Entrecard Ad Network payout: 75% to members

These questions fascinate me, and in truth, there is no way of knowing.

For speculative purposes, if we could remove 30 million credits from the economy, retail value of credits could raise to $15 per thousand and resale value perhaps as high as 7.50 – $8 per thousand… which was the market rate in the beggining when our economy was at about that level.

Graham,

Thanks for the lengthy explanation, now I understand what we’re approving the paid ads for. To be frank, I can’t see the purpose of advertising using ECs since most of free ads are eclipsed by the paid ads. Nevertheless, I’m sticking with Entrecard since I get alot of newcomers with this, hence more blog exposure.

Do you have an estimated date or month for Entrecard to be launching the credit cashout service?

very interesting…

I am wondering why people will pay to advertise on my EC widget, but not use EC credits. I have a ton of paid spots waiting, and I cannot help but wonder what that will do for my EC credit purchased ads. This is the part that concerns me most. What I liked about the EC widget is that there was no money involved. I am not using my blog to make money, therefor it was nice to have a medium for exposure that didn’t involve money.

wonderful idea to payout of 75%. i am trying to approve paid ads as much as possible to support entrecard. Waiting for the pay-day!!

all of a sudden I’m excited using entrecard

This weekend!. Well, I might just live to see this work. I haven’t seen a single werewolf add yet. That makes me very happy indeed. And werewolves haven’t even been knocking at my door. Entrecard is doing a great job. They just better keep that Maydoff guy away from a computer!

pure jibberish, go ahead with the proposed buy back and see what hapens you can count the days on one hand it will last.

telling people we all live in fairy land and we are now using real money to buy fairy bread and twinkles is not going to work

the whole concept of inflation is dispelled where no one now is getting ads placed, there simply is no infaltion

the buy back of ec is fraught with the black market and shady deals, your own site tells people that clicks / drops should not be taken to heart as they can be falcified.

wake up, fairy land finished the minute the first paid ad rolled out the door, the money needs to be paid 100% to the publisher who displays the ad.

I hope this policy base on the win win solution in order to the revenue sharing and sustainability EC program.

Everything is fine. just couple of points i would like to mentions here. 1.There must be some way/method to differentiate between blogs who accept paid ads and those who dont.
2.Regarding cash out facility- preference/priority should be given to those who have accepted more paid ads than the rest of them.

This makes alot of sense to me, and also adds to the morale of the entire community.

I’m glad this is going into play this weekend and look foward to future updates on this matter.

Pete…

Paying 100% to publishers – are you serious, of course not. Do you think Entrecard servers and hosting time just dropped down from fairy land. These operations cost real money out of a real person’s pocket in hopes that one day he will own a thriving, sustainable marketplace. Your comments are asinine.

I look forward to where this new direction might lead. Thanks for having the courage to implement something that was bound to be controversial.

I think the system will only really benefit those who have been hoarding ec credits. I for one always used them to advertise with so I don’t have a large bank waiting to cash in when the system goes live.

My number of drops have decreased as well since most people are spending a few bucks to use the paid ads instead of the traditional dropping method. I am wondering how quickly new credits are going to be acquired to be able to benefit from the cashing out system.

I am still in wait and see mode in regards to entrecard. I know anytime major changes like this are made there will be some growing pains. I’ll wait patiently to see what the outcome will be.

Interesting. Thanks for the explanation. I too will be waiting for the live cashout to see it really in play.

One thing you didn’t mention that I did want to remind everyone – some (many?) of the “paid advertisers” are the same as the good old non-paid advertisers you used to see popping up. Before you dismiss all out of hand, see what they have to offer. I’ve seen hits and returning visitors (what’s really important to me) increase both because of my unpaid and paid spots. I put in the minimal investment ($10) just to see, used the pay-per-click model and blog hits, returning guests, new visitors who stay upwards of 10 minutes, leave comments, participate are on the rise several times over! and i’ve only used about $2 or $3 dollars so far of my $10 initial investment (go for pay per click imho)

I for one can see why people are concerned/ confused but I’m at least curious enough to see what happens and suggest people give it a shot at least. For me, not only was it “not as bad as I feared” it was a surge of electricity and motivation to the blogs!

For now the a

The fact is that EC is not a normal ad network. Many people joined EC because they had very different goals than a normal ad network. Most joined to get traffic to their site and in some case to just be part of a community of bloggers.

