okay so ive been licensed for about 8 months now and ive been making contacts pretty regularly, mostly on 40m and some 20m when propagation cooperates. people keep mentioning QSL cards and LoTW and eQSL and honestly im not sure if i need to be doing all of them or just one or what the difference even is practically speaking.

i understand the basic concept — you confirm a contact happened with the other station — but like does it matter which method you use? i tried signing up for LoTW a while back and got confused with the certificate stuff and kind of gave up. and then some guy i worked told me to just use eQSL because its easier but then another guy said eQSL doesnt count for the awards he cares about so now im more confused than when i started

also do people still actually mail physical cards? i kind of like the idea of that but it seems expensive if youre doing it for every contact

haha yeah this trips up a lot of new hams, dont worry youre not alone. short answer is you dont need all three but each one has its place depending on what you care about.

LoTW is run by the ARRL and its the gold standard if you ever want to go for DXCC or Worked All States because those programs require LoTW confirmations. the setup is a pain, i wont sugarcoat it, but once you get your certificate loaded into TQSL and figure out the workflow it becomes pretty automatic. theres a good guide on the ARRL site and honestly just searching for tqsl setup tutorial will get you through it.

eQSL is way easier to use and a lot of DX stations upload there but like your contact said, most of the big awards dont accept it. its still nice to have just for the satisfaction of seeing confirmations roll in.

physical cards — yeah people absolutely still send them, especially for a nice DX contact or a first from a new entity. you dont have to send one for every contact though. a lot of people just respond to requests via the bureau which is way cheaper than direct mail. the ARRL bureau is like a few bucks a year and cards come through eventually, just slowly. for rare DX you might want to go direct with a return envelope and a couple green stamps (dollar bills) to cover the other guys postage.

im in basically the same boat as you, been licensed about a year. what finally got me to actually do LoTW was finding a youtube video that walked through the whole tqsl thing step by step, took me maybe 45 minutes total and then it just kind of works in the background with my logging software.

i do all three honestly just because why not — LoTW uploads automatically when i close a log session, i have eQSL set up too and check it maybe once a week, and i've sent maybe a dozen physical cards to stations that either requested one or where it was a meaningful contact to me. got a few back in the mail and they're honestly really cool to have, especially the ones from far away. there's something about holding an actual card that just feels different you know