ok so im about 6 months into this hobby and ive been trying to figure out the whole QSL situation and honestly its kind of overwhelming. like i understand the basic idea — you confirm the contact with the other station — but theres like three different ways to do it and i cant tell if i should be doing all of them or just pick one or what.

i signed up for LoTW because someone at my club said thats the one that counts for DXCC and other awards, which fine, but then someone else told me i also need eQSL if i want certain other awards, and then theres still people sending actual physical cards through the bureau or direct mail. im already uploading my logs to LoTW through TQSL which took me forever to figure out btw, but i havent done anything with eQSL yet.

do most people just do LoTW and call it day? or is physical card stuff still worth doing? i got a couple cards in the mail from dx stations already and theyre actually really cool looking, didnt expect to care about that but i kind of do now. anyway just trying to figure out what the normal workflow looks like for most hams these days

honestly most active operators are doing at least LoTW and eQSL together, they're both free and once you get your logging software set up it usually uploads to both automatically so its not much extra work. LoTW is definitely the one that matters for ARRL awards like DXCC and WAS, eQSL has its own award system and some people chase those too.

physical cards are kind of a whole separate thing. a lot of DX stations still love them and some rare ones wont confirm any other way, plus like you said they look great. i'd say dont stress about sending cards to every qso but if you work something interesting or rare its worth doing direct mail at least. the bureau system is cheap but slow, like months slow sometimes. if you worked a /p station on a rare island or something just send direct with a return envelope and a couple dollars for postage, most operators really appreciate it and youll usually get a card back pretty quick.

just get comfortable with LoTW first since youre already set up there, then add eQSL when you feel like it. dont burn yourself out trying to do everything at once

same boat as you were like a year ago haha. what finally clicked for me was realizing theyre kind of serving different communities even though theres overlap. i use Log4OM and it pushes to LoTW and eQSL at the same time which is nice. the physical cards i only send when someone requests direct or if i worked someone on a really memorable qso, i designed my own card on vistaprint for like 30 bucks for 500 cards and its been totally worth it just for the fun of it.

the bureau thing at the ARRL is worth joining if youre going to be active for a while, incoming cards are basically free and you just get a random envelope of cards every few months which is kinda fun actually