Unfortunately, there was no revenue stream in that for Graham.

So now he is slapping an ad network on top of his community. It makes perfect sense that there would be backlash from the community because members did not join to make money. If revenue is an important thing they would have joined the multitude of other ad networks.

What compounds it all is that there has been very little transparency into the WIFM (what is in it for me) for members. The concept that you run ads on your site for no direct benefit to you is against any capitalist principal. It sounds nice that you there will be a 75% payout but how it is paid or to whom it is paid has not been told. That is what Graham should of lead with. That way people would have known what they were getting and why they should participate.

Throw on top of that that there has been a multitude of bugs and technical issues in both the market and the ad network, and you get the issues you have seen.

Graham had some great traction, hopefully he can pull it together.

OK. I’m going to accept ads on one blog — the famed All Arkie Army — and reserve two others for people buying ads with Entrecard credits only (one of those is on Today.com, and we are prohibited from taking the paid ads; the other I’m holding out just because the rates to advertise on it are quite high and I don’t want to short anyone).

We’ll see how it goes.

Can any one explain all this in simple terms ?

What direct benefit will i get by advertising these paid ads on my blog ?

And why doesn’t the cost to advertise on my blog increase as the number of ads in the queue ?

Can someone PLEASE explain me in short and brief about what is written above?

It is too long and many jargon words.

I feel that this paid ads thingy is destroying the delicate balance of the entrecard system.

Entrecard should maintain its system of credits and generate its revenue through people purchasing credits/affiliate programs/banner ads on entrecard.

Inflation can be handled with a heavier advertising tax.

My 2 cents.

First of all, I am so deeply disappointed in the decisions that have been made I barely know what to say. Let me address the few concerns that I can think of in the moment.

First of all, I must say that I appreciate all that was done in the past, the many good friends I’ve made, the many beautiful blogs I’ve found that I wouldn’t have otherwise, and the ability, as a disabled woman who doesn’t have money for an advertising budget to speak of, to work to earn the credits to advertise. To me, that’s what set entrecard apart. I thought it was very special and I felt honored to be part of it.

Your changes a few months back I did not like but they were workable.

These paid ads and all that go with them are simply not only not acceptable but I wonder — and I’m sorry, I truly don’t mean to be disrespectful — where in the world your head was??? Truly.

FIRST of all, you assume everyone who is blogging is in it to make money. This simply isn’t true. Most of us have some little advertising on their sites, but mine, for example, are to get more readers, blog exchange ads in other words, and they are free unless you choose to go further and get upgraded services. There are a GREAT MANY of us who are blogging to share our interests, our heartfelt thoughts and writings, and to feel part of a community. That’s what I’ve always loved about entrecard, the community aspect. But you are destroying this in a subversive manner that perhaps you didn’t even think of.

And by the way, yesterday I changed all of my ad preferences to Entrecard Users only. I only want real entrecarders who work for their ads by dropping. That is the exchange I am willing to make. I work for my credits to buy my ads. And this is the biggest way in which your system is flawed.

YOU seem to think you are doing us a big favor by offering to “Buy credits back.” First of all, we are limited to 300 drops for site a day which isn’t enough to buy much of any ads. A lot of us have to drop for days to get enough credits to buy ads and believe it or not, we all have LIVES. We do not have 24 hours a day to drop ec’s. So where in the world do you think all of these extra credits are going to come from to sell anyway? I certainly won’t have any. I can barely drop enough to buy my ads. This is a very flawed system. Perhaps if you had given us the CHOICE as in taken a census, asked for opinions, feedback, etc, it would still of course been your call, but you seemed to make grand sweeping gestures without knowing or caring how those of us who you might say put you on the map, felt. Our being here dropping and establishing the EC system as it has been is what has made it grow, and now you, with no concern for how this affects us, no real concern, have laid so much on us so fast we can barely breathe.

I wanted to help entrecard. I had no idea that we were not compensated in any way for hosting ads (who do you know that hosts ads with no compensation? Other places we earn points to use to buy ads in a somewhat different way than ec, but with a similar outcome.) You say it wouldn’t have made a difference to YOU if you gave out credits vs. the system of buying them back. Well, I won’t speak for anyone but myself, but I desperately need the credits to run a good campaign hence I will never have enough to sell to make money, hence I’m dropping as fast as I can to buy ads to get exposure and while the ads seem to be getting amazingly expensive needing a week or more of accruing points to buy them, you seem to think you are being generous to offer “buying points back.” Buying WHAT points? Most of us are still trying to earn enough to advertise.

