SillaWhen you’re just starting your blog, it can be difficult to promote your site and build traffic. Here are 3 free services for advertising your blog, with the pros and cons along with a description of each one.
Blogupp is a free link exchange service, and is the easiest of the three to implement: there’s no signup process, and no ad submission. All you have to do is enter your URL and copy the code into your web site.
The widget will look like the image on the left, with 2 ads and a link to Blogupp in the middle. You will know that your blog has been approved when the link changes colour from grey to blue, or that it has been denied if it changes colour to red.
Blogupp will automatically take a screenshot of your blog, and show it on other blogs with the widget installed; your ad will be shown 9 times for every 10 ads shown on your blog. The best thing about Blogupp is that the screenshot of your blog changes on mouseover to show your latest article, which it gets from your RSS feed.
Unfortunately, the simplicity of Blogupp is also its weakness: there is no way to control what type of sites your ads are shown on, or what types of sites are advertised on yours. This means that the people who see your ad might have no interest in your site, and that you can’t choose to only advertise sites that are related to your blog.
Spottt is another free link exchange which I have seen on quite a few sites, but I keep getting an error when I try to sign up. I emailed support, but am still waiting for a response; even if I do manage to sign up, I don’t think I’ll make use of Spottt. The widget is more attractive than the Blogupp widget, but it has a few rules which make it the less appealing choice:
- - Your ad only gets shown once for every 2 ads shown on your own site
- - Your website must be in English
- - The placement of the widget on your site has to be at most 850 pixels from the top, so visitors don’t have to scroll down to find it
This last rule wouldn’t be so bad if you could choose which sites to advertise on your blog, but again there is no way to control it.
Entrecard is by far the best of the three, and the one I have chosen to use. The service is based on the idea of business cards - users can click the drop button on the Entrecard widget to leave you their card, which you can click on to visit them back and drop your card. You get 1 credit every time you drop or receive a card, and you can use your credits to buy ads on other users’ Entrecard widgets. The cost of each ad depends on the average number of cards dropped in their widget daily over the last five days.
Entrecard is the only service of these 3 to allow ad requests to be accepted or declined, giving you complete control over who advertises on your blog. You can also see exactly how many clicks each ad generated.
Credits can also be used to buy blogging related products and services in the Entrecard shop, or you can give them away in contests or even sell them for real money!
On the whole, I’ve found Entrecard to be a great way to find interesting blogs and to advertise my site on relevant blogs at the same time. If you’d like to advertise your blog on my Entrecard widget, just sign up, click the “E” next to the drop button on my widget to go to my Entrecard profile, and then click “Advertise” under my card. I hope to see you around! 
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