I just do not know if I am actually the right person to be writing this post. I do not consider myself an “expert” in the “ins” and “outs” of Entrecard-dropping. I have been getting quite a number of messages from my Entrecard inbox asking me where have I learnt so much. Some were asking me to share some SECRETS for my “success” at Entrecard and requesting me to do a post that could help newbie Entrecarders. I couldn’t just disregard those messages and shrug my shoulders off. It would be lovely if I could get to share some things I know and I hope some people could derive huge advantage from it.

First off, one must understand what Entrecard did for me. It did wonders for my blogs- Our Journey to Forever and Kuerdas (please try to swing by those blogs). It gave me more than 300 hits a day and more than the hits, I came across wonderful blogs and made friends with beautiful people. I couldn’t have done it if not for Entrecard.

When I began taking dropping cards seriously, it’s taking me forever finishing my dropping chores. I read and read blogger’s articles because that’s how amazed I was in encountering these beautiful blogs. That’s where I learned some of the tricks and that’s when I’ve started experimenting changing my techniques.

WHERE TO DROP YOUR CARDS?
I’m telling you, when I first joined here, I do not know Popular blogs existed! I didn’t aimed for my blog’s popularity. My concern is only to drop my cards to fellow Entrecarders with the hope that they would reciprocate. But to my dismay, for about a month of hurdling to drop 300 cards daily, my efforts were for naught. Only about 30% were returning my drops and most of the blogs I was dropping my cards on have long been dead!

What an absolute waste of time!
When we see an EC widget, we would usually click “drop” on impulse. That’s how it is for novice. But let me emphasize here that every cards dropped counts. We need to be sure if the blogs we have just dropped our cards on would return our drops. It’s OK to drop on friends no matter what rankings they have at Entrecard. They would always reciprocate because they are friends!

DROP FROM THE POPULAR BLOGS
You may ask me, WHAT RANKINGS? In case you still don’t know it, I’ve slowly learned that every blog is ranked at Entrecard. ALL blogs are ranked according to POPULARITY. There are 52 categories and each blog is ranked according to popularity in each categories.
Here’s how you can get to know your blog’s rank:
· Go to the CAMPAIGN TAB in your Dashboard
· Choose POPULAR
· Select ALL CATEGORIES
· Order should be by MOST POPULAR
· Choose NO MAXIMUM for Maximum Price.
· Choose 24 rows per page (Top 120 Popular blogs will show on the first page).

YOUR 125 X 125 ENTRECARD WIDGET PLAYS A VITAL ROLE
Out of more than 15, 000 Entrecard members, it will now be very easy to recognize the Popular blogs if you get yourself familiarized with their avatars. Once you see them anywhere, you will get to know they are those blogs who have been doing crazy drops, day in and day out! I know these blogs even when my eyes are closed, haha! Now, I would dissuade anyone from changing avatars every now and then. You wouldn’t want to lose your regular droppers, right?

COLOR CODING
One thing important to know is the COLOR CODING at Entrecard. These are as follows:
· Gold = Featured
· Rose = Favorite
· Blue = Ad purchased
· Green = Dropped
· Dark = Recently rejected
· Black= Not yet dropped

I want you to take careful notice of these colors if you drop from the POPULAR BLOGS. If you have made a drop on a particular blog, the color will turn to GREEN, so there’s no need to go to the site. That would save you ample time. If the color is black, and you want to drop on that site, that’s the time you can visit the site and drop your card.

HOW IMPORTANT IS YOUR DROP INBOX?
Very important. The drop inbox will help you keep track who made drops on your blog everyday. If you have made drops from the Popular Blogs category, you will know from who among them have returned your drops.

It should be noted here that most of the popular blogs get more than 300 drops daily. That’s way over the 300 limit. It only means that NOT all the drops they get they could return immediately. The TIP here is to keep coming back.

MAKE YOUR PRESENCE FELT. DROP. READ.
If you think the topic is engaging, you can take part by commenting.
In my case, once I see new EC widgets that made drops on me, I don’t usually return the drops made. If I am that bad, I am sorry. But please understand that I need to prioritize those blogs who have been frequenting my blogs and keeps dropping those cards. I can’t miss returning their drops in favor of a new one which I am not even sure if they could still come back. After a couple of days of persistent dropping, that’s when you will be included in my favorites.