Then there’s the matter of AFTER dropping like crazy to buy the ads, using up a ton of points, you now only show up half the time on the blog you struggled to get the credits for. How in your universe does this seem fair? Especially since we are getting no compensation for hosting the ads, but we are being cheated of half the ad time on the ads we have legitimately purchased through hours of ec dropping.

Further, with my three blogs, once the paid ads started, and I was trying to play fair because I truly DO want to help entrecard so I denied a few that truly were a bad fit. The next morning I had 8 regular ec ads and well over 20 some paid ads. We have all been going CRAZY with all of these incoming ads, and they were SUPPOSED to be screened but I have had everything from anime, to scantily clad women and more come in. Now, they have the right to do what they want to do, but I don’t call that screening, PLUS when you have checked an ad that says you only want ads that fit the criteria of your blog and yet ads come in with everything under the sun, very few fitting the criteria, something is not working right!

So the people I love and care about here, who are dropping like crazy, as well as myself, are being shortchanged on both ends. It’s hard enough to even get enough credits to buy ads (I can’t believe how many ads are going for 4000+, 8000+ and 16,000+!!! Huh?) At 300 drops a day how in the world are we supposed to buy these ads. And, I repeat, you act like you are doing us a big favor by offering to buy credits. How in the world do you do that? How many entrecarders actually have such a surplus of ads that that can work on a scale fair to all?

Bottom line. No credits for compensation, no can do. I was going to outright quit but I decided a compromise was to stay in for a bit to see what would happen. I’d like to see EC make income, but not at the expense of the very community that worked their hiney’s off to put you where you are!

Yesterday, after going through and denying/cancelling every single paid ad, and setting all of my preferences on all three blogs to entrecarders only, this morning I still got paid ads waiting in the queue. I almost screamed. I’d worked so hard to get this worked out. Plus I, like many others have said, have had ads show up as approved that we never SAW nor approved? And I’ve had a handful of sites who have applied for ads SEVERAL times in less that a day or two. When we drop we buy one ad and can’t buy another until our ad has run. What’s going on?

Finally, the scariest thing off all to me is that in the last days of the ad buying frenzy, a lot of ec’ers, a number whom I’ve regularly dropped on, are buying paid ads and for 2 days I received not ONE regular entrecard ad. When I changed my status back to ec ads ONLY I got 3 ec ads right away.

If the people, many of them, who regularly dropped for points and bought ads from me and I them go to buying ads, they will not need to drop and buy that way, hence I will get no ads for the now limited exposure, we ec’er’s who have put YOU on the map spending hours out of our daily lives earning points won’t be able to earn them or if we do, for what? I NEED ec ads to bring my value up. Paid ads don’t do that. I am sinking in the charts faster than a stone in a river, few people are buying ads the good old fashioned way by dropping, and the paid ads are cutting into our time for the ads we diligently dropped on for the single reason of buying ads in return.

If this doesn’t change quickly to a system that is fair to all. I’m taking my 3 blogs elsewhere. I’m already, as many have said, doing better on other ad programs that are fairly worked out for the advertisers and the publishers where everyone wins. You have WAY overstepped this time, and it makes me sad, and it’s probably going to make me leave.

And if I get one more paid ad in my queue after making it clear in my advertising preferences that I DON’T want them, I will pull all three widgets in an instant with no explanation.

You are killing the beautiful community you worked so hard to create.

I am very sad about this…

Rev. Mother Maitri

Well Graham. Let’s say 8 dollars per thousand.

That’s 8 dollars for 10 hours of dropping, or more hours.
It’s payment per click, even when you count in thousands.

So let’s say we’re here for the fun, Yes?
We play, you earn.

From the beginning I’ve said that two different systems: paid and EC would be a good solution.

Those who want both can display both widgets or a double one.

Right now I’m not accepting ads, because I still have EC blogs on my list that were accepted before the whole paid system began.

There’s also another reason. The paid ones are not at the end of the row, waiting for their turn, as I feel they should.
Paid ads might be more important to you, EC ads are the result of very hard work and are more worth for me.

I also think the paid ads should reflect some quality, as agreed.

