Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Entrecard

Entrecard have changed their system. It now also involves money.

I am thinking that this is not right for a multi-author community blog like this one, so I am proposing that we drop this feature.

All co-authors, if you agree or disagree, please leave a comment.

I am adding the Entrecard-info below:

"Greetings Entrecarders!

Today I have VERY important news for the entire Entrecard community. In approximately one week, we will be co-launching an Ad Network and a Credit Cashout Service. What this means, immediately to you, is the following:

A real ad network
We will be opening as much as 50% of our ad impressions network-wide to third party advertisers. We will be accepting cash payments to run 125x125 advertisements through our widget network. Ads will be sold as run of network, or targeted by category, for a low CPM rate to be announced. Please plan your daily entrecard ad purchasing accordingly. Whereas before, when you purchased an ad, you were buying a minimum of 100% of the impressions, you are now buying a minimum of 50%. However, the maximum is still 100% of the impressions, because if we have no ads booked for that category, or for the network, for any given day, you will still get all of the impressions.

Exchange your credits for CASH
With the money we make selling as much as 50% of our network impressions, we will purchase your credits from you, and delete them from the system. This means we're going to let you sell credits for cash, right from your dashboard! This has been the single most requested feature since we launched Entrecard. Members have clamored for a way to sell Entrecard credits for cash, but the same problem always arose: where does the money come from to let people sell their credits? How do we use our greatest resource (millions of daily impressions across ~60 niches) to benefit everyone? After much deliberation, the answer became clear. We must open up our ad network, and funnel the proceeds of the entire operation back to you, the members!

The state of the economy
The state of the world's economy is grim. We are in a global recession. People need simple ways to make money now more than ever before. Therefore, it became our imperative to turn Entrecard into a viable way for bloggers to make money. We think we've figured out a great way to do this. By allowing you to cash out your credits, and allowing you to earn credits by selling products and services in our market, advertising on your blog, publishing on your blog, and dropping cards, we're making big moves to help you earn a second income.

In parallel, the Entrecard economy has been in a state of inflation since day one. Every day, more credits are created than are deleted. As of writing this, there are 44 million credits in the Entrecard economy, and we're adding more each day. This is not sustainable, and so it has become clear that we need a more efficient way than advertising taxes to eliminate credits from the economy. The good news is that if this works, we'll be able to lower the advertising tax.

So, by paying you cash for your credits, and then wiping them from the system, we estimate that we can delete as many as 1 to 2 million credits per day. This will immediately shift the economy into DEFLATION, which means your credits will become MORE valuable, instead of less valuable, both in their purchasing power and in their monetary value.

Finally, Entrecard has needed a solid revenue model since day one. We are excited to have settled on a viable revenue model that allows us to make money at the same time as passing on the majority of our revenues back to you. For any given day, we will take 75% of our revenues and pass them on to you by way of cashing out your credits. We will take the remaining 25% for ourselves to grow the business as a solid revenue source.

What if I don't want these ads on my site?
We have always prided ourselves in being a service that offers you complete control over what does and does not appear on your site. Yet, at the same time, we're forced to mitigate this ideal with our decision to launch a more traditional ad network, as a way to make you money, restore the economy to balance, and make some money for ourselves.

We will continue to allow you to reject any ad you wish. However, to reject ads from paying advertisers, you will need to pay a credit fee for each ad you wish to reject. We don't know how much this will be just yet.

New Above-the-fold rule
If this is going to work for everyone, we must also mandate an above-the-fold rule. Thus moving forward, it is necessary for all Entrecard members place their widget above the fold to maintain an active account. The rule won't go into effect until we launch our ad network, which is about a week away, so please plan accordingly and make the necessary changes as soon as possible.

To recap
You can boil this down to the following 4 bullet points:

In a week, we're launching an ad network where anyone can advertise through Entrecard widgets for CPM rates. This can be run of network advertising, or targeted by category. We are making available 50% of our inventory, or approximately 40 million monthly impressions.
With the money we make, we are going to buy credits back from you. You will be allowed to sell credits via your dashboard, and we will devote 75% of daily sales to buying credits back.
The economy will no longer be in a state of inflation, but rather in deflation which means your credits will gradually start becoming more valuable.
For all this to work, we must institute an above-the-fold rule, which goes into effect in a weeks.
We realize these are pretty huge changes, and there are going to be a lot of questions. This is part of the reason we're announcing this a week early, so we can field all the questions, address everyone's concerns, and all get on the same page."

10 Comments:

Anonymous said...

I disagree,,,not for the money but any change complicates my life..
but...that's just me.

Mo and The Purries said...

Well, Entrecard is still a FREE service.
We have the right to reject any paid ad.
So if we did that, then no paid ads would show up here.
But frankly I'm kinda burnt out on it, so either way - we drop Entrecard or just accept bloggers' ads - I'm fine with it.

Speedcat Hollydale said...

Entrecard has always been a money thing .. while some people like me just drop after a comment and see some increased traffic through ads, and ad is an ad. I could sell my ecard points at any time.
Somehow ads are looked at as negative though, and I for one am really put off when I find a blog with them. It tells me the writer does not have the intent of blogging as a community, but to lure me over to click the ads. I have always taken blogging frienships with "advertizing" bloggers with a grain of salt.

As this changes, my own opinion would be to drop the ecard if it ever forced outside ads. Until then, it seems "Blogs" will be the only advertizers.

That's a round about way of saying just what Mo did!

Hello from SpeedyCat :-)

Mo and The Purries said...

There have been several revisions and clarifications to the program since that original e-mail was sent out.
These are listed on the Entrecard blog.
We can reject any paid ad - with NO ec fee.
But I am fine with getting rid of the Entrecard widget here - just let me know.

Unknown said...

Who is taking care of our entrecard account now?

Mo and The Purries said...

Info - that would be me.

Jos said...

Hi Mo,
Sorry, that 'info' is me, logged in to Blogger with the wrong account..
I seem to remember a discussion where someone else (Paula, Purplefrogcat??) was going to take over the handling of our BRB Entrecard account from you?
-Jos

Mo and The Purries said...

Hey Jos - it's still me.
Let me know what you want to do about the Entrecard widget - if you want me to delete the account, I have no problem with that.
Send me an e-mail
morgen1967 at gmail dot com

cheers,
mo

Unknown said...

i can still do it if u guys plan on it keeping it around...

Jos said...

As far as I am concerned, there seems to be no particular consensus for taking the card off, and I am fine with that. I was just assuming that a "somewhat commercial" gadget on this blog would be "somewhat" against the nature of this blog and its origine.

Also, I was assuming that handling teh E-card on behalf of the BRB had turned into a burden for Mo, who is handlng the E-card account.

So, if all of you don't particularly seem to want to remove the account, we can keep it on.

If our purplyfroggy wants to handle it, just contact Mo.

As you will have noticed, I have not been able to spend much time on this blog, or any other blog, over the past year, and it doesn't seem like if that's gonna change much, in the foreseeable future.
So if any of you co-authors would like to handle the admin of this blog, just let me know.

-Jos