CPM will be great !! i will love to wait for it !!

I can handle everything except having the widget above the fold. That just sucks and I may drop EC altogether. I think you will have many people who do the same.

Wow, you just took one of the coolest things on the internet and turned it into total crap. So many of us have other affiliate advertisers that pay us a LOT of money to keep our ads above the fold that we will have to abandon the entrecard system all together.

I am so depressed over this….. just got my mom set up on Entrecard too …. now it’s not even worth bothering to teach her how to use it …. she’s on today.com as well

I have two questions:
1. Is there going to be any change in terms of daily drop rate or is that going to stay at 300?

2. For the advertisers, is there going to be a matching algorithm of some sort so the ad will be some what related to the blog?

EC seems to change for the worse every time a change is made.

Entrecard used to be a very new and cool idea for webmasters and bloggers. Key words: new & ideas.

Now it just goes backwards and turning into just another CPM or CPC ad network which I do want on my sites. If you are going to make changes, make changes that are different and inventive. Not typical stuff that you can find anywhere.

I think I am done with EC once this begins.. I also think this will slow down the rate of new EC users and will eventually hurt EC as a whole. JMO.

@flit: you still haven’t explained why this contradicts today.com’s terms. like I said, we might be able to work something out.

@blueviolet: if everyone cashes out their credits, the incentive to advertise will be that ads will become much cheaper.

@Jamie: you can request an exception. If you have other things that need to be above the fold, let us know and we’ll mark you as fine.

we are not allowed to use any ads that advertise other products besides blogs because of the potential for conflicts with today’s advertisers. That is why so many of us useD Entrecard – it is one of the very few options we are allowed…. and of course, because it workED so well.

this week we were all directed to remove widgetboxes because they put a rollover ad on them.

I enjoyed Entrecard because I found a lot of new blogs to read, but I don’t care about getting money for my credits, nor can I place my entrecard so high, or take a chance on paying ads not matching my blog – I’m not about to upset my readers with ads that have nothing to do with my blog.. Blogging isn’t about money for all of us.

I expected something similar from Entrecard Team some time back itself. ANH, Its good to know that people will get an opportunity to make some extra bugs during this recession time. But, I didn’t like the above-fold rule. It should be up to the site owners to decide where they want to offer ad spaces. Graham, I hope to see some changes to this rule in the coming days.

The above the fold rule is going to take out a LOT of blogs, myself included. Love the idea until that last bullet point. This is all well and good but I highly doubt EC will generate as much $$ as mainstream ads will.

I am going to sound stupid, but I already looked into the Knowledge Base to find my answer and couldn’t, so here it goes.

What does it mean to place the widget above the fold?

*sigh* good luck with that…. I’ll look forward to an update – hopefully one that doesn’t involve a new entry in the banned widgets list.

OMG.. not happy

PAY A FEE TO DECLINE AN AD?

Does that not sound backwards to anyone?

@Brian, @Prasanna: what would be reasonable in your opinion? within two scrolls of the top?

@Storm: placing your widget towards the top of your blog benefits everyone, even you, as the ads you place in our network will get more exposure

@Grace: you certainly don’t have to use our service if it doesn’t suit your needs as a blogger. It is a trade off… we provide this free service for bloggers which is very expensive between servers and developers and such… in return we’re going to need to sell some of our network advertising, but at the same time we’re also taking that money and providing you with a cash exchange for your credits. all of these steps are necessary.

@plin: daily drop allotment will remain at 300, and the first level of targetting we’re offering is by category, but we hope to develop some proprietary algorithms shortly

Ohhhhhhh Nooooooo (groan) well there goes the neighborhood!

That’s good news indeed. I’m glad now you’re aware that bloggers also need to make money. More power and hope the system works well.

and i don’t like this one either
“However, to reject ads from paying advertisers, you will need to pay a credit fee for each ad you wish to reject”.

Wow! I have 5 blogs on EC all what I think are assets to EC. Their designs are such that the widget cannot be placed above the fold. The widget is just under the fold but a wee bit but still under. I’ve been a good supporter to EC and was happy with the changes. I’m now in the process of cancelling all advertisements on my blogs until we get further clarification. I’d love to stay a member of the EC community but with the new above the fold ruling I’m just not going to be able to do so. At some point the blog is all about the author not the advertiser. If every advertiser insisted on being above the fold well there wouldn’t be a heck of a lot of room for any content would there? I’ve enjoyed EC and I’m sorry it is going to end for me this way but I am not going to comprise my overall design to get someone’s widget 2 or 3 lines higher. Sorry.

@Garden Gnome: As I stated previously (and I’ll edit this into the announcement post), if you have a valid reason for being below the fold, you can let us know and it’s all good.

We will probably be changing the official wording of the rule, such that you don’t need to be “above the fold” but rather, within one scroll of the fold.

so, it will be within the top two pages of your blog.

@linzardB: please realize that we’re doing this precisely because we want to continue to serve you into the future. this will help ensure that entrecard is around for a long time, and not just a flash in the pan.

@Jena Isle: yes, this is a great point. placing widgets within the top two pages of the blog improves things for everyone across the network…

@FickleMinded: that is a very logical idea, and I could easily see our ad network evolving into something that closely resembles that. have to start at square one though…

I am surprised everyone after my last comment post got an answer. I suppose my question was just too stupid to answer.

I figured it out, though.

I am all for paying up a small fee for rejecting an ad as long as the ad that was presented to me came from an advertiser that realizes that their ad does indeed match up to what I offer on my blog.

I do not think we should be penalized if random advertisers simply want to buy up a bunch of ads, especially when they do not go with what we offer to our readers on our blogs.

I enjoy using EC, never used it for traffic much. While it was a great advantage, I was more interested in the give and take and reading up on some great blogs.

If we don’t want to operate under these new conditions can we still trade in the old credits for cash?

@Brian: you would need an account in good standing to be eligible to cash in your credits. so you are entirely free to stay in compliance until all your credits can be dumped, and then cancel your account.

@Jane: the price of EC will fluxuate. We’re going to be constantly adjusting the prices to keep the supply and demand curve balanced. this means the first day we offer for sale, we’ll offer a low rate to get everyone who wants to dump their credits really cheap out of the way. and then the price would go up, probably daily, until it gets high. It’s hard to set a concrete figure right now. You’ll just have to check the exchange rate on any given day.

@karlana: we will be applying a strict editorial process to all the ads that go through. Just like blogs entering the network, advertisers will have to have each individual ad they want to run approved by the Entrecard house.

My big question is will my credit calculations be correct? The last couple of weeks I’ve been cheated out of credits. I’d calculate I should have in around 1024 or 2028 but it was much less than that. Then I was told it was due to the total credits being cut in half daily (which I never did quite understand). Fine.. but then I noticed I got majorly slighted again, wrote EC and was told there is, in fact, a problem with credit calculations and that many bloggers were reporting the same issue.

So………now that you guys are throwing money in the mix, will this issue be resolved so that we are not slighted from true credits (money)?

I am not sure how I feel about all these changes. It sounds nice to get money, but to pay a fee to decline ads seems unreasonable. I know you are telling people to walk if they want to, but the bottom line is that EC would not be here if it were not for us bloggers. Mind you, I understand your side of it as being a necessity, but surely you must see our side and not be so rough on us voicing our opinions. It’s not fair to tell us this is how it’s gonna be and that’s that. We’re your business so we definitely should be involved in these types of major changes.

I didn’t need this kind of hassle either. This doesn’t sound like a very good for my blog. I just don’t see what I will gain except more to deal with when I’m stressed enough (as we all are) already.

Well…this just made my decision easy…widgets deleted…now 25999 blogs in Entrecard.