Interesting is that ads from outside are mainly low standard ads I would never ever want on my site when I had a free choice.
They have no widget, so they put the surfing-through-widgets to a halt.
Improving the quality of the ads that run through the system will raise acceptance on the widget, but…. it will also attract better paying advertisers. Quality attracts quality.

I’m OK with paid ads from other bloggers who were already in the system, or who are already in the system, except the “make money from blogging”, and some other advertising blogs. Let’s be honest, they came into the system to advertise and they have the budget to do so.

Some people are writing that those who run paid ads should earn more than topdroppers.

But running a paid ad without the topdroppers and other droppers would mean nothing, because they aren’t clicked and would stop the system.

Chicken or egg?
Paid ad or a drop?

When you want value the droppers only, the system goes down in the end, one way or another.

thank you for this post. now i understand what paid ads are for. i tried to understand it three days ago but couldn’t figure the entire picture of it. now i know how it works.

thank you for sharing “benefits” to the members.

The plan is to give members with the highest ratio of paid ad approvals first dibs on cashing out their credits.

As one that actively participates in the EC Market (#2 in total sales and #1 individual product) I am very interested in the cash-out feature. Paying 75% of ad revenue to the Publisher is, frankly, HUGE. Google Adsense only pays 1-5% of revenue. Individual blog owners will get a trickle down effect and the market will set a final price for the value of EC.

It sounds like EC plans to offer buy-back at 50% of retail which is lower than I had hoped but is not unreasonable.

Graham, I suggest you make public your statement that approval of ads will have an impact on priority for pay-outs. Also, I suggest you kick your tech support people in the rear and/or hire some more. when simple tech support issues get nothing more than an automatic response for 10-14 days, it will eventually crater even the best business model.

Loving the new updates!! I agree these changes are beneficial to the entrecard community as a whole

I’m fine with this new system /feature of yours. The trouble is that there’s way too much paid ads in one day waiting for our approval. The worst thing is, if we cannot take action to approve or reject the ads within 24 hours, they show up anyway. It’s really driving me nuts and I have read a lot of blog posts that they find it also annoying. I could send you links of those blog posts griping about these terribly annoying paid ads. I cannot stand them, because they’re not even droppers. I want to support blogs who support me.

Could you just make the one to two paid ads in one day , not 30 in half a day? And please make a grace period of about 3 days to approve or reject them before they show up automatically?

A lot of your members really do not like the present system. It’s also unfair for those who waited for days to advertise on our blogs –the ones who just pay with credits.

I hope you do something about this Mr. Graham. I tell you, and I have to repeat, “PAID ADS ARE ANNOYING”.

cool I have also been accepting all paid ads and i’m happy that we will be getting some cash woo hoo!! and this weekend how exciting i’m looking forward to it

Cited:”Graham Says:
April 7th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
The plan is to give members with the highest ratio of paid ad approvals first dibs on cashing out their credits.”

==========

Have you made a poll for this?

Or was it the plan from the first day on?

Thanks for pushing the topdroppers aside. Ugh!
I have been quite long with entrecard, to my feeling, so I really helped the system going.

I wasn’t able to load the widgets today, whereas other sites on the internet loaded quite well. I hope it’s coincidence.

Maybe it’s time for a strike of the droppers, so we all can see how much we droppers are worth!!

I agree “The client is King”

I also agree in keeping widgets separate and allow people to subscribe to whichever ad philosophy they want.

I said it before, I’ll say it again, I have a strange feeling you’re slowly moving towards paid-ads only and “buying out” our EC credits.

As the Rev. said, No one has enough time in the day to earn enough EC’s to drop EC ads, let alone paid ads.

While 75% payout sounds great, I don’t think your homework was done….I agree with whomever said in the previous thread on this that the proper way to go through with this is to do a test platform and allow your members to decide. You seem to have already made up your mind, and are just patronizing us by allowing us to air out our complaints. You are going ahead with this no matter what we say. It’s transparent.

I’ll continue to accept EC ads only, until I see where this is heading.

I still believe that a separate widget for paid ads, one like that of Project Wonderful that makes both bloggers and Entrecard earn, is better than paid ads and regular ads sharing the same widget. If a blogger wants to earn, then he has to put that paid ad widget in his blog. If not, then he has the option too of not putting that widget on.

