Pinoy Tech

Entrecard, the new viral widget since BlogRush is being installed on almost all my favorite blogs. It has been blogged about everywhere. You can ‘hear’ free traffic, free advertisement all over the blogosphere. Is there a reason behind this?

Yep, it’s because of the free idea.

I have read a lot of bloggers explaining that with Entrecard, you can advertise at John Chow, Shoemoney, Joel Comm or even the Problogger for free. I have to digress from the norm. Here are some myths I have been ‘hearing’ all week.

• Entrecard offers free advertisement - It’s more like the ‘banner exchange’ idea started years ago. You give your own advertisement space in exchange for theirs.
• Entrecard offers free traffic - The traffic you get is useless if they just dropped a card. It’s more of a useless bandwidth expense.
• Entrecard will get you more commentators - You’ll get card droppers, but not commentators.
• Entrecard will get you more RSS readers - Once again, you’ll get card droppers but not RSS readers.

Why isn’t Entrecard Free?

First of all the idea behind Entrecard is to earn credits by (a) dropping your business cards 2.0, (b) when someone else drops their card on your Entrecard widget and (c) when they advertise on your blog.

To advertise on John Chow’s blog you would need close to 200 credits at my time of writing. Do you get my point?

What should you do?

I am not saying that you should drop the Entrecard widget. I am merely saying that you should make use of the hard work you will be doing to get advertised on big name blogs. Use the attention Entrecard is getting to your advantage.

• Catch Attention - Unless you catch their attention, you’ll just get ‘card droppers’ and a high bounce rate. In short, have a link bait.
• Create a “catchy” banner - This will get people interested to visit your site via Entrecard.
• Advertise on blogs with the same category - You get a higher chance of getting a reader interested in your site.
• Advertise on blogs not in the same niche - You’ve noticed! This contradicts #4. But this should only be done if you know you can get a significant audience.

We will next discuss the reasons why you shouldn’t listen to guys like me…