Graham, I understand you are doing what you feel is best for EC.
I want to know more about the ads and advertisers. I read in one of the replies that each ad will be approved by EC but what’s to say that EC and I agree on what’s offensive?

@valmg: we want to work together with our members to set guidelines as to what we should and shouldn’t approve. off the bat, I can tell you that no nudity, hate speach, or adult themed ads will go through at all.

I encourage everyone to speak up now, and into the future, as to what kinds of ads they don’t ever want to see… and we will continually revise our approval standards

@DivaShop -you won’t have to pay money… just credits. and it won’t be a whole lot of credits…

@Garden Gnome: you, and anyone else in a similar position, is completely fine. no need to worry. we’re actually 100% on revising the “above the fold” rule to “within one screen below the fold” anyway…

I have quite a few concerns about these massive changes.

First I have a problem with others selling ad space on my sites.

Second I have a problem of me having to pay a credit fee in order to decline a site which may not fit with my guidelines.

Third I have a problem with anyone telling me where I need to place a widget on my site. If you don’t like where the widget is then simply don’ advertise on it.

Fourth the rules are not even in place and your already making exceptions for people in these comments.

There are MUCH better ways for you to monetize entrecard without trying to sell adspace on sites that are not yours.

If the choice is simply the changes you outline or to charge a membership fee. Then charge a membership fee…. At least that way the owners of sites maintain their rights of ownership.

Look first to monetize your own site and quit trying to make money off and control members sites.

Lets not kid ourselves the reason you want the widget above the fold is so you can charge more for outside advertisers to place their ads there.

@Bruce, I’m sorry that you feel that way, but you contradict yourself a bit. You state: “If the choice is simply the changes you outline or to charge a membership fee. Then charge a membership fee…. At least that way the owners of sites maintain their rights of ownership.”

So why not just buy some credits and reject all the ads? In lieu of a membership fee, you can acquire whatever credits you need to reject all the ads… and that would be exactly the same as paying a membership fee, except you could probably get most, if not all, of the credits you need for free.

Also, entrecard point bloat will be taken care of by this, making the points go up in “value”?

But when we buy an ad on the site, it will be worth 50% of the exposure that it was before?

So there will be less credits to throw around, and we’ll getting less exposure?

Am I sorting that out incorrectly?

as long as the payments aren’t only on paypal frankly I think they have a huge monopoly on online payments. I don’t ever want paypal again and don’t plan to get it.

I won’t be able to place this widget above the fold because I have Blogher ads and they don’t allow it. Hopefully I’ll get an exception for that. I also don’t think we should have to pay credits to reject an ad, that’s ridiculous. If we don’t want to run an ad, that should be our choice and not be penalized for it. My next question is how we would be paid. If it’s through credits, potentially a blog that has very few visitors could get paid quite a bit just by dropping on 300 blogs a day. But a high traffic blog that doesn’t do much entrecard dropping wouldn’t have as many credits to trade it, but your ads would be seen by many and you would make more money off of that blog. That doesn’t seem fair to me. I would also like to see an example of how much the credits would be worth.

@kirk peterson: I agree that in the second fold is way more reasonable. It’s just that a lot of us (those of us that are members of the BlogHer Ads network, or members of Today.com) have signed contracts saying that we won’t post any other ads in the top fold, so we would have to quit. It wouldn’t be a matter of bargaining chip or anything like that… we would have to choose one network over the other.

My other big issue is with having to pay to reject an ad. I think it should be my personal choice, just like the other ads are as to rather or not I want to run a certain advert on my site. This is the reason I don’t run google ads on my site… because I can’t control the content.

I understand you guys need to make a living, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t want you controlling who advertises on my site. Give me a choice.

I’m open to seeing how all this goes. Hey, could really be a good thing for some. Not overjoyed about being penalized for rejecting an ad, but once again, will see how it goes.

Yes, please think about the above the fold rule. My widget is one scroll down from the top, so I would hope to be one of those exceptions. I stay in the top 3 in my category, and figure that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I feel that having people have to do that one tiny scroll down at least lets them see the title of my latest post. From there, they can decide whether to linger and read, or just drop and run anyway. For the most part for me, it is about getting readers…not just droppers.

Should be interesting to see how this all shakes out.
BTW, being able to cash in credits for $$$ rocks.

Graham – because if you charge a membership fee I am not being penalized for exercising my rights of ownership on my own site.

By making people pay a credits or anything for that matter just for the right to reject placing an ad on their site is in my opinion crossing the lines and infringing upon my rights as owner of the site. You’re penalizing owners with higher standards of quality.

As owner of the site I have the right to say who can or cannot advertise on it and I don’t feel a need to be penalized for exercising that right.

By forcing sites to place the widget above the fold you are trying to drive up the prices that can be charged to outside advertisers making all sites give up premium advertising space.

A membership fee is just that – a fee charge to be allowed membership and site owners would retain their rights to say what goes where and who can advertise there.

You’re right though. Either way it results in a payment of some kind. I guess it ties into the other part of my problem with this.

I understand the need to make a profit for the services you provide and do not fault you one bit for it. But the profits should be driven from your own site and services. Not by selling ad space on the backs of all the members here who’s sites you don’t own nor have the right to sell or control adspace on imo.

I do understand the value of you being able to sell ads across a network of what 30k+ sites though. That is probably very enticing. I am just curious as to how many will stay and what the quality of those remaining sites will be.

Undoubtedly you are going to have members with differing opinions on this. Some may like the way your proposing this, others may have different solutions.

Whatever you decide to do the world will continue to turn and I will either have to look for other means to generate additional traffic to my blog or not. I have stated my piece so I will just wait and see if these changes go into effect or not.

Guess in the meantime I have a boatload of credits to try and use up over the next week.

If the ads will be targeted by category then you MUST add categories for Outdoor / Nature blogs. We continue to be forced to choose Lifestyle, Photography, Hobbies, or something else. I mean… you don’t even have an Outdoor Recreation category. I would be happy to have canoes or hiking boots or tents advertised on my blogs, but not a bunch of totally unrelated stuff. And paying to not accept an ad is bizarre. Even Adsense doesn’t require that and they have tough rules.

Yeah, I’m not happy with this either. I get the feeling there are going to be a lot of people that are just gonna skim blogs and drop on the widget, spending their time hitting the max drop limit just to cash out instead of finding new blogs and friends. Maybe even an influx of new people that have flimsy blogs made just for the sake of making money out of the network.

I’m also disappointed over the fact that there are going to be outside ads that I won’t get compensated for and the fact that I don’t know how frequently the ads I purchase are going to be displayed (50% – 100% is a pretty big range). I don’t like that you’re making such a big change, and I don’t know what this will do to the service.

Mostly I’m just offended that you would make such wide sweeping changes to your already established network with little warning. I understand trying to make money, but to completely change your network well after it has launched and gained a large group of members bothers me. Did you not anticipate a financial problem with your original set-up? How do we know you won’t send out another e-mail in a few weeks saying that you’re going to make another huge change?

You’re right in stating that this doesn’t have to be an adversarial relationship, but from where I sit a lot of that is on you – you can’t expect to make such massive changes without members pushing back. Changes like this make your product appeal to a different set of consumers, so you’re in effect exiling some of your existing members whose needs will not be met by the new service.

I’ll probably stick around and see how it goes, I suppose you deserve the benefit of the doubt, but I think you’re taking a pretty big risk here. We shall see.

OH- but is there any way you could restrict those stupid BLINKY ads? Those just make a blog look cheap, like a used car lot or something…

Keep in mind, nothing is set in stone, which is why Graham stated EC is working with members-myself included, to determine the best way to handle your concerns. I have already handled several tickets regarding the “above the fold” requirement and yes, we will make exceptions. I am currently adding the users to a “hold” folder as a record of who cannot change the widget placement. As someone who changes her WordPress theme more often than her underwear, I’m well aware of design and trends.

