At Blog World Expo I was introduced to Entrecard and it wasn’t until about 15 days ago that I actually signed up for it. I have to say, I was missing out on so much. For the most part I was missing out on some great traffic for my blog.

I wanted to give the service a few weeks to evaluate how it worked. And I have to say that with a little work on your part Entrecard will work well for you.

The basic gist of the service is that it acts like a virtual fishbowl on your blog. People can drop their blog business cards into your fishbowl. When they do that they earn Entrecard Credits (or ec). You can also earn ec by dropping your card on other people’s blogs, so earning ec comes from giving and receiving. That is a good concept. I posit that the more you give the more you will receive. Some may disagree with me on this point but in my experience with the service I get many more drops on those days when I drop the maximum # of cards (300 by the way).

Another way that you can attract people to drop their card on your blog or visit your blog would be by advertising on someone else’s blog. When you start using Entrecard your blog will most likely be worth 1 or 2 ec to advertise. So that means that it costs 1 or 2 ec for another blogger to advertise on your blog for one 24 hour period. You can accept or reject the blogs that you want to advertise on your blog. When you accept a blogger’s advertisement they get a notice and that advertisement will begin running on the specified day. It seems that the 24 hour clock begins the moment you accept a blogger’s advertisement. I accepted my first advertisement at 10:45am and advertising on my blog runs from 10:45am to 10:45am the next day. From the first accepted advertisement I have had a steady stream of people advertising on my blog.

Don’t be discouraged that it only costs 1 or 2 ec to advertise on your blog, as you get more traffic that number will rise.

My blog started at 2ec per ad and got all the way up to 268ec per ad. That was all within the 15 day period.

Here are my current stats.

So how did that happen?

My theory is that many factors came together to make this happen.

1. I have a compelling blog with fresh unique content daily.

I have a theme to my blog and that is daily unique photos that I take each and every day. I post them to my blog as well as to Flickr, Twitter and to a mobile blog all through the service called Utterz. That means that in addition to images I can also post video and audio. The web is multimedia people, make use of it.

2. I put the Entrecard widget “above the fold” so people could see it right away.

If people see your widget they are more apt to click on it and also to click on the blog advertising on your widget. You should give your advertisers a return on their investment, whether it be money or ec.

3. Viewers immediately see my latest content.

Because I take a photo each and every day new viewers will always see a unique photo ‘above the fold’ I am convinced that images draw viewers. If the image is compelling people feel they should read the content. So I make sure I make the image compelling.

4. Hook ‘em with post titles.

I used to title each Photo-A-Day image as “Photo-A-Day #”. Not really something that would hook someone into reading the content. So with Photo #1001 I started making better post titled.

5. Enter Entrecard contests.

By entering contests you are helping out other Entrecard users who will remember you and visit your blog and drop cards on your blog. You will probably also get decent link love from the contests too and sometimes you are lucky enough to get additional ec.

6. Chain Drop.

If you visit a blog to drop a card click on the blog that is being advertised and continue on till you come back around to a blog that you have already dropped a card on. This way you can visit many different blogs and you can work towards dropping the maximum number of cards each day (300 to be exact).

7. Throw a contest of your own.

Come up with something decent and easy and start giving away some ec to people in return for link love or an ec entry fee. I have blogged about many different and varied contests that are being held and one of the best ones is the football squares contest by Sam Freedom.

8. Leave a recommendation on blogs you like.

By leaving a recommendation on a blog you are increasing the good karma on other blogs and gaining good karma for you and may even gain a daily card dropper. Leaving a recommendation on a blog is very easy to do as well.

9. Thank people who have visited your blog.

If someone came by and dropped a card on your blog, thank them for coming by. Ask them to come back, ask them what they liked about the blog. You can send messages to other Entrecard users easily and it is a great way to meet more people.

10. Be consistent and be nice people remember when you are nice to them.

Visit the same blogs that you like daily, comment on the blogs and tell other’s about them too. And always be nice to people because that is just good manners and promotes good karma. If you do deny an advertisement be nice about it and explain why. Waiting for your blog to be worth more is not a good reason. It is selfish and not in good spirit. But if you don’t feel comfortable directing your audience to a specific blog let the person know in a clear and nice way. Behind each blog is a human being, treat people well and it will return to you tenfold.