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**UPDATE** EATING WORDS AFTER ONLY TWO DAYS!!

EntreCard rolled out a new toolbar addon for Firefox browser. It’s supposed to make visiting blogs, dropping and advertising easier.

I’ve been testing it for the last two days. I wanted to make myself very familiar with it before I wrote anything about it. Sometimes I get excited about something new and write positively and then feel like an idiot when I have to eat part (or all) of my words

Positives:

• It installed easily
• It makes it much simpler to switch between blogs
• it doesn’t let you get logged out every 3 sites
• It lets you add blogs as favorites easily
• It keeps track of your drops as you go along making it easy to tell how many more you have to reach the max.
• It makes it very easy to jump to other areas of EntreCard such as the Blog or some of the Forums.

Negatives:

• It brings up some of the same blogs over and over again
• When limited to the INBOX, it only brings up about 25 different blogs even if you have more in there

Semi-negative:

• It only lets you load 10 blogs at a time. While you can click the 10 button multiple times, you increase the number of duplicate blogs you open.

**EATING THESE WORDS**

• It was supposed to make advertising on the blogs easier, but I can see no difference.
• There is a HUGE difference in advertising on a blog and I totally missed it!! {smacking forehead} If you’ll LOOK at the toolbar, you’ll see that there is an “ADVERTISE” button with the cost of the ad right there. The great big humongous advantage here is that you’re seeing the blog, verifying the widget placement, page rank, Alexa score and ******drum roll****** ta da! UPDATED CONTENT before you spend your credits on a dead blog.  W00T! There’s also this nifty drop down menu where you can click the sites’ profile page to see what it’s popularity and how many drops it’s given you in the last 30 days. Those might be other criteria you use to advertise. At any rate, it’s all there in a click or two. NICE!

**END WORD EATING **

** ADDED STUFF**

Some people are having trouble switching accounts from the link page. Don’t switch from there. Use the tool bar to switch. Just drop down the button to the far left and choose the blog you want to switch to, then next to it, you’ll see how many credits you have on that account and how many drops you’ve done for the day, click on that and you’ll get a drop down menu that includes dashboard, messages, your ads, statistics, linked blogs (that one is redundant IMO) and buy credits. Just click one of those and you’ll go to the relevant account’s whatever-link-you-chose.

Right now, the toolbar seems to be fighting with the main dashboard pages, but if you’ll let the toolbar lead the dance, you’ll do just fine.

** END ADDED STUFF **

My “normal” drop method was to use a list. I have a couple of them and switch between them so as to mix up the blogs I drop on somewhat. I can open 25-30 tabs at a time in FF which makes dropping on 300 blogs pretty quick and simple. I could do one set of 300 along with quickly browsing the newest post and commenting on some in the hour before leaving for work in the morning. Then do a second set at lunch and my last set after dinner. I haven’t managed to do 300 per blog yet with the tool bar although I came pretty close Sunday. It takes a lot longer due to the duplications.

** MORE ADDED STUFF **

Ok, I’ve done an experiment that has worked better than my wildest dream. I opened my list(s) and opened 30 tabs, dropped through those (reading and commenting as I went along) and repeated until max drops were reached on one blog, then clicked another account, and began again. I was done dropping 900 cards in about 2 hours (complete with reading and commenting on many of those blogs!). The toolbar kept track of my drops, so I always new how many I needed to finish and the sites loaded quickly. I was never logged out the first time, was able to report blogs that had lost their widgets or had been closed by google and all was wonderful in my EntreCard world.

** END MORE ADDED STUFF**

So, it’s a great start, but I would say it’s still in Beta testing as far as I’m concerned.

Have you downloaded the EC Toolbar? What are your opinions on it? Is it something you’re going to continue to use?

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