I am not familiar with today.com terms and conditions. As a team, the Mods will look at the options some of you have presented and figure out a way to work around your concerns in order for you to keep Entrecard without being punished, or, going against the reasons you blog to begin with.

EC is not trying to dictate how any of you run your blogs. Keep in mind, I may be a moderator, but I’m a member as well. In order to keep the service free, and after a year of people trying to find ways to monetize their blogs with EC, 3rd party advertising was the best option. We aren’t dismissing your concerns, either, which is why they are being addressed here and through the Feedback form. Before you rush to delete accounts-before anything has even started, remember, we are giving this a try and listening to everyone’s ideas, concerns and suggestions.

@ Grace

You can cash out credits for cash

Beth, today’s news could not have been worse timing for the contest or perhaps it was planned that way. See I really thought I was part of a community, now I’m not. I was reporting all violations for awhile because you know the new changes meant something was actually being done about them. Now I’m looking at removing my blogs from EC. Go figure. It is a fickle environment and obviously one in which quality blogs do not have any say. That’s ok because I’m not the one who has to sleep with the latest decisions. I honestly care about my readers and my reputation as a blogger so as long as I do right that’s all that matters.

Why should I even bother reporting glorified splogs. They will put their widget right to the top then you can enjoy all their advertising, as in every stinking post but hey, I don’t make the rules. And for the record, I have been reporting TOS violations over and over and over again and again so don’t hand me the I didn’t report it thing. Just yesterday I think I reported alone 6 blogs so hey if you aren’t getting the reports you need to work on your system. You guys wanted a community but you really don’t want that.

BTW, are you even listening to the twitters. This time EC is going to be extremely lucky to come out on top. Bloggers are walking away and they will continue to do so with this change. That’s just my opinion.

Maybe, all 3rd party adds must be rated by 100 ec members on a scale of 0 to 1 before it is approved. 0 set as “I would never run this ad on my blog” 1 set as “This ad does not interfere with my blog”, then multiply the avg. score from the users by the default price to remove a 3rd party ad.

For example, say the default (perfect ad) cost to cancel a 3rd party ad is 300 credits. A reputable company might earn .99 from the users, so it would cost 297 credits to remove that reputable ad. But, lets say… a less reputable company applies for an add on EC and earns a .1 from the users, then it would cost 30 credits to remove that ad.

This might lead to the creation of fake accounts so an advertiser could pass this step. Also, this could scare away 3rd party advertisers.

Graham: “we will be applying a strict editorial process to all the ads that go through. Just like blogs entering the network, advertisers will have to have each individual ad they want to run approved by the Entrecard house.”

How should I be able to know that this process will work when the mediation process in your marketplace isn’t working at all?

I’m very curios about the changes..
I’ll have to wait and see if I’m going to like it or not…

Regarding the above the fold position.. The ec widget placed in my sidebar is above the fold in my screen (1680×1050)… So what are the guidelines for that, Graham?

Thanks in advance for your reply Graham!

I’m kind of concerned about these announcements.

My blog is a personal blog with some (unpaid) product reviews. I don’t intend to change it to a money blog.

I’ve been on EC since December, and my “price” has ranged from 128 to 784. I’m not the top of my group, but I have never had less than 3 or 4 ads in my que.

So far, I haven’t turned down any ads, but there are several ads I’ve come across are ones I know I would not want to be on my site (political, diet pills; things that go against my personal beliefs). i think we need more information about the approval process.

I like the idea of widgets being within one scroll of the fold. I rarely advertise on blogs that are below the fold. I hate scrolling through pages and pages and pages to get to the widget.

I’m going to stick around to see what the new EC will be. But I am skeptical.

“Above the fold” is not a standard. It depends entirely on the resolution of the you use to browse the web. The fold is in different places at different resolutions.

If you run your monitor at 1600 x 1200, more stuff is “Above the fold” than if you run at 1024 x 768.

If you decide to enforce this standard, use a real standard, like the max number of lines of resolution you can have above the widget.

Wow! Just getting back here, and look at this!
Hmmm… well ya’ll it’s been real. You can have my unused credits or whatever they are. I’m outa here. C’ya!

the funny thing with your talking about “The state of the economy” is that the economy was built on fake money. Banks gave out loans on money that they shouldn’t have – a loan increase the value of the money loaned – the banks loan out the profit they are assumed to get if the first loan is paid back.

Entrecard is build on something fake. When you first build the system there was on account and you gave that person (for the sake of this post) 200 credits. A second came in, he was given 200 credits and so on. So you invented an economy. The 10 first people had 2000 credits between them. Each visited the other sites the first day and every person took one advert on a different site. They all spent and earned 2 credits on the advert and they all earned 9 credits for voting on the other sites, plus 9 credits for getting votes. So the end of day one there were 2180 credits in the economy. Nothing had been produced and the EC economy just grew.

You guys failed in not taking EC’s out of the economy. MLM, like a Ponzi scam is based on the first person getting money from the second, the second from the third and so on. This works fine for everyone (especially person #1) as long as the list keeps growing geometrically.

Now there are too many people and no profit from running your adverts – or none for you guys – and this is the logical next step. Getting real money into the economy. At least real for you.

According the advertise page there are Entrecard widgets on nearly 22,000 blogs and deliver over 80 million impressions a month across 65 different channels.

Entrecard.com generates over 600,000 page views a month. so running 8 adds and charging a CPM rate, you get a little bit of cash.
(note to beginners: CPM is clicks per thousand – M being the Roman numeral for 1000) 8×600xprice of advert.

But the 25% real money made from over 80 million impressions a month is a heck of a profit. Using the numbers above, the average sites get 3636 hits per month and basically no one makes money out of Entrecard (unless an individual finds a way). If I get 100 hits a month on my card it’s lucky – but I did get 2000 hits on a post yesterday or the day before that came from LinkedIn. Not sure how many totally, I was just tracking LinkedIn. Normally those folks would have not touched the EC widget (based on previous tracking) and you would have had made a profit (for both of us) on those “uncounted” visits.

Good idea to get real money into this thing.

Not a good idea if the people don’t like the type advertisements.

Not a good idea to make people move above the fold, but one that I agree with even though I will probably not be able to do it.

Good idea – it takes the Entrecard Ponzi scam feeling away a bit.

I am extremely unhappy with this. Paying to reject ads is insane. You say this is necessary. I say: I am part of the Blogher ads network. I can opt-out of ANY campaign I want, and it costs me NOTHING. There is no reason to penalize bloggers who don’t want to run certain ads.

There is little incentive to remain with Entrecard, you’ll have to do better than that.

T.

Great news! Thanks Graham.

To all those with blogs below the fold, now you know why your blog doesn’t rate highly in the most popular list.

Entrecard will be all the better for the new changes and clear out a lot of poor blogs that nobody reads.

So if I read that right…..

Now we have to PAY to use Entrecard? instead of it just being a free service and letting us go around and do our drops? Thats how I am reading and taking what that email I got means….. If its true…. Then I guess I will have to skip town and take the widget off my blog * IF * its fixing to become a paid service

I just hope its NOT

— Christopher

How would one go about deleting one’s account, if that were desired?

Graham

I understand from a business point of view that you need to raise capital to keep running but I do think you have made a big mistake going this way.

1. A few months ago you pointed members to the OIOPublisher script that allowed publishers to sell advertising either for EC’s or cash, you earned from every sale of that buggy script, now you are selling the advertising on those same blogs, what was the point of us buying OIOPublisher. Maybe if you promoted that script more you would earn some $$

2. I have not seen anything that shows what bloggers get from the ads you sell on their blogs, Do we get a %% from the sale or do we earn the current credit rate as if it was another blog ad or do we get nothing?

