Ok so i just got my ticket a few months ago and ive been making contacts pretty regularly, mostly on 40m and some 2m local stuff. Someone in my radio club mentioned I should be uploading to LoTW and also eQSL but honestly im kind of lost on how all this works together. Like do people actually still send paper cards through the bureau or is that mostly an old timer thing now? I set up a LoTW account but the whole certificate process was kind of confusing and I'm not 100% sure my logs are actually uploading correctly. I use WSJT-X for FT8 and I think it logs to ADIF automatically but then what, I just drag that file into the TQSL thing? Also someone told me eQSL is kind of looked down on by some people which seems weird to me. Just trying to figure out what the actual workflow is that most people use these days.

yeah the LoTW certificate thing tripped me up too when I first started, took me like two weekends to figure out. but once its set up its pretty painless — TQSL will handle the signing and upload, you just feed it the ADIF from WSJT-X and it does its thing. the main thing people use LoTW for is DXCC and WAS credit through the ARRL so if you care about awards down the road you really want to get that working properly.

as for eQSL, honestly the stigma is mostly from older contesters and DXers who didnt like that eQSL couldnt be used for ARRL awards. its totally fine for a lot of other awards and plenty of people still use it. I upload to both just because why not, takes like 30 extra seconds.

paper cards are still a thing and honestly I love getting them in the mail, theres something nice about a physical card from like a rare DXPEDITION or a first contact with a new country. the bureau is slow though, sometimes like a year or more. if you want cards faster you can do direct QSL which means mailing directly to the other ops address with a self addressed envelope and usually a couple dollar bills for return postage if theyre overseas.

I'm in the same boat pretty much, been licensed about a year. What I ended up doing is just uploading to LoTW and eQSL after every operating session and I dont really worry too much about paper cards unless someone sends me one first and then I try to send one back. Got a really nice one from a station in Japan last month which was cool. The LoTW upload from WSJT-X is actually pretty straightforward once you watch a youtube video on the TQSL setup, that helped me way more than reading the documentation.