Entrecard members are the best members!!
Written on April 8th, 2009 by Graham
Entrecarders rock!!
When we announced that our paid ad platform was coming online, there was a lot of skepticism, hesitation, and questions. There was also a lot of support from people who love Entrecard, and want to see us survive in the economic recession.
A few things happened immediately upon turning on the new platform. Some members decided to reject all paid ads until the “dust settled”. Some members approved only those ads that fit with their theme. Some members approved every ad that came their way, supporting us any way they could.
I just want to say, that however you chose to vet the paid ads coming through, thank you! You are the best, and your efforts to make this work, even if you are rejecting every ad, is appreciated more than I can express. Helping us make this work is what makes the community so special, and I am not only flattered but also humbled by the overwhelming support in the community for our bold new initiative to take the economy to the next level.
So I just wanted to give you all a big thanks and a ::hug:: for helping us get this off the ground, and helping us see Entrecard through as per my larger vision for what this can be.
I also wanted to take a moment to talk about a few important issues that have popped up.
Dropping
A lot of people have complained that their dropping habits have been impacted by the introduction of paid ads into the system.
Dropping, as you know, is the method of earning credits by visiting Entrecard members and clicking the “drop” button on their widget. Some members like to drop by clicking through the ads in the widget, dropping on each blog they pass by. With 50% of the ads now paid, this becomes a problem because there isn’t always an Entrecard widget on the other end of the ad. Thankfully, a high portion of our paid ads are from Entrecard members with widgets, but many are not.
Try the toolbar!
This is the perfect time to try out our Toolbar for Firefox if you aren’t already using it. It offers the following benefits:
- It will take you to an Entrecard blog every time, with a widget you can drop on.
- It can open multiple sites at a time
- It lets you visit your entire inbox, and drop on them all
- It lets you drop by category, by price, by popularity, as well as a number of other filters
- It lets you advertise on any site you come across with a single click
So if you used to widget surf while dropping, and finding it more difficult now, I would suggest you try out the toolbar. We’ve worked hard on it and I think you’ll be pleasantly surprsied. Try it out here. You will need to have firefox to use it.
It’s taking too long to approve ads
If you trust us in making sound judgement calls on the types of ads we let into Entrecard (and we do hold out advertisers to the highest standards), we have created a checkbox button to “automatically accept all paid ads”. Now, we don’t want to pressure anyone into doing this. We realize that everyone has their own ideals of what types of advertising to allow. But, if you are the type of person who is accepting every ad (and there are plenty of you out there), checking this box will save you from every having to click the “approve” button again.
Where are the advert settings?
To find this option, along with lots of other advertisement settings, please see the “Advert Settings” on your dashboard, right under your “Quick Stats”. If you haven’t visited these settings yet, you should, because they help you tailor the ads that will come your way.
We’ve also been taking measures to throttle the amount of paid ads we send through, approving only a few at a time to lighten the load on everyone.
That’s it for now. Thank you all for making this such a wonderful place!
April 8th, 2009 at 3:27 pm
I myself stop my dropping for the past two days, but then I realized, it’s not a good way of “protesting” against Entrecard bec it’s those site that I frequently visit was the first got affected,so I decided to start visiting and dropping to them again although out of my 300 list, most of them decided to get rid of their widget until everything is ok.I’m still in the waiting line hoping to see thing thru.
April 8th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
Same here, well the fact is entrecard giving me some traffic and of course i don’t have the rights to complaint for the new system. All i can do just droping droping and droping, then i don’t bother accept paid ads because i’m not one of them not yet actually. Well just make a win and win situation just makes sense for me and for the system right now still good for me.
April 8th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
Why not just bookmark the sites you like and visit them that way?
April 8th, 2009 at 4:39 pm
^and while visiting them, why not click the ec too?whether I like it or not, I have to accept the fact that I need the traffic that I get from ec especially that I do paid blogging, and most of them (the visitors) are only there to click the widget, reading (while waiting for the page to load completely) and commenting (if they found it interesting)is just a bonus.The ec is not doing anyharm (yet, aside from those ads that I don’t like which I completely rejected already) in my blog,so I decided to keep it for now.