3. Most free services have some kind of advertising on their site, apart from a few ads on this blog you have no ads on the EC site. I understand you may have problems with putting something like adsense on the inbox or category pages because they are at the end of the day just pages of links but there would be nothing stopping you selling advertising on these pages, considering how many people view their inbox and putting ads on every other page of the site.

4. You say you expect a handful of bloggers to leave, I think you may be underestimating this. I have not decided which way I am going to go but I know a lot of other bloggers that are more that likely going to drop EC, especially as there are other similar networks coming through, heck I considered starting one last time there was major changes and had a lot of interest from others when I suggested it.

Maybe I missed it, but “one page” is different depending on the monitor. What are your specs?

I’m not completely fine with this change. I just hope the fee for declining ads won’t be too much ‘coz I understand those who complained that they don’t want to put ads that are not related to their blog.

And I agree with Julie. I wouldn’t want to advertise on a blog if visitors won’t see it right away. However, I also agree with those who said that they want to have control over which ad goes where.

I hope there’ll be some changes with this announcement as a result of the views that you got from this post.

Like some people have already said: above the fold (or one page scroll) depends on the monitor resolution (and also depends if your browser window is full-screen, or a small window of 600X400 ! ).

Also remember: the width of the browser/screen is more important than you might think. EG: some blog sidebars will “float” so that a sidebar that might seem above the fold on a 1680X1050 monitor, will suddenly shift to below the main content (ie way WAY below the fold) on an 800X600 screen).

I design websites, and I see so many websites designed for only 1 resolution. The web design can often look awful once you look at it using a different resolution / browser.

Graham needs to give a general indication… something like: using firefox “out of the box” on a 1024X768 screen. According to my web stats, the most common resolutions are: 1024X768 (29%) and 1280X800 (20%)

Its good that Graham is giving some leeway on this, but webmasters need to realise that the further below the fold you go, the less advertisers will want to pay, and the more difficult it is to make the whole ecomomy work correctly… so be careful what you wish for, as you might get it (and regret it).

Graham,
Congratulations on getting it! I think this can be a sustainable model if it is well executed.

Here are a few advice points:
- What is the credit fee for rejecting an ad? If this is a relatively low or moderate fee (i.e., a percentage of credits they would get from the next EC ad), then maybe some of the detractors will turn around.
- By giving exceptions or relaxing the “above the fold” standard you are giving up substantial advertiser value.
- If you want to succumb to the pressure of the detractors, you could build an “opt out” function that segregates the users into two (however it would be wrong to give them the ability to sell credits if they opt out of paid ads).

If you ask me, they are the detractors are the vocal minority and this is your service.

There is even another dark side to these changes. Advertising on others blogs by paying for credits will become worth substantially less.

Why? Because we as advertisers will only be getting half the impressions for the credits we spend for that space.

These changes will drive entrecard into the ground imo…. The quality of blogs will drop substantially. Trying to generate credits to advertise will not be worthwhile as we as purchasers only get a portion of the impressions.

The quality if the traffic generated has always been poor (see bounce rate) but it seems this will really reduce it and drive the quality of the traffic farther down.

Most bloggers only click on the banner to find the next blog to drop on. When that next site has a 50% chance of not having a widget they will stop surfing in that manner and go solely to the entrebar. Are you going to then discontinue the entrebar?

The widget clicks will decline dramatically.

Much better to make a membership. Charge everyone $1 per month or $10 per year appx to be a member. At however many thousands of blogs here that should bring in a very substantial income. It will also serve as a way to drive out some of the poor quality blogs and make the job of reviewing them easier.

Anyway – still waiting to see how it shakes out. If these changes you outline happen hopefully you will allow us with high credit balances an opportunity to actually use them somehow before leaving.

First of all, it would be great if someone would translate this into ENGLISH. “Ads will be sold as run of network, or targeted by category, for a low CPM rate to be announced.” Huh? I may not understand all of this, but I’m quite sure I’ll be leaving. What I do understand sucks. I absolutely will not allow any random ad to appear on my blog, and I’m not going to pay to control what goes on MY blog.
I was really enjoying this – I should have known it was to good.

I think people are missing the point about paying to reject an ad.

If I understand correctly, advertisers are going to pay based on total impressions throughout the network (or throughout a category in some cases). Entrecard then uses part of that income to purchase EC from members. So there is no direct correlation between the number of impressions on MY blog and the economic benefit MY blog receives. The payment from advertisers benefits the community as a whole (or the category as a whole, which is still a lot of blogs).

In other words, because I’m part of the network, I get a (modest) economic benefit from EVERY ad purchased on the network. If I say the ad can’t run on my site, the advertiser loses a few impressions, and the network as a whole loses some revenue. Obviously these are small dollar amounts, but that’s the concept.

So if I can reject an ad at will, but it costs me nothing to do so, I will still share in the overall benefit to the network, yet by rejecting the ad I have reduced the value to the network.

Graham, I think it will help if you specify HOW MUCH blogs will be charged for rejecting an ad. If the charge is 1,000 EC, that seems excessive. If the charge is 1 EC, that’s hardly worth the time to administer. I have no clue how to do the math to figure out the actual cost — but it seems like it makes a difference how many visitors a blog gets. Maybe high-traffic blogs should pay more to reject an ad than low-traffic blogs.

Also, Fickleminded (#89) has an interesting idea — what if you allowed people who are not interested in monetization to put the widget wherever they want, and insist on premium placement only as a condition of participating in the ad sales. I’m not sure about all the implications of this, but it sounds like an elegant idea.

Disgusted and done with EC. I’ll sell my own ad space, thanks.

My first answer to this when reading it was a big resounding NO!. And, looking at the comments, it seems a lot of folk think this too.

While I’m not as active an entrecarder as I should be I do like the network, and I was a little suspicious of this. After all, isn’t it a great business model to build a big network of bloggers with a free advertising network – then use that juicy asset to make cash later from those same bloggers… ?

But I’ve thought about it a little now. And it is a good idea. After all, you’re entitled to make money from this. It’s your service. And I guess perhaps selling credits just isn’t making you the money you expected

In fact, I’d go further. Use the money to attract more A+ big traffic blogs, by paying the bloggers direct instead of a messy earn-credits-and-sell-them-back system. You need more premium blogs here. And you have to weed out dead blogs, Blogger blogs with one post that were updated last year. And blogs that are plain messy – loud music, the entrecard hidden right in the footer or among 1,000 other ads, etc.

I’ve no problem carrying commercial ads on my blog as long as they’re relevant. At the end of the day we’ve already taken the decision to carry ads, so what’s the difference? I’d like to still be able to approve/reject them though I’d doubt that is possible. Perhaps you can pay double credits for commercial ads and mark them as such?

I was just about to comment about the above the fold requirement but I see that it has been revised much to my own liking and current Entrecard widget placement. Thanks!

“and good luck selling ads on your 4 EC blog.”

no need for that type of crap personal reply, if you think the value / popularity of the blog in ec is based on quality you are so very very wrong

Does this mean you’ll be able to pay moderators now?

After thinking about this for a while I have the following concern. Since EC’s will now be worth cash, won’t this tend to make bloggers want to horde their EC’s and not spend them as freely on advertising? In fact, it may tend to force sites to stop advertising on as many sites and now have them focus on just a few sites that are highly related to theirs. Droppers will now be thinking twice about just advertising on any site just to try to boost their category ranking.

Right now, I’m more than happy to spend my EC’s on some non-related sites because I know that EC’s are fairly easy to get. But just as soon as you put a $ value on EC’s then I believe it will force bloggers like me to be a lot more selective and tend to reduce EC earning for everyone.