At first, I was, ‘Okay, let’s give it a try’. But after a few days of seeing paid ads eating my dashboard completely every time I sign in, it became very annoying.

Please give us the option to run or not to run a paid ad by providing a separate widget for this. You earn, we earn. Period.

EC credits for cash? Then who else would want to buy ad with credits? I would drop and save all my credit for cash out. Is this the ulterior motive to eventually get everyone to go on paid ads? We pay for the ads, drop and save the credit and then cash out?

Wow! I don’t know what to think?!? I truly was thinking, hey, somebody found, and liked?, my blog!! It was so kewl – then I started thinking, there’s something afoot! Yep, should’a figured it was something controversial, and that unwittingly I fell right into it! lol Shame on me for never knowing ‘what’s going on?’!
Well, as I was clicking approved on my ’special “they love me, they really love me!” advertisers’, I was wondering about the “paid ad” thingy – the one above it wouldn’t approve and the ‘paid’ ones went right thru – imagine that!?
Anyway, just wanted to say I’m sorry to all of the dedicated ECarders for my not being aware – and apologize for all of the strange ads on my site,(for the next few months, I guess!) – after all, ignorance is no excuse! just a note on that; I once rejected an ad – a long time ago – and still feel bad about it; I felt I had judged someone, and I am not really capable of judging *anyone* – hence, my frivolous ‘approvals’ now!
I hope we’re not seeing the end of EC – it was a great project…

Many of the questions here have been answered in other blog posts. The length of the paid ad queue doesn’t matter. Paid ads will only get 50% of the “air time.” They will rotate randomly on that 50%. They will run until that advertiser’s money runs out… who cares? Advertisers did not target anyone’s blog… it’s not like buying with ECs. Advertisers can choose to have their ads shown to everyone or for a higher price in certain categories. So no one should be angry over what’s in the lineup. If you don’t like ‘em, don’t accept ‘em.

I personally have various levels of discrimination on my various blogs because of the audiences they have. I’m not happy about some of the sexier ads and blogs, but I just don’t accept ‘em.

I’m not thrilled that this means I’ll have a lower payout status, but I understand why it has to work this way. Sort of rewards those with no taste, though.

It will be interesting to see how it plays out. The only question I haven’t seen answered somewhere yet is: If we reject an ad will all future ad purchases by that advertiser also be rejected automatically or will we keep seeing them in the queue over and over?

[...] is that 75% of all the revenue we’re generating from the paid ads is going to the members.” Read the full story here – Entrecard Ad Network payout: 75% to members Discussion Question – Please Comment on Your Thoughts    1. Would you be interested in [...]

I’m waiting for the final result.Hope It will be great

I have some problems with the system you’re introducing here.

For one thing, you’re assuming ever blogger actually has products or services to sell. There are a lot of bloggers in the community who are not in small business. These people cannot participate in the EC market as you have suggested and therefore, the amount of EC credits they can earn is limited. Is this a community for all bloggers or has it become a community for commercial bloggers only?

Secondly, there is no incentive for blogs that generate a lot of web traffic from outside the community to actually participate in this new economy you are creating. Having a more successful blog does not earn more credits. And where’s the incentive to actually accept all these paid ads when other bloggers who do not accept paid ads earn the same credits?

I’m actually removing one of my websites from Entrecard because it receives a lot of traffic from outside the community and the widget space would be better used by an ad network that actually rewards popularity and increases in web traffic.

I had assumed you were going to sell ads to reputable companies and websites outside the community. But from what I can see, most of the paid ads are actually bought by bloggers within the community. So in effect you’re earning money from the same people you are paying out to and bloggers are paying for ad space they use to get for free.

The way I see it you’re not actually building an economy here, you’re just moving money around the community and the only one who is going to benefit from this are the owners of Entrecard.

Don’t get me wrong, you guys deserve to earn a decent living from what you have created here. But wouldn’t it be better to actually sell your ads outside the blogging community the way the other ad networks do? Wouldn’t it be better to take advantage of all the web traffic flowing through the community by actually launching a real ad network?

This is only my opinion, but I think you would have done better to keep the widget system the way it was and create an additional ad network for Entrecard and bloggers to earn an income – like BlogHer and others have has done.