April 8th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
QUOTE: “So if you used to widget surf while dropping, and finding it more difficult now, I would suggest you try out the toolbar”
OK .. before I comment let me just say that I’m a paid advertiser, an EC advertiser, and a surfer/dropper. I am trying to support as best as I can.
I try not to complain too much and I do enjoy the E community … but I am getting real tired of the “spin” going on here.
Graham, I really think you should stop “feeding the fenzy” by backing off for awhile. The comment I quoted from your blog post (above) is just silly. You are litterly telling people to NOT CLICK on the paid ads.
What good does it do to have paid ads if you are just going to tell people to not click on them.
And the “deflation” line is a crock … if you wanted to curb inflation it would have been better to reduce drops to 100 a day. It is the DROPS that cause the inflation not an EC only advertising platform. On my blog I am earning at most 100 ec a day, but through drops I can earn 500 or more a day.
As a side note … I wouldn’t even use that term anymore because “deflation” is actually BAD for the seller. And we are the seller … selling space on our blogs. During deflation our EC ad rates will drop probably by 50% to 75%. So even if you are buying back credits it will make no difference to the average blogger because they will now have very little credits to sell.
So basically you trying to reduce the value of ad space on small to medium blogs while the larger blogs stay around the same EC rates because they have extra traffic. Then you expect them to give you MORE of their time in dropping to make up for the lost credits.
And then you spin it like it is a good thing.
I have no problem with you needing to earn money … just could you please stop with the “spin” … I’m getting dizzy.
April 8th, 2009 at 6:57 pm
“If you trust us in making sound judgement calls on the types of ads we let into Entrecard (and we do hold out advertisers to the highest standards)”
It is obvious by the sheer number of complaints in the forums that you have not earned that trust, nor do you deserve it.
April 8th, 2009 at 9:31 pm
@Chris
1.) With regards to the toolbar. I’m not telling people “not to click on ads” -and likewise it’s not as if the only traffic any of the blogs are getting is from Entrecarders. I’m just saying if they’re running into trouble dropping, the toolbar can become indespensible. Plenty of people will still click on ads, whether or not more Entrecarders start using the toolbar for their drops instead of widget surfind.
2.) Deflation is not a crock. There is a lot of solid evidence I can cite to evidence it. Yes, reducing drops to 100 would also reduce inflation. But every time we polled members, no one wanted us to do that. So we have to deal with it one way or another. Dealing with it in a way that makes people money is the way that we chose.
3.) Deflation isn’t bad for the seller, it’s all relative. Credits will increase in value. If that increase occurs at the same rate that advertising rates drop, the net effect will be equal. But as credit holders, your holdings become more valuable.
The glass can be half empty of half full. What no one has is a crystal ball to look into the future and see exactly what will happen. This whole thing is breaking new ground, it’s never been done before, and we’re doing the best we can to make everyone happy and stay operational, and grow and strengthen the economy.
April 8th, 2009 at 9:51 pm
How can you approve a paid ad when you can’t see who the advertiser is? Is it just my computer but so many ec widgets are just black boxes now – I am assuming they are the paid advertisements. When an ad request show up on my dashboard I don’t see who it is. I have stopped dropping on the black boxes and only drop and click through when I can tell where I’m going.
April 9th, 2009 at 8:37 am
I only recently started using Firefox as a browser, and thought I would give the Entrecard Tool Bar a try. It has helped my dropping a great deal. I used to do my dropping by clicking on every widget that I came across. Now with the toolbar, I can choose which categories of blogs to visit (favorites, in box, subject) and I don’t have to worry about clicking on widget for a paid ad that does not have a widget. It is awesome
April 9th, 2009 at 6:50 pm
Graham, the crystal ball you mention is called a business plan created with strategic planning. You make it what you want it to be, don’t tell us we have to follow EC’s sudden business urges and the end result “might” be good.
April 9th, 2009 at 11:01 pm
unfortunately, even the almighty business plan cannot look into the future, otherwise the stock market wouldn’t be so full of ups and downs.
but please understand, this is far from a sudden urge. This is strategic planning, in every sense of the word, to weather the recession for in a recession investment capital dries up and all that matters is revenues. and it matters to bloggers just as much as companies. this way, everyone can make money.