I think more categories will need to be created in the long run. Certain categories like “Cooking and Dining” seem to be a catch all for many blogs that aren’t exactly about Cooking but don’t seem to fit anywhere else. For example: I wouldn’t mind seeing a Beverage category created. It could cater to the Coffee, Wine, Beer, Smoothies, Softdrinks and Tea blogs and would be more pertinent to the type of blogs we write. While Cooking and Food go hand in hand with beverages I don’t exactly like being classified as a Cooking blog. More categories will help place more relevant outside ads into our blogs.

I certainly hops that the outside ads that Entrecard allows on the network aren’t simply those sleazy type of ads like “Male Enhancement” or “Miracle Diet” variety. I really dislike having those ads plastered on my Beverage blog. I’ll reject those ads no matter what the cost (up to a point) or simply stop using EC altogether if those types of ads are widespread. I think we the droppers should have some say as to the types of advertisers that come across our blogs without having to pay a huge EC cost to deny them.

I like the change. I am disabled and can’t afford my medicine every month any more. I need money badly and so far I have made NONE with 3 blogs and one website.

My blogs have won awards and so has my website. I also write for a medical journal at Wellsphere…

If anyone can tell me about all these other people you keep talking about that require your space above the fold, I would sure like to know. Or all these “affiliates” I keep hearing about……

I have ads on my website and blogs from adsense and have not made any money from that either. Oh, yeah, $.0.58…… A whole 58 cents………

This offer from Entrecard is the first offer of real money…..if anybody out there can offer me real cash, I’ll certainly take them up on it too.

thematrix777
goldfield_nv@hotmail.com (primary email) just email me there

Wow….

I didn’t expect such a negative reaction…but i did expect SOME negative reactions…

I know a lot of us have concerns about all of this.

Above the fold was originally rejected by the mod staff…it is a policy that won’t work…which is why we then decided on a 1-2 scroll rule…which means you scroll 2 times (usually 3 lines per scroll) and you should be able to see at least PART of the widget…some blogs have their widget at the very bottom of a very long page…those blogs don’t make credits because they aren’t really valuable to the advertisers….of COURSE we want to increase the value of the entrecard widget thru placement…why wouldn’t we? if it is more valuable for outside advertisers then it will be more valuable to EC advertisers….after all of this takes effect the prices on your blogs may change dramatically, but so will the value of the individual EC Credit–economies like entrecard will adjust themselves over time so long as no one really screws up the exchange rate!

the fee to decline an outside advertiser will be relatively tiny from my understanding…totally worth it IMO…you will also be able to provide feedback as to WHY you rejected said ad so that we can review the advertisers ability to advertise on our system again.

another thing: there were concerns that this was gonna make tons of money and give you guys scraps of it back in exchanges….however if you read the announcement again you will see that 75% of it will go directly back to those that want to sell your credits back…25% will go back to developement of Entrecard and making it better…

also, a few of you have been concerned about the 50% number: the amount of hits we are selling for each site—this number is the MAX number that can be bought…not all of the categories will receive that percentage of outside ads. it isn’t quite as doom and gloom as it sounds..

your patience will be appreciated

I really don’t care about everything else, but I can’t do above the fold. My site isn’t formatted to accept that, and the two spots I have above the fold go to the sponsors who are paying for me to attend a conference and my social networking connections.

Unless there is a way to apply for an acception to the above the fold rule I am going to have to drop Ecard…which sucks because I have used Ecard on quite a few occassions as a featured writer on several other sites.

How many advertising spots can go on any one blog at a time?
Are there a limit to the number of advertisers that can apply in any given 24 hour period? I wouldn’t want to pay to decline advertisement after advertisement.
I too think you might want to look at a paid membership as another option for people.
I’m going to wait and let this play out for a month or two before making a final decision about what I will do.
Never say Never

My bog is focused and I regularly reject ads that don’t fit that focus. I don’t like being penalized for it and I too may leave over this.

Based on this news, I will be leaving Entrecard. All of my above the fold and first page scroll area ad sites are full with ads that pay me a minimum of $3 CPM –often more. I certainly am not going to move entrecard into one of those and lose money (I seriously doubt I will ever see that amount from the Entrecard ad space). If you want to guarantee a minimum CPM, I might reconsider. I also do not lightly give up control over any ad space and I find a drastic change without consultation to be very distasteful. I absolutely will not pay to reject an ad.

Also interesting to note is that the new policies are most likely to drive away the larger sites–something that will hurt the ability to get quality advertisers to begin with. For example, while I find Entrecard to be fun and used it out of general interest, I never saw it as a great traffic source. I already have good traffic, so I don’t need Entrecard for that purpose and I never really notice it in my stats. That means I can also easily give it up.

High traffic sites don’t need Entrecard for traffic or ad income and are likely to want a higher level of control over their ad base, so they will likely be highly annoyed by the new polices. Yet the high traffic sites are exactly the ones that you should be hoping to keep around in order to have a successful ad network. Unfortunately, your policy is set up in a way that will likely drive many of those away.

I will remove my Entrecard widgets sometime this week. Thanks.

The concern I have is that if entrecard becomes a paid ad service which does not pay users for the “sponsored ads” then why wouldn’t a blogger be better off using the space for full paid ad space? Assuming of course that money is the point of the adspace.

However it seems that entrecard is moving from a free blog based system for creating buzz to just another paid ad network. And if the membership drops (which it seems it already is due to location, today.com rules, and pessimism about this new model) then why continue to use the widget?

Concerning ad space. I don’t see (I might have missed it) where “above the fold” is defined in an objective way. My screen resolution is larger than normal so my fold is pretty deep in the page. I have friends who still use 800×600 who scroll like mad.

Also, many bloggers use the top of their page for monetizing their blog. If you can’t guarantee them a certain amount of money they will move or drop the widget in favor of more profitable ads.

I must say I don’t like this new model because I am already signed up with profitable ad networks. I don’t use entrecard for money, I use it to attract new users and pick up a few hits. So, again, it seems to me that entrecard is leaving their niche and becoming just another paid ad network.

However I am not leaving. I hope my concerns are baseless and netrecard will emerge better for it.

@S Fernandes: that is correct. Entrecard is a free service, and needs to find some way to pay for itself.

@Victoria: we have officially changed the “above the fold” rule to within the top two screens. So it can be on the top screen, or one full-screen scroll down.

@Joel: if we want to take steps towards a healthy, thriving economy, basing payouts on credits earned is the only way to go. there are unlimited products and services you can sell in the shop to earn more credits. but economic participation is what we’re rewarding with this move, not traffic to your blog.

@Jennifer: you suggest charging a membership fee. why not just use the money you would pay for a membership fee, buy credits, and reject every ad? it would cost you exactly the same. just consider that a “membership fee” to be ad free.

@Chipper Dave: we want to involve the community in the ad-approving process. don’t want miracle diet or male enhancement ads? no problem! they won’t be approved. We want to stick with ads the improve the quality of our network, not diminish it. After all, we are making these decisions on behalf of our entire network.

As for whording credits, yes and no. The more people who whorde credits, the more advertising prices will go down. This will make people want to buy ads. Plus, what is the point of whording if you can dump them on the market and earn cash instantly?

@S Fernandes: yes we are hoping to be able to pay moderators and everyone else who helps us, just like a “real business” that “makes money”. It will be a beautiful day.

@Stuart: we will definitely use the money to attract more a-list bloggers.

@Megan: you can certainly sell your own ad space. In fact, you can do that AND participate in Entrecard at the same time.

@DR Burst: You already can pay $ to abstain from all third party ads. you would just buy the credits needed to reject the ads.

