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In this article we explore 2 very simple yet very effective ways of increasing the number of Entrecard droppers on your website. To prove our pudding we have been implementing 1 of the 2 techniques and have seen a very positive response so far.

The 2 techniques we are about to explore all hang on one principle.. reward. The best way to promote and encourage the development of an active community is to reward those users that visit or participate the most.

So how do we go about this..

There are 2 techniques that you could implement on your own weblog or website to help increase the number of people dropping their card by offering them a way promote their own website at the same time. Both techniques involve the use of clever RSS feeds from your Entrecard dashboard to show the link of those Entrecard droppers in your sidebar.

Method 1: Show Your Recent Droppers

The first of the 2 techniques involves making use of the Latest Droppers RSS feed found on the Entrecard Dashboard. All those that drop on your site will have their direct website link shown in your sidebar as a reward from dropping which can take users no more than a few seconds to do (Note that a maximum of the 10 latest droppers will be shown). A link will remain in the sidebar until it is replaced by a succession of 10 other droppers (make sense?).

How Do I Implement This On My Wordpress Blog?

Implementing this feature into your sites sidebar is very simple and took me only a couple of minutes.

Firstly you need go to your Entrecard Dashboard

Now you need to locate your “latest droppers” RSS feed. Click the link and follow it to the RSS page.

This image illustrates where the RSS icon can be found to run this feature on your site.

At this point you need to copy the URL of this feed, which should look something like this..

http://entrecard.com/feeds/inbox/XFGXNPKZKY/rss2.0

Now head to your Worpress Admin > Design (Presentation for <2.5) > Widgets > Add RSS feed.

Paste the relevant code for your RSS feed into the link box and a title for this.

Hit the “Save Changes Button” and your done.

The Pro’s And Con’s

As with all things their are always pro’s and con’s and this again is no exception those rules.

Pro’s

The best thing about this technique is that no matter how many droppers you have on your website they will always get their link shown, so all of those dropping their card on your website will benefit. And for those sites receiving very few drops they may even get their link shown twice.

Con’s

The downside to this is that the more droppers you have each day the less time a single droppers link would be shown for. The length of time the link is featured on your site all depends on how many droppers you are receiving each day.

Those receiving over 100-150 drops a day would start to lose the benefits of this method as the links would be shown for such a small length of time it would hardly be worth the effort for that dropper to come back and drop their card each day.

At this point it may be worth looking into the second technique..

Method 2: Show Your Top Droppers (Recommended)

This technique aims at offering a more long-term reward system on your site and I feel is more of an incentive for droppers to keep dropping to stay featured for an unlimited length of time. When you feel that it’s time to advance from the first technique due to the number of drops increasing this is the next step I would recommend.

In this method you will only feature those that have dropped the most Entrecards on your blog. I feel this is better because those that are visiting your website regularly are receiving the greatest benefits for doing so while those that only drop occasional will not featured as much.

The top dropper to your website will find their link at the top of the list in the sidebar while the 10th best dropper will find their link at the bottom and will need to take care as to not be replaced by a newcomer.

With this technique droppers featured in your list will have to continue dropping to ensure that thier link remains on your website which means that you will almost be getting a guaranteed 15-20 drops a day on top of what other traffic you are receiving for those competing to keep thier positions.

How Do I Implement This On My Site

This is implemented in exactly the same way as Method 1 as the first method only this time you need to use the “Top Droppers RSS” which can be found by going to your Entrecard Dashboard

Then following the “more stats..” link and scroll to just above the bottom.

You will see a Feed Icon. Click on this and use that code to feature your top droppers through the RSS sidebar widget.

It should look something like this..

http://entrecard.com/feeds/top_droppers/XFGXNPKZKY/rss2.0

And your ready to go.

Pro’s

This method installs a much more long-term benefit to those that are featured. They will remain featured for as long as they drop their card every day while those that miss a day or more will slowly find themselves moving further down the list. This encourages everyone to drop as often as possible to get themselves featured on your site or to keep their current position.

Those currently featured may find themselves receiving traffic from you and knowing that they are benefiting from this may further encourage them to drop more often to keep that flow of ‘free’ and possibly targeted traffic coming.

Bad

Only those that reach the top 10 will be shown in your list. But as the number of drops from your lowest featured dropper goes up (The 10th best dropper) the chances of getting featured on such a site becomes harder and harder and takes longer to achieve.

Summary

It’s swings and roundabouts for both of the methods highlighted in this post and you may find that one method works better for you than the other. It is all simply a matter of trying each method and seeing which showed the best results on your pwn blog.

I feel that method 2 would be perfect if there was a way to reset your top droppers box to level the playing field after a set time period, say every month or two. This way others that may be struggling to get featured could have their chance to shine.

Promote What Your Doing!

On a final pointer to making both of these techniques work its always important to let your readers know what you are up to.. If they don’t know they have a chance of being featured they won’t bother to come back on a regular basis to take part!

Informing your readers that they have the chance to get their blog featured on your website is very important to getting the ball rolling with new features like this. And the more members that know about what you are doing the more activity it will generate. People love free back-links and through Entrecard it will take just a few seconds of their daily lives to do, “What do they have to lose?”.. I mean they are also gaining credits for dropping.

A post informing your readers of this does not need to be long, it could be just a short post highlighting what method you are using, and where they will be featured (eg. the sidebar). The more prominent the feature the more competitive your readers will be.

B2L Experiences

Here at B2L we are using the second of the 2 methods and featuring our top droppers. (Note: this was at time of posting and may have changed)

Along with our new blog theme we implemented this feature into our sidebar and have seen some great results from it over just a few days. Our average drop count went from, on average, around 5 up to and average of about 17 with a peak of 25. And that was just over a week ago (Date: 4th Aug).

Let the results speak for themselves.

At this point I hope you can now go forth and implement this on your own blog and get improved results from Entrecard.

Let me know if you did get positive results from either of these methods.

Blog2Life

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