I do not know if blogs in the Popular category have been doing the same technique as I do. You can well ask them, too. These techniques worked well across my three (3) blogs: this blog, Our Journey to Forever and Kuerdas. I will be doing the sharing of techniques in parts since it wouldn’t be possible to do it in one shot.

I will be very glad if this post could help you understand Entrecard more. If you have a better way of doing your drops, please feel free to share it in my comment section.

This post is long overdue. As you can obviously see, this blog, Our Journey to Forever and Kuerdas got a total makeover. I am no artist and I don’t have the know how in tweaking blogs more so in understanding about codes, HTMLs, etc. You can just imagine what could become of my blogs if no angel from above came down to do wonders across my three blogs.

I thank the heavens for having a good blogger friend in IVY. She is such a sweetie and would always offer to help me out in fixing my blogs. All for free- only labor of love, hehe! Her artistic hands never gets tired in helping out a helpless friend, sigh! She has been keeping me company every night talking just about anything.

As I was learning more about her as a person, I find myself very lucky. Not everyone is given this rare chance to get that close to her and I appreciate her even more as a person for being transparent and outspoken.

I find her a dedicated and a passionate blogger. Her entire day would usually revolve around her blogs- doing opportunities, tweaking her blog themes and dropping cards. When you get to see her photos, who would have thought she is a married woman? She looks very young and very pretty! She is such a great catch. I am sure the hubby has long realized just how lucky he is for having a wife like Ivy.

Try to take a peek at all of her blogs. Just click the 125 x 125 images below:

This blog is just barely four months old. I’ve never given this blog much attention, not until I’ve noticed the increasing number of visits it got per day. Today, I got too overwhelmed by the number of drops this blog got from Entrecard. I never fail to drop 300 cards daily. I do get return drops over 300. But today, the return drop is 507! It’s the first time for this blog’s history to have received that much number of drops. Breaking into the Top 20 Most Popular blogs at Entrecard is also unbelievable! It even surpassed my other blog’srankings. Don’t mistake me for bragging about this but I sure as hell got very ecstatic. Out of more than 15, 000 Entrecard members, my blog is slowly inching closer to the top. Though I am well aware that rankings for the most popular blogs is never static and keeps changing every minute, it’s something that I think this blog can never accomplish again. I’m all the more humbled by this blog’s progress.

One thing noticeable here is that I have only purchased one slot of advertisement which has been up and running at this site. I’ve purchased it for 1, 024 worth of credits. I didn’t think twice in purchasing the slot because that particular blog is always in the Top 10 most popular blogs.

I was faced with a huge challenge today in choosing the blogs I would drop my cards on out of the 507 blogs who made their drops for the day. It’s kind of hard because I can drop cards to only 300 blogs. I need to make a sound judgment on which blogs would likely return my drop again. Let’s face it. There are some Entrecarders who aren’t serious in dropping cards. They may have come across your blog by chance and tried to drop and that’s it. They never come back. I’m hoping I have indeed made a sound judgment in choosing the blogs I’ve dropped on as I’ve just finished dropping cards to 300 of them.

The blog who purchased a slot for my site today got 273 drops! I hope the blog owner is happy with the turn out of her ad purchase in my blog.

All these could not have been possible without my regular droppers and advertisers. Thank you from the bottom of my heart!

1. I have made a run down of the things I’ve learned today. These are as follows:Never hesitate to purchase big amount of credits for advertisement.
2. Be wise in choosing the blog you want to purchase your slot for advertisement.
3. Purchase slots from the campaign tab, go to the MOST POPULAR blogs at Entrecard, then choose ALL CATEGORIES and select NO maximum amount.

If you have a better way of purchasing your own slots for advertisements that gave you big numbers of drops, feel free to share it in my comment section.

I personally salute Graham Langdon of Entrecard for always coming up with innovative ways on how to help bloggers improve and become successful. Everyone were so ecstatic with Entrecard’s partnership with Sezwho. The motive is for the best interest of everyone. But there is always no perfect innovation. I’ve attempted to install Sezwho in both of my blogs but I wasn’t too successful. I just don’t know if I am experiencing the bug or it’s just because I am too ignorant in tweaking blogs and all. It made even more difficult for me to install the plugin.