@Kirk: We’re going to search for the magic number of credits to charge such that most people don’t reject, but such that anyone who is offended or doesn’t agree with an ad can always reject.

@Bruce: it’s easy to paint a “doom and gloom” scenario, but allow me to point out where some of your assumptions are inaccurate. First, you claim that the quality of traffic generated will go down. But, by requiring everyone to place the widget at the top of their blog, thus exposing the widget to people’s entire audience, and not just those who go to the bottom of a page searching for a widget… certainly that will INCREASE quality of traffic by exposing all of the ads across the entire network to everyone’s total audience?

And then you say that traffic overall will go down, because people will start using the Entrebar to drop. Well… If you currently get 50 clicks a day from the Entrebar, and 50 clicks a day from ads and then after the changes people switch to the entrebar and now you’re getting 75 clicks a day from the entrebar, and only 25 clicks from ads, it all balances out. I have no way to look into the future, but I do know its unwise to draw early conclusions about exactly how it will play out.

@Palma: you said “Blogs are the life of EC. You would not be here without them.” Well, we also won’t be here if we don’t start making some money. So blogs are the life of EC, but without making money we simply cannot continue, and then NO bloggers would have EC, even the ones who were happy with, or excited about the changes.

@Yesar: the new one scroll rule works as follows. If you load your page, everything you see on the screen is the top page, above the fold. Now, if you scroll down one full screen, that is the second page. Your widget must be on the top page, or the second page under this new rule.

@Greg: 1.)Only a handful of people in the entire entrecard system bough oio. We’re talking in the tens. It became resoundingly clear at that point that all of our members are with us because we’re a free service, and charging members money for anything is the worst thing we could do.

2.) with the money we make selling ads, we’re buying back the entire network’s credits, as much as they’re willing to sell. that, plus a small take for ourselves, is what we’re giving in return. We have to think network wide here. We’re selling ads across the network, we have to give something back across the network, and this makes perfect sense. If we were selling ads individually, then maybe we could give something individual back, but we aren’t doing either at this point.

4.) while it truly saddens me that inevitably some bloggers will leave, I would rather have a thousand less members, and a healthy, sustainable virtual economy, backed by a healthy, sustainable business, that can thrive and grow well into the future, rather than a thousand more members, and a business that is about to close up shop.

@Caledonian: precedent is yet to be set for these types of things, and we’ll have to wait and see how it plays out, and cover all our bases along the way. but essentially, it’s no different than earning an income with an affiliate network or a traditional ad network.

@ Rabulah: to delete your account, enter a ticket at help.entrecard.com

@Christopher: no, you absolutely do NOT have to pay to use Entrecard. This is exactly what we are completely avoiding by instead choosing to sell network wide advertising to earn revenue. Entrecard is still free to all members. The only change here is you have to pay a small credit fee to decline paid ads you don’t want running on your site.

@ImpNerd: based on the number of credits in the economy, the number of credits we’re inflating by daily, and the volume of credits we anticipate people wanting to sell, we need to come up with a lot of money to buy them all back, which is why we went with 50%. This is one of those things though that isn’t set in stone. We can fluxuate it down and experiment, but it will never go OVER 50%, only less.

@SendChocolate: “I am part of the Blogher ads network. I can opt-out of ANY campaign I want, and it costs me NOTHING. There is no reason to penalize bloggers who don’t want to run certain ads.”

The difference between us and traditional ad networks like BlogHer is that we bring you traffic as well. How much traffic does BlogHer bring you? None. It only brings you money. Sure we have some stricter guidelines now, but in return we offer you all the free traffic you can muster, a fun virtual economy to participate in, and a network whereby you can meet other bloggers and start successful ventures with them.

@Thierry: this will encourage people to visit twice as many sites. Right now you earn a credit when you visit a site. What we’re about to do is make that credit 10x more valuable. You don’t think that will motivate people to drop more, knowing that their time is now 10x more valuable?

@Xavier: these problems are intimately related. The short answer is this will work, because we must make it work, because it is our revenue base. That’s almost like asking google “How are you sure you’ll continue to keep adwords working if Lively sucks?” With the money we make, we’re going to overhaul the shop and the mediation process.

@MoneyEnergy: initially, we’ll pay out with paypal, and eventually branch into other options.

@Carleen: “Also interesting to note is that the new policies are most likely to drive away the larger sites”

How wrong you are… Larger sites typically care about one thing: making money. Now, whereas before there was no way to monetize your traffic, now there is a solid one. Let’s say you’re a large site, and you get 10,000 daily visitors. Let’s say 5000 of those daily visitors use Entrecard (a combination of existing members and a recommendation). That’s 5000 credits your going to earn daily from people’s drops.

Over the course of one month, thats 150,000 credits. That’s thousands of dollars worth of credits you can sell back. So I think this actually incentivizes larger blogs to use Entrecard, because now it is a viable revenue source for them.

Advertising is fine with me. But what if the ad is offensive? I’m a wholesome guy and wouldn’t want ads of sex toys or enhancers on my blog. I’ve also had my widget just below my banner eversince I joined EC. How can EC assure me that they will be responsible enough in choosing the advertisers? I have done paid posts but I make sure that my advertisers live up to their claims. I don’t want to be a tool in defrauding other people.

@Joel: I totally understand your concerns, and would like to assure you that we are going to vet advertising thoroughly. I imagine we wouldn’t be in business too long if we honored ads on behalf of dishonest advertisers and scammy products. Furthermore, no one wants ads for sex toys on their blogs (unless its a sex themed blog) and we just wouldn’t allow it.

Look for a follow up post soon as to exactly what types of ads we’ll be allowing and how you can give us input as to the types of ads you don’t want us to approve. We will be listening very carefully, I assure you.

Wow. Somebody didn’t like my earlier comment. Went from 3.4 to 1.7 with one rating. Oh, well…

I’m not really interested in making money from Entrecard. As a matter of fact I spend a lot of money here. And I couldn’t care less about the “above the fold” thing – it’s all the rest of it that could be a problem.

I wonder if people are going to earn their credits everyday and then cash them out and not buy advertising in ec anymore. When we DO buy advertising on a blog only 50% of the time our ad will show? That sucks! That means we only get half the people visiting our blogs and only half the people clicking from our blog to the other blogs. I think this is going to completely change the dynamic of ec. I would rather pay a membership fee then have third party ads run on my site. The more I think of it the more I hate the idea. The whole idea of EC is to help bloggers and now you are going to open it to every Tom, Dick and harry selling every kind of scam program on the internet. It’s really kind of sad. One of the things I loved most about ec is that I didn’t have to read about all of the latest crap that is advertised everywhere else on the internet – this was a kind of clean, safe zone.

But – I will try to keep an open mind and see how it goes.

I hate the idea of have ads on my blog that I don’t approve of. I sounds like we’ll have to pay for keep our blogs ad free if that’s what we want. Would there be a way for us to choose which ads we would want to run on our blog? Also the above the fold line makes things junky looking. Perhaps halfway down would be acceptable? I’ll give it a try because I like being part of the EC community, but I hope there will be some way of having ads related to our blogs. How many will we be made to have?

EC will be banned for Today blogs because any and all money-bought adverising is against their terms of service, this is not negotiable on their end.

After reading through all the comments on this post and this change to the Entrecard economy I think that I will stick around with Entrecard for a little while at least.

I don’t want to receive any money from Entrecard. You can put other ads in the widget on my blog, IF I can approve them, and you can make money off them if you need, but I don’t want money. If you pay me in credits I would accept, but not money.

I’ll check through my stats to see how the change effects Entrecards performance in sending visitors to my blog.

The changes sound a little bit sketchy. If they work out I’ll stay, if not then I’ll leave. I’ll wait for further news.

