Bloggers seeking traffic for their blogs need two things. The first is good content, and the second is to be findable. The first is just a matter of good writing. The second is more challenging. There are Search Engine Optimizations experts out there that will tell you all kinds of methods of getting incoming links, building your mailing list, getting people to subscribe to your RSS feed and so on. The bottom line is that you need to promote your site, and ideally do it where you are likely to find potential regular readers.

This is often done through link exchanges, traffic or click exchanges, and what I like to call blogger advertising networks. Many of these exchanges or networks have features from several categories and people will argue about whether a site is a link exchange, a click exchange, or an advertising network various levels of praise or derision.

One of the most notorious such networks is EntreCard. A large community has built up around EntreCard and it is amazing to see how they manage to continue in spite of repeated management snafus. One of the biggest was the way they mishandled the introduction of paid advertising. Many people complained, many people left, but still they muddled along. Then, they changed the payout for clicking on advertising sites. This resulted in more complaining, as well as more people leaving or cutting back their activities on EntreCard.

Now, they have announce that they are bringing back paid advertising in a different form and more sites are leaving. What is unfortunate is that the sites leaving tend to be the ones with the best content, such as Kitchen Retro, The Virtual Dime Museum, Symphony of Love and Politicus. This comes back to the key issue of any blogging: good content. Some of the sites producing the best content are leaving EntreCard, which makes EntreCard much less desirable a place to advertise or surf.

This leads me to another interesting issue. Recycled Frockery, which is another good blog that is leaving EntreCard, has an interesting blog post up about EntreCard and Viruses. EntreCard blogs seem to be a breeding ground for viruses and Recycled Frockery provides some useful links for fighting EntreCard blog bourn viruses.

Recycled Frockery goes on to encourage people to take a good look at their dropping patterns. Which blogs do you often drop on that don’t drop back on you? Which blogs often drop on you that you don’t visit? It is a very good post that I encourage people staying with EntreCard to read.

That said, I have a different approach to dropping EntreCards than Recycled Frockery seemed to have. Instead of strengthening an existing community, my approach has been much more scatter shot, visiting blogs I wouldn’t normally visit that are not regular readers. My primary focus is to bring in new readers and hope that the content will get them to stay, instead of working on building the relationship with existing readers, which is also important and seems to be more of Recycled Frockery’s approach.

Another interesting effort to build the relationship with existing readers is the 1 million EC Free Traffic contest that Cornyman is running. The way this contest works is that you enter by adding comments to specific blog posts of participating blogs. This week, I won EntreCard credits from Photodito, My Frugal Ways, and Business Sphere Consulting. It is a great way of building up existing relationships and I hope Cornyman’s contest continues in spite of EntreCard’s management failings.

So, where are people going as they flee EntreCard? The top location, in my opinion, is Adgitize. There is a lot of overlap between EntreCard and Adgitize. However, Adgitize is run much better. Instead of advertising with credits, you have to pay hard dollars to advertize. A month long ad costs $14. I get more traffic for my $14 ad then I do from all of my EntreCard ads. To put this into perspective, I am currently putting up about 500 EntreCard credits a day worth of advertising. This works out to be 15,000 credits a month. If I were buying EntreCard credits this would cost me $85. In other words, I get more traffic from Adgitize for one sixth the price of advertising on EntreCard.

In addition, my earnings coming back from Adgitize have consistently been more than the $14 I spend, so I’m really making money off my involvement at Adgitize and getting good traffic as well.

CMF Ads is the other place people leaving EntreCard have been going. I don’t get as much traffic from the ads I place there, nor do I earn as much as I do on Adgitize. They also take a fairly steep cut on payouts.

The one thing that EntreCard does have that I have not found another site do as well is workable micropayment system. The contest that Cornyman runs typically provides awards in EntreCard credits. It would be great to see some other more viable system for microtransactions amongst bloggers, and I’m sure that one of them will come along soon enough.

So, where does that leave me? I will continue with EntreCard, but most likely at ever decreasing levels of involvement. I will keep using Adgitize and encourage others to do so. I will keep in touch with good blogs that I’ve found and encourage people to participate in contests like the one that Cornyman is running.

Now, where does that leave you?

P.S. As I contact various people I've mentioned in this blog post, I note another person I should have given a shout out to

As the Crackerhead Crumbles does a great photo montage of various blogs, often EntreCard or Adgitize users and I was honored to be included in a list last month.

Update: The Painted Veil has a post up saying that EntreCard has changed their policies yet again in response to public outcry and have a different option for people wishing to stay. As a result, at least for the time being, they will be staying.