And Break!

A lot of startup blogs have the need to expose their web site to a broader audience. Entrecard is a free blogging network that lets you reach that goal by dropping electronic business cards on other blogs. Through dropping cards you earn credits which you can in turn use to advertise on other blogs.

Because of this Entrecard is particularly useful at reaching a broader audience. If you are new to it and want to use it more efficiently read about some tips for Entrecard.

To get a true picture of Entrecard you also have to look at the problems people are facing with it. Some of these issues are rather serious while others are more unimportant.

Entrecard’s Problems

1. Lots of Malware

   This is one of the most serious problems with Entrecard - there is a whole lot of malware. If you visit a lot of web sites through Entrecard and do not clear your private data after leaving your browser you might be vulnerable to malware.
   To avoid this under Firefox you can to Edit -> Preferences and there select the tab Privacy. Make sure there is a check where it says Always clear my private data when I close Firefox. Then click on Settings… and make checks at Cache, Cookies, and Offline Website Data as shown above. This is the minimum, I actually delete all of the data when I leave Firefox.
   Now that you are set up you should be better protected from malware spread by malicious web sites. What we did is to tell Firefox to delete all of the irrelevant data like the cached objects when you close it.

2. Poor Content of Web sites

   Poor content is a really serious problem with blogs using Entrecard. There are a lot of small blogs that do not offer good content which in turn decreases the experience you have with Entrecard. But there is a deeper problem to it.

   The issue evolves from Entrecard itself. It’s concept is to help bloggers become more well-known and receive more traffic, a genuine idea. But therein lies the problem. Only people with small startup blogs will use Entrecard to generate traffic.

   Why would well-established bloggers use it? Have you ever seen a highly popular blog using Entrecard? Not really. They might have used it some time ago but why would they stay in a network that is worthless to them because they already get enough traffic?

3. No Sustained Traffic

   Traffic is important but I think it is not worth it if you have to promote it heavily. Entrecard does generate a lot of traffic for bloggers but you have to be active in the community to receive a good amount of it. Of course it is good to be active in the blogger community but I do not feel that it is worth it. I stopped dropping cards on other sites because it does not make sense to me.

   I now focus more on building unique content which is much more important because over time you will eventually receive a lot of traffic naturally through your articles.

4. Entrecard Advertisement System

   Entrecard’s Advertisement System is of course good for bloggers to once again receive more traffic. The only issue involving it is that only the better “Entrecard blogs” are worth advertising on. The others receive so little traffic that it is not valuable to put your ads on their blogs. Take a look at my stats: Out of 14 ads I placed I received only traffic from 3-4 of them. In my opinion this is a pretty low figure.

5. Entrecard’s Toolbar Works Only with Firefox

   This is actually a minor problem but I thought of mentioning it. Entrecards toolbar, Entrebar, only works in Firefox. I love Firefox so it is not a problem for me but it might be for other people using Internet Explorer or Safari.

I do not mean to discourage you with this post I actually think Entrecard is really helpful but I just wanted to give you some insight in what I think are the problems with Entrecard. Feel free to share your thoughts