Entrecard is, first of all, a great platform for bloggers to get their blogs noticed by the search engines first, by other bloggers in the second place and only in the last place by potential readers. Based on a simple yet effective concept, an Entrecard user can “drop” at most 300 cards on other blogs in the program to earn credits. Dropping means visiting a blog in the program and clicking on the Entrecard banner – this way you get one credit and the blog owner one visitor.

With the credits, people can purchase one day long advertisements (125×125 squares) on other blogs, thus improving their exposure and, in theory, getting some targeted traffic. But the reality is different, unfortunately, and I tell it after spending about one year in Entrecard with three different blogs.

First of all, the visitors you will get via the Entrecard widget are other Entrecard users themselves. And although we’re talking about genuine traffic, we’re not talking about visitors interested in your content, but in clicking the Entrecard banner. Therefore, 95% of these “droppers” will NOT read your blog’s content, nor generate ANY income unless you run some sort of CPM advertising program.

However, until now, this was not a big problem: you were still getting some traffic if you are very active, you still had the chance to make a bunch of good friends – the few blog owners that actually read your content, and also you had the chance to get a decent amount of linkbacks, which is something every blog owner interested in growing their blog should strive to get. So, all in all, you were getting some free traffic and link backs and maybe the chance to meet some great people to connect with.

However, the overall value of Entrecard kept declining. First time when I joined, I remember getting about 400 and even 500 visitors per day (that was happening about one year ago) without breaking too much sweat, very active bloggers, I managed to create a solid community around my blog and I soon started to win some money. However, I had to sell that blog and started a new one – one that was a bit less successful in terms of users from Entrecard, even though I was more active. And finally, the third blog I started and signed up on Entrecard about one month ago proved me that the service went down and is still sinking.

First of all because most of the bloggers, just like I did with my Entrecard-listed blogs, come there for the links and the few extra visitors then, when they get enough to carry on by themselves, quit the service. This means that the really active users pool is not as big as before, people come and go, and most of them started to see that it’s all about dropping your card and not building a community – which is wrong, but that’s the truth!

Even more, the Entrecard owners took another strange decision that ultimately hit their popularity within the owners: they came up with a new set of rules, demanding that the Entrecard widget is placed above the fold (that might have changed meanwhile, though, since nobody was fond of that) and, even worse, by delivering paid banners – banners that gave just them cash, and not the owners. In other words, if a user purchased an ad space with Entrecard credits, half of the impressions would go to the paid sponsor. Of course, that is something most of the users did not agree with and neither did I, and it’s just a proof that Entrecard is unfortunately going down.

Of course, they do not (or at least did not, when I had an account there) oblige the users to display the paid-for ads, but most of the people do.

Still, in my opinion, if you wish to get some extra visitors to your website for free and get some link backs if you are very active, Entrecard is a good choice as long as it lasts – but you’d better hurry joining them (www.entrecard.com) since they’re sinking and I was not the only user leaving them… Also, if you want your content to be read or your bank account to grow, you should seriously look elsewhere because Entrecard is no longer what it used to be!

UPDATE: I was contacted and told that Entrecard is actually planning to allow users cash out their credits (one visited blog = one credit). The exact value is not yet set, but it is rumored that it will be of around $5 for 1,000 credits (about 3 days of dropping all your cards). However, even though this sounds good, it’s only good for those who already have some credits left since, due to the paid advertisers who take half of your drops and the fact that you have to PAY WITH CREDITS for the ads you purchase, you won’t get any richer, anyway…