Anyhow, I just came to this thinking. If I am to comment on blogs, it’s because (1) the topic is of interest to me and somehow I can closely relate to; (2) i merely want to make my presence felt, and (3) it’s either the blogger is my friend or i want to befriend the blogger.

I am never against Entrecard’s idea of giving out credit to commenters posting relevant comments. In fact, I love to receive credits for taking that extra effort in reading and commenting on blogs. BUT , with or without credits, I would love to comment because I want to, not because I am expecting something in return or because I’m “bribed” or compensated to comment. The question on whether comments are genuine or not will somehow devalue the system of commenting. The blogger will never know if we are commenting because we are sincere or just because we want to earn credits. It wouldn’t be too bad to receive credits for our commenting efforts but it should only come as a bonus, not our main motivation for commenting on blogs.

I am more than ecstatic with my membership with Free Comments Defense League. I won’t ever receive credits from Entrecard for all the comments I’ve made. I think it would be best if we comment on blogs without expecting credits as an incentive. Membership to FCDL is limited to only 100 blogs. The code for FDCL blogroll was sent to me by Mr. Matthew S. Urdan in my mailbox last night. Thank you for counting me in!

I am anticipating for a more valued partnership with my participation in the Free Comments Defense League. This league values and respects your thoughts on any trivial discussions, with or without credits!

Indeed, there is power in commenting on other blogs. It’s taking me a long time to finish my daily tasks of dropping cards to Entrecarders because I take a pause, read and comment on topics that I can especially relate to and entries that stirred my interest. I don’t simply drop and run. I appreciate comments made by my co-bloggers here in my blog although there aren’t much, hehe! I prefer commenting than leaving my footprints in the tagboard section because cbox and/ or shoutmix’ characters are limited.

And here’s the catch! Get your blog indexed in search engine by posting relevant comments. Everytime I get to check my site, the first thing I take a look at are the comments section. I always see to it that I check out the person behind the comments posted. That’s added traffic for your blog. Commenting is one sure way of increasing your blog’s traffic. Of course, one must be cautious on what to say or else you will be in big trouble. Below are the things I considered important for a blogger to consider in posting comments on blogs:

1. Do away with “Nice post” comments. I don’t consider this a comment. I’ve done this many times in the past out of habit and I don’t think it’s making sense at all.
2. Add value and substantial input on the post being commented. You might love to share your own experiences or add new ideas to the post. Just be sure your comment wouldn’t sound like a tele-novela and even double the number of words written by the author, wink!
3. Try to be nice and comment constructively. Never sound too critical and make stupid comments if you don’t want to be in deep trouble.
4. Respect. Don’t get angry when your comment got filtered. The author always has the sole right in deleting comments not to his liking.
5. Post comments on topics you think you have the authority to talk about.
6. Be polite and sincere. Don’t comment just for the sake of commenting and leaving your self-serving links.
7. Revisit the site. I always make sure I do come back on the blogs I’ve posted my comment on and see if it got filtered or if the author have made a reply. This way, interaction is encouraged and there is open-communication. You can leave your footprints after posting your comments especially for Blogger hosted blogs.

If you have more things in mind, don’t content yourself to be simply just a lurker. We already have an abundance of them.

Participate. Interact. Contribute.

You can add more content on this post by hitting the comment button

I received an email today from Entrecard team issuing a warning of account deletion for members who are operating “Quick Drop Pages” or otherwise known as PowerDrop. These pages are identified by Entrecard and are advised to take down the Quick Drop pages before July 1.

Since I started dropping Entrecards to other members seriously, I have encountered a number of blogs that showed only the Entrecard widget. There is no blog content at all. I just shrugged it off thinking that it’s their style to make loading of pages easier and dropping of Ecards smoother. But since Entrecard is banning these sites starting July 1 for reasons of network de-valuation, all Entrecarders must be made aware that not only those sites that contains PowerDrops are warned but all members in its entirety. We have to make sure we don’t drop to Quick Drop Pages or else, penalties will be incurred. This is called illegal Entrecard dropping. Yes! There is such a thing as “illegal” here in the blogosphere.

There is still no better way to blog than with a clear conscience, getting everything done in all honesty, not by creating schemes to gain credits in a very quick but illegal manner.