Nathan

I make my living blogging and I think it’s an excellent idea. After all, how can Entrecard survive without this new plan? It benefits advertisers, bloggers, and of course Entrecard. I plan on using Entrecard more often than I have been!

@heathenMom

We do have a membership option for those who have no interest in running third party ads. It simply involves buying the credits you need to reject them all.

Would it help if we implemented an auto-reject membership option that would automatically reject ads, and purchase credits if you didn’t have enough to reject them? It would probably work out to a dollar or two per month.

The reject fee will be a small amount of credits… not entirely sure yet. we’re probably going to start around 50-100

Graham, will the ads only come once per day and only one per blog? Would it ever be necessary to reject more than one advertisement per day?

Wow, that took a while to read through… I got to the end of the comments, refreshed the page to check for new ones, and another 50 had appeared. Read them, refreshed, yet more arrived. It looks as though this change in policy has certainly got people’s attention. As someone else said earlier, only those at either end of the spectrum (I suspect heavily weighted at the negative end) will be motivated enough to comment here.
I’m happy to stick around and see what happens in the future with these changes, though if my EC-based traffic drops too much, I’ll probably say goodbye for now, as it isn’t all that high right now. Anyway, just wanted to leave a quick comment from someone who is happily observing from a slightly positive to neutral standpoint, to remind others we exist, we’re just not incensed/overjoyed enough to stick our head above the parapet
Hoping this directional change works out well for EC and fellow bloggers.

if there will be multible adds rotating through how will we be able to reject adds? I for one am not on entre-card all day, but I do check every day at least once. I think these ads need to be accepted as well as rejected, or limit the amount of ads that will rotate in 1 24 hour period. Does this make sense?

Even if we have the ability to automatically reject ads, we are still stuck now with a system in which out ads will only show about 50%, maybe a little more, of the time. So I’ll have to think about whether it is worth it to spend all the time that I do dropping to get only half of the visitors I usually get back in return.

Well my EC widget is already above the fold (or a scroll page) so this won’t be a problem for me. But will have a close look at the new advertising thingie to see how it affects my blog.

I rarely advertised these few months and seeing that only 50% of it may appear, I might be more reluctant to advertise but we’ll see how the economic + rate goes

Graham,

I am still not understanding why rejecting ads should be penalized. It should be our freedom to do so. If I don’t run the ad, I don’t get paid for it. It’s as easy as that. Cashing out credits will be incentive enough, for the blogs who are interested in monetizing through EC, to accept all ads that EC has sold to advertisers.

I am not saying that EC is wrong in trying to find a financial venue, I think you should, but I do think that EC is wrong in demanding a rejection “fee”, treating bloggers (whom, I insist, are the life of EC), as if they were EC’s private assets, while we are paying hosting fees and own our content, and drive way more incoming traffic from other sources than EC (bounce rate?), so a big part of those “impressions” are fruit of our hard work, SEO tweaking, etc., that EC is also gaining a benefit from.

I think that a fair way of going about it, is to use the same system as now with paid advertisers:

I see who wants to place an ad, check their (tacky or not) banner, I decide, approve or reject, based on quality of products and content, as I see fit for my site, which I own.

If I approve, I earn something in return and will be able to either cash out, or spend those credits running my own campaign on EC.

If I don’t approve, I don’t get any ad credits, and all is well, without penalization. Just like now.

EC will still be making money from selling tons of ads, throughout the network. Is this so difficult to achieve? Is it a possibility?

Graham said:

“The reject fee will be a small amount of credits… not entirely sure yet. we’re probably going to start around 50-100″ Then he also said “yes, there could potentially be multiple ads rotating through, but never taking up more than half the impressions.”

So if I don’t want any Entrecard thirdparty ads on my sites I could be rejecting one or more ads a day at the cost of 50 to 100 ec credits per day … do the math that’s 1,500 to 3,000 or MORE credits I’d need to use just to reject ads/ per site that I have listed in Entrecard each month… at least the ones that might be in popular advertising categories like Home and Garden for example.

I have several sites in Entrecard and I don’t have time to drop daily, let alone drop daily for each one, so it seems like this would end up costing quite a bit of money/credits if I were to reject all ads.

Obviously I don’t think it’s right to have to pay to reject ads.

I can understand that Entrecard needs to make some money to keep things going, but this doesn’t seem like the right way to do it. Bloggers should be able to opt out of thirdparty advertising in some way other than having to use all of their credits to pay to opt out.

You have a forum, this blog and thousands of Entrecard blog description pages that likely have enough content that you could easily add Adsense or the Yahoo network ads on. You could also try other ad networks – Amazon, eBay, Chitika, Kontera or some kind of intext ads etc or CPM (cost per thousand views) ads to monetize your Entrecard properties. I know that you use OIO on this blog, but you could have other types of ads as well.

I guess what I’m really saying is that I’d like to see you try harder to monetize your Entrecard properties before trying to impose what seems like mandatory opt in ads on your bloggers sites.

Secondly … you sent your message late on a Saturday night. I don’t know about other areas, but here in Toronto March Break has just started for some students. I’m sure there are some Entrecard members that went on vacation on Friday or Saturday and whom won’t be back until next weekend … just in time for all the changes we’re supposed to have made to our sites to take effect, and others will be busy packing and planning for the following week when their kids are off … so a months notice might have been better than a week given the time of year.

One week is not enough notice for a change of this magnitude. Not at all.

Third … what is one scroll down from the fold .. is it one click of the PG DN button? If so most of my sites comply with that new rule … if not … well maybe they don’t.

A few of my sites are in the Glam Network and my contract with them is to have their ads above the fold. I not only make good money from those ads, but I also gain traffic from their network (much like many Blogher ad members do as well). I know those ads work so I’m happy to have them above the fold, but since the Entrecard ad network is new and unproven as an earner I won’t be moving my Entrecard widgets to the top of the fold and jeopardizing my contract with Glam or other advertisers.

Also, I know you said all ads will be screened, but will they be screened well enough that they won’t break TOS with bloggers other advertisers? For example if a site uses Adsense you can’t promote poker, gambling, alcohol, hate or several other topics via their content or presumably their other site advertising. That’s just one more reason why bloggers need to have the ability to reject third party advertisers without penalty … not only because they want ads to compliment their sites topics or niche and or their personal preferences, but because they need to keep inline with their other advertisers terms of agreement.

At this point I haven’t decided whether I’ll stay with Entrecard or not. Perhaps I’ll wait and see what happens over this week and when the ads start, but I must say I’m not happy with 1. the short notice and 2. the fact that we’d have to pay to opt out of individual ads.

Hmmm…interesting news. I’m not sure how I feel about it yet.

The idea of paid advertising doesn’t totally scare me, but I do not have paid advertising on my blogs (except where I’m part of an affiliate blog network and have no choice). I never really liked the idea of having paid adverts on my blog when I have to PAY to reject them or allow them.

I like that we can reject an ad…I don’t reject many but there are some even now that are not appropriate for my blog. I just don’t want my readers to be “spammed” with completely irrelevant stuff.

*sigh* I understand the need for EC to have funding. I don’t plan to leave because I’ve discovered so many wonderful blogs. I just hope the new advertising doesn’t completely take over.

With this the 201st comment, I hope you didn’t run out of gas to read even more.

I understand your need to make money, don’t we all need that?, but I think that this scheme is more for making you money than us, despite your delivery message. YOU are the one getting the bucks for the sold ad spaces and leaving publishers with relatively meaningless credits to sell. Not only that, you are taking away 50 percent of the ability to earn those credits by sharing ad space!

Sure, outside advertisers is what is needed to monetize the system, but what about right here on the Entrecard site? Isn’t how many thousands of eyes enough to sell space for?

