As most of my normal visitors know, I’ve been using Entrecard on 3 of my blogs for a few months now. I’ve really loved the service, and I’ve gained quite a few new readers because of it. On top of that I’ve found many new blogs that I now follow via their rss feeds. I probably would never have discovered many of those blogs if I hadn’t signed up for Entrecard.

Of course the fact that I’ve seen a massive increase in traffic on a couple of my blogs is a plus, too.

If you don’t know what Entrecard is, it’s basically an advertising system for bloggers. You can find my Entrecard on my sidebar. When an Entrecard user visits my blog, they can “drop” their card on my widget. Every time someone drops a card on me I earn 1 credit. When I drop my card on someone I earn 1 credit. I can then use my credits to buy advertising on other blogs, or I can visit the Entrecard shop to buy other things like reviews of my site, header designs, etc.

I’ve been really happy with Entrecard for the most part, but that changed today. As I was sitting down after dinner to begin dropping Entrecards when Lisa brought it to my attention that Entrecard changed their rules. As of today you can only drop a total of 600 cards per IP address. Previously you were allowed to drop 300 cards per day.

I don’t agree with this change. First of all, it wasn’t announced. It was something Lisa discovered when she reached her limit. Secondly, this is not a good thing for those of us who have multiple blogs. This means you are limited to less than 300 cards a day if you have more than 2 blogs in the system.

Why did Entrecard make this change? They say it’s their only option to weed out the spam blogs, but I don’t agree. I believe there should be an approval system in place that prevents these spam blogs from entering the system in the first place. Don’t punish the good Entrecard users who spend hours a day taking the time to actually read blogs while dropping cards.

One of the Entrecard admins even admitted on the forums this is exactly why they did this.

It’s not a penalty, it’s just our only real rational response to people creating multiple “spam blogs” and going nuts dropping a thousand + per day. Unfortunately, some legitimate users will get caught in the cross-fire.

I admit I don’t always have a chance to drop my daily limit, but there are times when I sit down for an hour or two at a time with the full intent to drop as many cards as I can. I try to drop at least 100 cards per blog on those days. It normally ends up taking me much more than a couple hours because I get caught up reading the blogs, commenting, etc, but I still try to drop as many cards as I can.  That’s currently 300-400 cards on the days I have the time to read and drop.

But here is where this becomes a problem for me. I have more blogs that I would like to add to the system. None of those blogs are junk blogs, so they deserve a chance to be there. Unfortunately if I do add those blogs to the system that’s going to cut my dropping down to almost nothing for each blog.

Then we’ve got a case where hubby has started blogging. He has thought about adding Entrecard to his 2 blogs, but if he does so that means between the two of us we would have 8 blogs in the system running on the same static IP. 600 max cards per ip per day and 8 blogs? It’s not very hard to do the math on that one.

This could turn into an even bigger problem for people who use public computers or drop from work.  I know you’re sitting there thinking “well if they’re at work they shouldn’t be online dropping cards.”  I could mention 2 people (but I don’t w/o their permission) who work 3rd shift, 12 hour shifts.

They both work Firewatch, so they sit at a desk playing on the computer for 9 hours a night, and they spend 3 hours on scheduled walks around buildings making sure things are secure.  Those other 9 hours are basically considered free time.  They still get paid, but they can leave to get something to eat, play online, etc.  Both of them use the time to work on their blogs and drop cards from the 1 computer in their shared office.

If one of them happens to drop 600 ECs across her accounts before the other person drops any, the 2nd person won’t get a chance to drop any cards at all that day.  That’s assuming they are the only 2 people in that job office that use Entrecard.

On top of that the spammers can very easily get around the limit.  All you have to do is change your ip.  For many of us it’s easy to do this just by resetting your modem.  Then we have to ask is the system able to detect a proxy?  If I proxy my connection for my own protection, how many others could be using the exact same IP I’m proxying?

All in all I think limiting 600 Entrecard drops per day per IP is a bad idea.  There are just too many variables that punish too many legitimate bloggers within the system while still giving the spammers a means to break the rule.

As much as I enjoy Entrecard and my fellow droppers I just wanted to let everyone know that I will not be joining the “U Drop I Follow” campaign. As much as I would love to, I just don’t have the time to sit here everyday dropping cards. I’ve found that if I actually chisel time out of my schedule to drop cards, I won’t drop very many. I visit a blog to drop a card, and I start reading a post. I find it interesting, so I end up spending another hour looking back through older posts. By the time I’ve finished looking over that blog my time I’ve set aside to drop cards is up.

If I were to make myself set aside the time to drop cards back to everyone who has dropped one on me I have to hurry through the blogs, and I would never see the actual content you have to offer. Wouldn’t you rather I actually take the time to enjoy reading your blog versus stopping by for a few seconds to leave you 1 measly card?

I do promise if I’m reading your blog directly from your site, and I see your Entrecard box I will drop my card. For those of you who are on my feed reader, I’m trying to drop by to drop at least one card every few days, but sometimes I just don’t have time to do much more than read your articles via Sage or Bloglines (depending on where I am at the time).

I do still love you all though.