Entrecard Resources

I guess it started with the "U Comment - I Follow" movement, and was adapted for the Entrecard community by Lee Doyle to read U Drop - I Follow. I admit that for a while I was thinking of using "U Drop - I Smile" but figured it would engender the wrong reaction in folks. However, I have seen a "U Drop - I'm Happy" that made me smile.

Now, Deimos Tel`Arin (ahkong.net), who was one of the first Entrecarders to publish a list of sites to drop cards on, and was the first (to my knowledge) to come up with a Reciprocative Dropping group, is pushing a "U Subscribe - I Follow" fellowship. Great idea! You subscribe to his blog feed via email and he will return the favor and subscribe to your blog's feed. What a great idea!

Perhaps you are saying "Duh" and yet there are some Entrecard-specific dynamics that make this new movement a valuable one, at least to me. I haven't yet run contests or used any other device to encourage readers to subscribe to my main blog, The Entrecarder and it took me almost two months to put a standard button on my site where folks could easily subscribe to my feed. Over the past couple of months I have routinely signed up for blog feeds as part of contests and usually unsubscribe a short time later. I don't feel much loyalty to a blogger just because they gave me a chance to win something, even more so when I don't get much from their blog entries. The same might hold true for the U-I Subscribers, but at least they are having to see my feed for a nanosecond before they move on.

I actually prefer to read blog posts via email feeds because I don't have to break my rythm when card dropping. I seem to be able to scan an emailed post quicker than reading it on the webpage and then just archive it when done. And for those who chose to only send a partial entry in their feed? Hasta la vista, baby. I don't care who you are, if you think your writing is so wonderful that you are going to get me to click through to your site to read beyond the teaser, I've got one word for you: Unsubscribe.

I expect that the honor system will have to be the order of the day for the U-I Subscribers and that's ok. It's not worth the time to try and track who is commenting back or dropping back and if someone really doesn't like what you are writing, then let them drop the feed.

Note: Deimos does something that is really slick and that I will probably start doing myself. He updates his Entrecard profile with the specific address of each new post so that the traffic goes to that page and builds a better overall site ranking as a result.

Speeding up the Entrecard dropping process is on a lot of Entrecarders' minds as they click, click, click their way through up to 300 sites per day, per account. Dropping your entrecard on others' widgets is not a requirement of Entrecard participation nor is it the only route to Entrecard success (eg-Joe Tech.) However, for those of us who are clicking for at least an hour a day, any legitimate method of becoming more efficient is gladly embraced. The Entrecard resources that I'm writing about today deal with power dropping and reciprocative (recipro) dropping.

Turnip of Power was one of the first, if not the first, to offer a list of bookmarks for those who are interested in power dropping. Deimos of Ahkong.net initially offered a list of sites to drop on, but has changed his approach to reflect his status as the King of the Reciprocal Drop by establishing the Reciprocative Entrecarders Guild. Power Dropping and Reciprocative Dropping are the two most popular methods currently in use in the Entrecard community, but that could change as folks become more familiar with Site Hoppin.

Site Hoppin is a browser in a browser that--as the name suggests--allows one to automatically hop from site to site. With the ability to create a custom list of sites to cruise through and set the time before the next hop, Site Hoppin can work well for Entrecarders who want to take a bit more casual approach to Entrecard dropping.

PowerDropping.com is taking the speed approach to power dropping and publishes a list of Entrecard sites by their site loading times. When opening 10-100 sites at once (either via folders or the Linky add-on) one doesn't want to get hung up by slow sites and this type of list can trim minutes off of the daily card dropping chore. (Entrecard Hacks is taking a similar approach.)

A soon to be debuted Reciprocative card dropping site is run by Chalk is Cheap.Site author Arnold is hoping to get 200 participants in the group, each of whom will commit to dropping on all the other members' sites on a daily basis. Rounding out this review of Entrecard dropping tools is a recent entry in the drop by folders approach found at TysBlog.