This post is about Entrecard and its potential use as a source of income.

(If you have no clue about what I am saying check out this introductory post on Entrecard.)

Entrecard is a great way to increase traffic to your blog. If you are reading this post right now there is a good chance you came from Entrecard so I won’t really get into the whole thing, if you would like to read more check out Entrecard Tips.

Entrecard Credits and Real Currency

The basis of the ‘Entrecard system’ is the Entrecard credit or e.c’s. The value of advertising on your blog, on any blog for that matter, is represented by an amount of credits. These credits are the Entrecard currency. The amount of credits required to advertise on ones blog is a direct outcome of the amount of Entrecard traffic/drops that blog is getting. In other words, Entrecard credits are directly analogous to traffic. The more traffic you get the more credits you make. The more visits and drops you make the more credits are added to your account. The more traffic/drops a blog gets the more credits it costs to advertise on that blog just because more people visit and drop on it. It’s pretty straight forward…

Entrecard is great because it gives the opportunity to bloggers with less or no traffic and income to advertise and get more visitors for free. In general however, advertising costs money. Sometimes, a lot of money…. Within Entrecard, credits are the equivalent of money. They are advertising dollars, and they are used by the at least 4,000 members to buy and sell advertising. Since Entrecard credits are used for advertising and advertising costs money, it is pretty easy to make the correlation between Entrecard credits and real money….dollars.

Making More Credits/Dollars with Entrecard

What are the ways for making more credits and eventually more money with Entrecard? Well, the answer is pretty straight forward. First you need to answer one question. Ask yourself, what am I selling?

You are selling traffic. When someone buys an ad on your blog they pay with the intent to get more visits. So you as a seller must be able to give your advertisers, your Entrecard ‘clients’ the best value for their advertising dollars. When someone places an ad on your widget for 100 and got 10 visits then they paid 10 credits per visitor. The more visits someone gets when they advertise on you the higher the possibility for them to advertise again; which would mean more credits for you. To make more credits and get more for traffic for your advertisers you need to be active in the community. You need to drop a lot and try and get other Entrecard members to your blog. Being active in the forums is a good way of doing so. The more time you spend on the community the more visitors you will get. Eventually you will learn ways to decrease that time spent, and as you get better in attracting people to your blog the time you spend doing so will decrease.

The best way to accumulate more credits is to remain active. As you use the system credits will rack up.

Drop a lot and drop smart. Drop to get a drop back.

Drop a lot.

Pretty straight forward advice…Visit as many blogs and drop on as many widgets as you can. Ideally, you should reach the daily drop limit of 300 every day.

Receive drops.

Drop on people who reciprocate drops. Keep track of your inbox on Entrecard and drop back on them. Some will appreciate that and always drop back. Get organized, get the RSS feed of your inbox, check it daily. Add blogs that reciprocate drops to your favourites, drop on them daily. Weed out the ones that don’t return drops and keep doing what works best. Also when you get more drops the price to advertise on your blog increases….

Receiving drops is very important in accumulating credits. Just think about it. If you drop 300 cards a day on people who will all reciprocate drops, you will be accumulating 600 credits a day. 600 day x 7, that 4,200 a week, x 52 that’s 218,400 credits a year. Since there is no limit on the drop one can receive, and there are 4,000 possible daily droppers out there, you could be getting way more than just 300 drops on you per day.

Don’t get excited, this is all hypothetical. Even if you drop 300 a day the chances of having those 300 bloggers reciprocate are pretty slim. You can fine tune your dropping over time or rank higher in your category buy advertising and get more people dropping.

Ok, so you drop a lot and you get drops back. That’s great but you are still not maximizing your Entrecard earning potential. Doing so involves selling things for credits in the shop.

The Entrecard shop

There is a shop and you can actually use it. Anyone can. You can sell advertising for more than one day, sell custom logos, capitalize on your writing skills, anything that might have a monetary value, and that could interest a buyer, could be sold. There are several other sellers in the shop that might be selling similar things with you. Don’t be discouraged, be competitive. Sell for less, give more value and you can always count on making a sale.

How much is an Entrecard Credit worth? Well, how much do you value a visitor? How much would you pay for 100, 200, 300, or even 1,000 visitors? How much would you pay for just over 200 visits? There is no ‘Entrecard Standard' maybe there should be maybe there shouldn't be. I don't know... however, it all boils down to how much you value a visit. Would you pay 500 credits for 500 visits? I know I would. Having 500 visitors in one day can be great. So what if most of them will come here just to drop. Even if I get 20 out of the 500 stick around I and read and two of them actually join an affiliate program or make a purchase through my blog, I could make that 500 credits back ten fold! How about 1000 credits for a thousand visitors? You could get those visitors for less than $10. I'll sell you 1,000 credits for $8. Just visit my profile and send me a message.

The way I see it you can use Entrecard to make money in two ways: Directly and Indirectly.

Visit my blog to learn more about how to make money with entrecard