You may notice the little widget in my sidebar that has a little bar that says Get One or Drop. Well this is one way you can get a bunch of free blog traffic. I just signed up with them yesterday as part of my 31 Day's of Free Blog Traffic Challenge.
This is my Entrecard "card" one that I will use to advertise on other sites. I know it needs some work but I thought it wasn't too awful for just throwing something up there. I made a new advert card - the one on the right. I think it is better in some ways and also harder to read? It will have to do for now.
I was not sure about signing up for this Entrecard at first or not, I thought it might be considered black hat. It may be somewhere in the gray area, because this is not targeted traffic and ultimately that is what you want coming to your blog. When you start a new blog as I have you are some what desperate for any blog visitors so you are willing to go out there and try some interesting things.
I have read a bit about Entrecard on some other blog's and here is what I have learned (not sure if any of it is true or not). John Chow used to use Entrecard, so if it was good enough for him then it is good enough for me. Google and the other search engines may lower my page rank because of the high bounce rate or the blog traffic from Entrecard visitors. Many of the site visitors will just click on the "drop box" then immediately leave.
Well right now I am not concerned about my page rank because I don't even have one yet. The problem of having some of the free blog traffic just clicking in and then right back out, well maybe a few will leave comments. I might even get a small percentage of loyal readers out of the whole thing.
If your blog needs to get some free traffic you might consider trying out Entrecard. You may not like the widget that must be displayed but once your blog gets approved I think you can move it down lower on the page, which may help your blog visitors see more of your blog and stick around to read something.