Today I decided to do some research on how to get blog traffic with a variety of widgets. One of the most popular blog traffic widget at the moment is Entrecard.

So far it has been an interesting addition. You build credits by “dropping” your card onto other people’s widgets, and having them do the same to you. You in turn then spend these credits on ad space for other blogs, and other blogs do the same to you.

In a sense however, it seems like a momentous waste of time going around earning credits; in fact I inadvertently spent a good couple of hours browsing and dropping cards all over town.

Perhaps if you can restrain yourself from getting too involved with the process, you could spend 5-10 minutes a day on it, and see some substantial traffic returns. Although the word “addicting” has crossed my eyes from reading reviews a few times.

I like it though so far, it actually looks pretty nice up in the corner. I’ll definitely bring some stats after using it for a month or so.

Here are some reactions across the blogosphere with some interesting data and opinions; so far the general buzz is good:

Tyler Cruz provides extremely detailed 2 week stats:
http://www.tylercruz.com/two-weeks-with-entrecard/

Bruce Hopkins has a good analysis of his results:
http://brucehopkins.net/blogging/entrecard-update-review.php

David won’t use entrecard, and makes some interesting points:
http://xfep.com/advertising/why-i-wont-be-using-entrecard/

For my own personal experiment, I am going to limit my entrecard usage down to just 2-3 5 minute bursts a day for say a month. Then hopefully I’ll have a better picture of if this service is worth anyone’s time.

P.S. A warning for all adsense users. Back in the day on an old blog, I used to use a service called BlogExplosion, which was similar in concept (credits=traffic). Due to the nature of the traffic, I received a stern warning to stop those kinds of ad impressions. So if you use adsense on your blog, you may want to avoid this service, or at least do some serious research first.

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