If by chance that this system works, it will go nowhere unless there is a sizeable advertising budget behind advertising ad space! Worst case scenario, you could end up in the shitter big time should you fail to grow the ad base while buying back all these credits you say you will buy back from us.

Another wrinkle in the process is just how interested in one 24 hour ad will advertisers be interested in?

Instead of sharing the same ad space and diluting the community that is Entrecard, why not code a double widget? Why not code many different widgets for all layouts and all options? This could include extra spaces for Entrecard members’ ads as well. This has been suggested before, and it’s something worth considering.

I ruffled quite a bit about this change. It feels like my choices are fixing to be taken away, and that pisses me off. Sure, I like Entrecard and its community. I’ve met quite a few people that I never would have. And that is the sole reason I remain a member.

But, you are risking something even greater here, and that is the whole she-bang. High rates of traffic that does not translate into eyes staying long enough to see, let alone be interested in, the content or the ads already defeats the purpose of monetization. By instituting this half-baked money-making scheme on top of that fact can only fail. Your safest bet is to sell advertising throughout the Entrecard sites and leave the bloggers alone.

Graham, Entrecard is what it is. You have brought countless people together and that is no small feat. Work with what you have instead of fighting it. It’s a good thing that could last – if you let it.

I have to jump back here to reiterate what Tricia said. You say, “It will only cost 50-100 credits to decline an ad” and then go on to say that there could be several ads in a day. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get our 300 drops in. Uhm. we hsve LIVES and many of us have multiple blogs and struggle to keep up and there has been a lot of discussion lately re: how people have gotten so sucked into trying to drop their real lives are suffering.

I absolutely cannot afford to pay to decline ads and while you say that a fee is no different than paying to decline credits, you are so wrong. I pay Bloglog $3 a month to have a premium account. I’ve paid $2 or $3 a month for some services that I felt helped my blog, but the thing is, when a fee is paid it’s paid and you don’t have to worry about how many ads at what price??? are constantly coming through.

I have stayed with entrecard through some changes I wasn’t happy about because I’ve grown to be friends and really love a lot of people here. It’s been the sense of community to me that matters most.

And I too think that you are moving WAY too fast with a lot of big changes. A week is nothing when it comes to trying to digest all that you have and I am at a loss. I absolutely don’t want outside advertising on my blog and yet I don’t want to lose contact with so many wonderful bloggers I’ve met here. I really think you should take a look at Gaia, which started out at zaadz. It is still free to members and they take outside advertising for the Gaia site. To insist that members have to take outside advertising is unfair and not at all what I think most of us signed on for based on what you said you were. I understand you needing income, but the biggest part of what you seemed to propose at the outset was a wonderful interaction between bloggers, a real community, and we earned our ads with drops and that worked well.

Further, you say you will screen ads, but supposedly you do that now, and yet some of the ads in the categories I’m in I find very offputting and wouldn’t have on my site. I have rejected a number of ads, and I myself have been rejected. That’s fair because it gives the blogger the power to decide what goes on their blogs. To say that the ads just WILL be there or we have to pay is so unbelievable I still can’t get over how shocked I am. I think you really need to rethink what you are proposing. I truly believe MORE than “a handful” of bloggers are going to leave than you imagine. These are drastic changes in so many directions it’s hard to even take it in.

I have loved entrecard and I will miss it terribly if I go, which I’m still in the process of deciding.

Maitri

I afraid that I am also a above-the-fold-no-can-do. I’m not sure that I understand the full impact that these changes will cause and I’m not sure what mechanism will be in place to test the changes. I’m not a fan of paying to decline ads. Relevant, contextual ads are a priority for me to maintain credibility.

If you are to transform into a “real” ad network, have you considered other IAB standard ad sizes, such as, for example a 468 x 60 that would be placed between articles and could suit some of us without the possibility to provide an above the fold?

@Pahn Yes, that’s exactly what graham has been saying.

Everything is still 100% free.

Hopefully the scroll down thing sticks because I can’t do the above the fold deal. I can understand that EntreCard wants to do this to maximize earning potential from advertisers, but my layout is more important to me. I understand there will be less junk blogs that could give a crap about on EntreCard, but to me the importance is in the fact that I can keep my great layout. I do have it in the current rules though… hopefully they stick. If it goes back to “above the fold” I’m out!

@ James – well if that is the case, I don’t think EC will lose much users..

I think there are only few trying to sound pissed because they thought they may need to pay something and EC credits will totally vanish..

I think you should rephrase the “by paying you cash for your credits, and then wiping them from the system”.. the word wiping sound like EC will change the very whole system.. hahaha

I will totally support this then… if I can find time, I may even want to create an e-book about entrecard ^^

This is something new. Lot of changes in coming week. I will keep checking. I may encash some of my credits.

also have to check the new advertising!

The idea of being able to cash out our credits is good. And I also like the opening of advertising space to third parties, but that widget placement rule is just absurd.

As you said, we’re in a grim period, so you can’t expect people to give a better placement to something that is not necessarily paying them out so good, as something else may be. But without doing so, they lose the ability to partecipate in the EC system, which is great not so much because of advertising and credits, but because of friends you make here and new blogs you get to discover.

{ @Margaret – How wrong you are… Larger sites typically care about one thing: making money. Now, whereas before there was no way to monetize your traffic, now there is a solid one. Let’s say you’re a large site, and you get 10,000 daily visitors. Let’s say 5000 of those daily visitors use Entrecard (a combination of existing members and a recommendation). That’s 5000 credits your going to earn daily from people’s drops.

Over the course of one month, thats 150,000 credits. That’s thousands of dollars worth of credits you can sell back. So I think this actually incentivizes larger blogs to use Entrecard, because now it is a viable revenue source for them. }

Not sure where those figures are coming from. My blog has been in the number one overall spot for popularity at times and is nearly always in the top 5 or 10. I have never seen 5000 visits per day from entrecard…. I would not be counting those thousands of dollars in eccles to sell back per month quite yet.

I have voiced my concerns over these changes. They all basically stem from Entrecard attempting to use my site as their asset with these changes.

Like I have stated – I completely understand that entrecard wants to monetize the service. I just disagree with the method. Monetize your own site by charging membership fees or whatever, but don’t try making $$ by taking control of and selling advertising space off of my site. My site is not one of Entrecards “assets”

It looks like these changes will take effect so in anticipation of that I have been taking steps in preparation of leaving.

Cancelled 500 or 600 pending ads (lost count) – Attempting to burn up my credit balance so if these changes happen I am ready.

i don’t see what the big deal is about having your entrecard widget above the fold i think that it’s a great idea it saves everyone from having to go all the way to the bottom of there site looking for it and i think that all the changes will be great and i am going to stay with entrecard no matter what changes there is because if it wasn’t for entrecard then i probably wouldn’t have has many people visit my blogs and that probably goes goes for everyone else on entrecard so really you should be thanking them not threatening to leave because you aren’t getting everything your own way

Looks like people don’t like the new changes.

I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don’t know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.

Ruth

http://laptopmessengerbag.info

[...] members primarily changing the way we are going to look at Entrecard moving forward. The move is Entrecard’s launching of a third-party ad network ‘imposed’ across the board that will affect all its members. Consequently, they are [...]

I like the changes too, but i have read through everything on here and cant seem to get an answer anywhere!

I just want to know:

How much credits is each paid advert going to be worth?
What is the worth of 1 credit in money?
Where can i track my paid ad credit earnings?
How do i cash my credits in?

Today i accepted 18 ads my 3 blogs, but i wont accept any more i wont be getting anything from it.

Thanks

[...] recently launched an advertising network in which paying third-party advertisers can advertise on any member’s EntreCard widget. [...]