EntreBlast

Archive for the ‘Guides’ Category

Lately Entrecard has showed strong encouragement for commenting on other people’s blogs. With the addition fo SezWho, and the posts on commenting lessons, I think people should start getting the idea that blog commenting is beneficial. Here are just a few of the many reasons why you should comment on blogs:

Links

Some blogs have do-follow enabled comments, which means that if you comment with a link to your site, search engine spiders like Google, will follow through to your site, giving your site a linkback. The more you comment on these types of blogs, well, they could contribute to your Google PageRank. That is, if you care about that.

Traffic

When you comment on a blog post, you should enter your website URL in the URL field. A quality comment will make readers wanting to see your blog. Make it to the Top Commentators list, if they have one, and you’ll probably receive traffic from that as well. You won’t be getting an enourmous ammount of traffic, but you will get some.

Branding

It’s about people remembering the name. Use the name of your blog or website when you comment. The more comments you make, the more people are going to start remembering you. If you don’t get them to check out your website through your comment the first time, eventually they will be too curious and won’t be able to resist.

Reputation

This kind of goes with branding. If you are leaving really good comments, people will remember you even more. It’s easier to do this with guest posting, but it can still work with blog commenting. If you make a SezWho profile, people can see how your comments on other blogs are rating. If you have SezWho installed on your own blog, and you are commenting on your own blog, (which you should be, it’s important to interact with your readers/commenters) they’ll want to check it out.

Community Feel

I mentioned this in the last section, but you should be commenting on your own blog. You should respond to people that take the time to read and share their thoughts on a post. This will benefit you, but make an impression on them. Responding to comments adds to your reputation. It helps make the relationship between the reader and the writer closer. It’s hard to see the impact from a writer’s perspective, but as a reader and the writer comments back, you’ll see what I mean.

And there you have it. There are a ton of benefits to commenting on blogs. If for some reason you aren’t doing so yet, try it out. Read a post, and share your thoughts. Like this post for example. What’s your view on blog commenting? Do you do it?

Not getting dropped on?

Are you receiving either 0 or just a few drops a day and wondering why? Or, recently have you noticed a decrease in the amount of drops you are receiving, even if you are continuing to drop regularly? Chances are, there is something wrong with your EC widget or website. Here are some explantions to your confusion. Check out these things and see if they solve your problems!

Reasons Why You Aren’t Receiving Drops

Your site takes way too long to load.

When it comes to dropping, Entrecarders can be very impatient. Well, when it comes to loading a site at all, I think everyone is impatient! If your site takes too long to load, people will just close it and move on. You can speed up site loading times by removing scripts and widgets that you don’t need, which is most of them.

Your site doesn’t load at all!

Great. I spent all this time trying to get this one site to load and then I get the message that says it can’t load the site! If that is happening, or your site is down, well, you can’t get drops! It’s important to keep track of your site’s bandwidth usage, since that is probably the problem if your site is down. If it’s not, it could be your host. A reliable host is important!

Your Entrecard widget is too hard to find.

A skilled Entrecard dropper can find a widget in a matter of seconds. The eyes draw to the sidebar, and look for a square with a little gold strip underneath. It’s usually easy to pick out. However, some people like to hide their widget. Either at the bottom of the site, stuck in a post, or hidden in a cluster of ads. If this is the case, you are going to frustrate some people, and they might think you don’t even have a widget! Make sure your widget is clearly visible.

Your Entrecard widget is impossible to find – it’s not there!

It’s really fun trying to reciprocate drops, searching the entire page for the widget, checking the places where users sometimes hide it, and then finally deciding that the widget isn’t even there. Fun fun! You could be a regular dropper and then one day you could find that your widget isn’t there. This happens sometimes if you accidentally remove the code from your sidebar or edit it. This could be from adding, removing, or editing, soemthing right next to the EC widget, and the code for the widget just gets stuck in the mess.

You are banned from Entrecard.

This is easy to figure out if you try to log in to Entrecard. No one will be able to drop on you if you’re banned! This could be due to a number of things. You can check out this list of ways your blog could have been banned from Entrecard for.

Additionally, you probably aren’t receiving a whole lot of drops because you aren’t dropping yourself! The reasons above are for those who continue to drop regularly. However, if you aren’t, you won’t be getting many drops back either. It’s important to regularly return drops and drop on new blogs. This will increase the amount of drops you receive.

There are plenty of ways to gain Entrecard credits! And they are all pretty easy too. What’s difficult is racking up a ton of ECs. It takes a lot of time especially when you first join Entrecard. Anyways, here are ways to earn Entrecard credits.

Selling Advertising

This method will give you a steady stream of ECs each day. Entrecard takes 50% of what you earn from ads, and the minimum cost for an ad is two ECs. So, you can at least earn 1 EC a day by doing nothing. But, the more people drop on your Entrecard, the more the spot is worth. You can end up earning hundreds a day!

Dropping

You earn 1 EC every time some drops on your Entrecard, and 1 EC every time you drop your card on someone else’s. This takes a bit of time each day if you wish to rack up on ECs. You can use the Entrecard Browser to easily find other Entrecard user websites and earn Entrecard credits easier.

Contests

Using Entrecard credits as prizes seems to be the coolest thing to do right now. Almost every contest I find includes 1000+ ECs as a prize. I’ve even seen a 20,000 EC prize! Though searching the blogosphere for Entrecard contests takes time. Lucky for you, EntreBlast brings the contests to YOU!

Selling Stuff

Entrecard has their own Entrecard shop where you can buy and sell items and services in exchange for ECs. You can sell almost anything. A wise thing to sell would be a service, like designing Entrecards.

Buying ECs

Ebay, The EC Shop, and other sites have people selling ECs on them. The cost for ECs vary from person to person and place to place, but Entrecard is working on their own EC exchange which will hopefully set fixed prices for buying and selling Entrecard credits.