their own blog. In this interesting service, every blog is represented by a a 125×125 image, called as an ‘Entrecard’. An Entrecard may be called as the business card for a blog. The system works by exchange of entrecards via a widget that every member places on their blogs. With entrecard you can promote your blog and launch free advertising campaigns within the network.

Entrecard has a point system, called Entrecard Credits! These credits are used as the virtual money within the system. Entrecard credits are used to purchase placement for your card on other blogs via the widget. You earn a credit every time you drop your card in someone else’s widget, every time someone leaves you a card, and every time someone buys placement for their card on your blog.

How to start with Entrecard?

It is very simple to start. All you need is a blog, that you write in English. Get a free Entrecard account here. Once your account is activated and you are logged in, you will see the entrecard dashboard. This is the place from where you can run and manage your advertising campaigns. Prepare your entrecard with your own design or by using a default one and put the widget code on your blog. Once the automatic widget scanner detects the widget on your blog, you can start your journey!

In the right side of your dashboard, you will see four small columns. These columns will show the interested advertisers, your ads, ads running on your widget and recent card droppers on your site. On the left side of your dashboard, you can see your quick stats, account settings, most recent transactions etc. In the header tabs you will find links to the dashboard, widget code, campaign, entrecard shop, entrecard blog , entrecard forum, statistics and help section.

Use the campaign tab to view the entrecards of other blogs. You can view them by category, most recent, most popular, most recommended, lowest wait, your favourites or by your nearby. To advertise on a particular entrecard, just click on the advertise link below that card (if available) and then click again to confirm the sale. Remember you must have enough credits to purchase a spot! Once the entrecard owner approves your proposal, the system will assign a particular date and time for your advert. On that date and time your entrecard will appear on that blog and will run for 24 hrs.

My experience with Entrecard:

I am using entrecard on my blog and I am satisfied with the system. To test the system I dropped lot of cards in the beginning and eventually decreased it to zero per day. The results are amazing. I got over 1000 visits from entrecard to my blog. (Don’t laugh at my stats! I have no time for dropping 300 cards a day!) I also managed to advertise on JohnChow.Com, from where I got 65 visits! During my zero drop days I got 20-30 visits. But it reduced my ad spot value from 96 credits/day to 10 credits/day!

The most interesting result was the drop ratio. I dropped 719 cards and in return I got 742 card drops on my blog. So, it means that the more you drop, the more drops you will receive. So don’t wait and start dropping your cards. It is fun too, if you have some spare time!

Advantages of Entrecard for Bloggers:

• Drive a huge amount of traffic to your blog, without paying a cent!
• Discover new blogs in your blog niche.
• Build good relationship with new bloggers.
• May get some good blog subscribers.
• You may find some new sponsors too!

Some tips for using Entrecard:

• Drop cards on different blogs. Drop as much as you can. The general principle is the more you drop, the more drops you receive on your blog.

• Get an eye catching card for your blog. It may help in getting more drops.

• Place your Entrecard widget on a higher place. You may place it on your sidebar or on your header. Avoid placing it on your blog footer.

• Write recommendations and send messages to your favourite bloggers. It will help in drawing their attention towards your blog.

• Visit the Entrecard forum and try to participate in the discussions.

Entrecard gives you traffic. But, are they useful? Many people thinks that entrecard traffic is useless. Because, most of the entrecard visitor comes for dropping cards. They stays hardly a few seconds on your blog. With growing popularity of this system, I have a growing fear on my mind! Is there any chance that Google AdSense will term these as invalid impressions? What you think? I know that many of blog readers are using entrecard. So, please feel free to express your reactions.