Ok to say I am a little confused is an understatement. Are you saying that we have to participate in the Entrecard market, ie selling, and buying goods to participate in the cashout option? I will not care for that. However, paying us 75% of the revenue you earn for putting ads on my blog, is a great option, I was hoping for 50 so 75 is great. Also I am wondering why there is no limit that you are requiring members to click on others blogs, to be able to participate. Since you implemented this I have noticed that bloggers that are now paying for ads, seem to be no longer clicking and supporting the system. I think that is detrimental to the whole system in general, and unfair to those of us who continue to click just like we always have.

Entrecard is still completely free for bloggers to advertise. You can still buy ads on every site in the network for credits, and you can still earn credits for free. Nothing has changed, except for the exposure that ad gets, and the prices they’re selling for have both been cut.

You can earn credits for free by doing the following:

dropping cards
publishing on your blog
selling your ad space
selling products and services in the market
receiving drops on your blog
entering/winning contests

So go earn some credits and buy some free ads! That’s what Entrecard is all about!

To be honest, I think there is a major flaw in this economy. That is, you don’t receive credits or any form of reward for accepting paid ads, but you receive credits for accepting “legacy” ads. The other problem is, a single paid ad can run for days, while the legacy types of ads just ran for a day.

So lets look at two people – Person A, who accepts a few paid ads that end up running for five days total on his site, and Person B, who accepts five legacy ads over five days.
Lets assume that neither person has the time to offer marketplace services or drop cards.

–After 5 days, Person A has not earned any credits, but has helped to feed some cash into the system. He will not see any of this cash however, because he hasn’t earned any credits that he can cash in.
–Person B, on the other hand, has earned at least 40 credits or so (assuming he got 8 credits each on average for the legacy ads). Person B can then cash in these 40 credits for real money – money that was earned by Person A’s paid advertisements.

So, Person A has basically done the altruistic thing and the result is that Person B, who did not “support the economy,” got the reward.

An economy like this simply cannot work and will collapse very quickly. Just my two ECs.

To make this work, there has to be a tangible reward for accepting paid advertisements. As much as you would like to believe that everyone is altruistic and would like to support the greater society, the fact is, it just ain’t so.

You can also just think of paid ads as a membership fee… pay as much or as little as you feel like.

Also, keep in mind this is a preliminary step. Once we’ve deflated the economy and gotten it under control, we’ll most likely issue some reward for accepting paid ads. But we need to do first things first, and just get the whole system up and running, and not crashing the site.

The value of credits will fluctuate, certainly, but we estimate that for a long time, it will only go up as we remove more and more credits from the system and make them more and more scarce.

Hi,

I think what your doing with Entrecard is fantastic and I’m looking forward to the future.

It’s easy to see that what you have here is something that could be very beneficial to everyone who uses Entrecard with little cost (time) to them.

But there are a couple of points I’d like to bring up about the system which I feel could be fine tuned a little further.

First of all, when approving a paid advertisement which will share 50% of the time on the card, the cost of advertising in ec credits does not increase against your card. So the value for the user in approving advertisements which are cash paid are…….getting paid in ec’s??

Second, after approving a paid ad, no ec credits are given (at the moment), which again is strange because aren’t we supposed to be receiving 75% share of ad revenue..when do we actually receive credits for approving advertisements?

Third there’s no option to have a cash paid widget and ec blogger widget so as to keep the different types of ads separate (paid and ec paid), it has to be shared…

Fourth, Since the requested paid ads are kept separate from normal ads on the dashboard, it would be nice to see the same happen once they’re approved. (making it easier to keep track of blogger ad and paid ads).

Fifth will there be a cost measurement for ads on each profile in the same way that cost increases when an ec dropper has bought an ad using credits i.e. will the cost of paid ads increase with demand ?

Ok, so on point one and two, I assume when the testing and beta stage has finished and credit implementation system is finalised, there will some kind of ec payment for accepting ads and some tweaking will have occurred with in this process. If this doesn’t eventuate I can only envision that there will be a separation between your different type of users…ec droppers won’t approve paid ads in the long run until they see the benefits of doing so and advertisers will become frustrated by having ads rejected…leaving you guys to force ads through (removing the reject button) and then seeing a large amount ec users leave because of that.

I hoping that the latter situation won’t be the case…perhaps you can provide some feedback on points one, two & five. The other points are minor things which I think will be nice touches to your great service.

Otherwise…Keep up the good work! : D

Seems like this is gonna be more interesting than i thought

Thank you for the lengthy explanation. However, I still have a rather ‘muddled’ feel about this. I joined Entrecard to further expose my blog and thus to invite my readers to delve further. I enjoy the virtual money for ‘paying’ for adverts on other sites. Now I am finding many commercial adds wanting to be placed on my blog which have nothing to do with my ethos and thus pushing the free adds down the queue.

I shall wait to see what happens this w/e. In the meantime I am not happy accepting adds from commercial companies. Sorry!

You’re right, deborah, He’s picking and choosing what he answers, and sticks to the original posts at all costs, he’s dancing around the issue because he’s already chosen to do whatever he wants. He’s taking us for a ride and letting us vent to make us feel lik we’re a part of the process.

Personally, i’m not a minion. I don’t work for free. and I’m not going to give him free space on my blog for him to pay the bills.

I joined entrecard because of what it represented. I’m not getting nearly the same EC ads as I did before this whole SNAFU started. I have a feeling, i will be closing my account by the end of the week. I don’t like to be taken for a fool, and I’m not going to penalized and have my blog at the bottom of the totem poll because I choose not run paid ads. I’m done,

Graham, please explain this one thing:

Why on earth is one of the paid ads I haven’t even approved or rejected yet being currently displayed on my blog now?!

I really don’t like the idea of rewarding the people who got ads on my blog using credits by sticking in a paid ad.That just cuts into the time they get exposure.I’m also not happy that there is a paid ad displaying which I did not approve.Until I see the actual benefit of approving paid ads I will have to decline allowing them to show on my blog.To anyone who wants to advertise using credits I will gladly accept your ad,I reject no one.

I am interested to see how this whole thing pans out.

Maybe a little patience to see how the pay-out system will work is not a bad idea. I do accept paid ads for the time being and wait for the bugs to be fixed but I did notice a slight decrease in ‘normal ads’.

On the other hand I have noticed plenty of EC members who signed up as advertisers and get exposure that way.

One thing which needs to be implemented is a screening process for third party advertisers to ensure only quality advertisers are allowed to sign-up.

Another blog post about grievances on this system;
http://earn-money-blogging.com/2009/04/08/new-questionable-entrecard-paid-ads-system/#more-339

Hopefully everything will work out well. Good luck.

It’s way to complicated for my aging brain although I did read the entire statement above. But that’s alright. It will sort itself out. And I’m relieved to know it’s not a bug.
I will just ride along and see what happens. I haven’t come this far just to ditch it without a fair wait and see.

Where can we convert our entrecard credits into cash? And what would be the value then? I am looking forward for this.

I think the easiest solution is just to charge a monthly membership fee for people who don’t want to run paid ads, since that’s how we’re affording to offer you this service. I don’t blame you for not loving paid ads, but we do need to pay the bills somehow.

And wait a minute – you mean no one knows how much an Entrecard credit is worth? Yet we’re being asked to participate in this paid ad thing? LOL … omg. I thought I was missing something. Scam…sounds like a scam people!

I’ve said clearly, many times, that the price of the credit is going to fluctuate. The economy is inflated, and we are going to start with the lowest price anyone is willing to sell for. After they’ve all been sold at that price, we will raise it, and so on until we find an equilibrium where we are spending all the money we are generating in a given day on credits.

Agreed, unfortunately it is the problem of anyone who wants to use this service in the future!

good info, review thanks. check out VideoEgg’s new ad unit, sounds compelling…

http://www.blogtogreat.com/2009/04/ad-network-video-egg-announces-twig-new-adframes-unit.html

That’s the problem sharkbytes…

personally have various levels of discrimination on my various blogs because of the audiences they have. I’m not happy about some of the sexier ads and blogs, but I just don’t accept ‘em.

I’m not thrilled that this means I’ll have a lower payout status, but I understand why it has to work this way. Sort of rewards those with no taste, though.

They’re rewarding people who are willing to do whatever they want at any cost and without any thought to their readership. And that’s just a tacky and disgusting way to do business.

They want to help the economy out so badly, then they need to find a way to do it that doesn’t penalize people who give a modicum of thought to how they run their blog and not just to those who will whore their site out to anyone with cash.

[...] couple of months ago (or was it longer) Entrecard introduced the Cashout system. What this means is that you can exchange your Entrecard Credit (EC) balance for real cash (USD). [...]