It’s not as if we decided yesterday to do this. We’ve been working on it for a long time. A lot of work has gone into it, and most members understand that money needs to come from somewhere to pay for servers, developers, accountants, and investments in growth. That’s the business plan.
April 10th, 2009 at 6:47 pm
Why is there an unapproved paid ad on my widget, when I have in the settings to run only ads approved by me, and I am currently rejecting them?
This morning in the queue there was AGAIN the offensive edible and delicious ad!!!! I can’t take a chance that an ad like that runs “mistakenly” on my blog!!!!
I am seriously concerned about these glitches.
April 12th, 2009 at 10:45 pm
Well, I consider all paid ads to be spam and have and will continue to reject them. I don’t have any advertising on my blogs because I’m totally against it. I didn’t mind having a blog advertise – as was the original way EntreCard was used … but now, with paid junk ads, no way. I’ll continue to approve blogs that are just blogs. But I will reject all paid ads and sites that are just here to make money.
April 13th, 2009 at 4:54 am
so you have a check box to approve all paid ads. Sounds like you also need one for reject all paid ads.
I was accepting paid ads until I saw ads that I had not approved running on my widget. Now all paid ads are canceled and rejected. If I continue to see ads running on my widget that I have not approved, I will remove the Entrecard widget. I’ve been loyal to EC for well over a year, but enough is enough.
April 13th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
Yes, I’ve had unapproved ads running on my blogs as well. Now I’m checking in here all the time to make sure that’s not happening – which is a pain. I’m thinking the answer is to cancel EntreCard altogether.
I do find it curious that they have and “automatic approve” option but not an “automatic reject” option – which is what I would be choosing.
April 13th, 2009 at 2:33 pm
It’s not really curious that we don’t have an automatic reject all option. These ads are how we are going to pay for hosting, customer service, feature development, credit cashout, etc. Please consider helping us generate the revenue we need to fund our operation.
April 13th, 2009 at 5:45 pm
Actually Graham, you’ve just convinced me to cancell all my accounts.
April 13th, 2009 at 8:50 pm
No problem at all. Thanks for trying Entrecard!
April 14th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
Just my thoughts on the Paid Ad’s:
http://life-accordingtochristopher.blogspot.com/2009/04/entrehuh.html
http://life-accordingtochristopher.blogspot.com/2009/04/entrecard-is-downright-dirty.html
— Christopher
April 14th, 2009 at 11:38 pm
Graham firstly thanks for encouraging entrecarders.
I agree with you that there is no need to have reject all option as it has been explained earlier that the revenue generated from this system will be transfered to entrecarders by 75% so if no add runs then how would you be able to maintain this site and give some bucks to your devoted entrecarders.
Another thing I did download entrecard toolbar but in that I am not getting inbox opened through toolbar so that I can visit all my devoted visitors daily and give them a feedback drop as a mark of visit to their site.
thanks,
anisha
April 15th, 2009 at 12:11 am
Dear Graham,
I am still not able to know how this rating comes and now all these sites are ranked in campaign.please explain me in brief
April 15th, 2009 at 3:42 am
Cheers!
April 19th, 2009 at 4:53 am
Dear Graham,
I am still not able to open my inbox from entrecard toolbar.What’s wrong with it.
Is there any problem with toolbar if yes then how much time it will take to be eradicated.
It will become very easy for me to visit my devoted and loyal visitors and drop on them if I am able to open my inbox from toolbar itself.
Hope you are able to resolve this matter as early as possible.
I am using firefox browser,
thanks,
anisha
April 20th, 2009 at 1:52 am
I’m glad people haven’t given up yet. It would suck if everyone gave up completely.\
April 21st, 2009 at 8:00 am
I didn’t realize that paid ads weren’t all entrecard members, that doens’t make much sense to me.
What I’d like to see, is the ability to reject an ad without having to explain why. Many times none of the responses make sense. Also it won’t let me type in the box to explain furthur.
April 25th, 2009 at 10:15 pm
Loving it =) Cheers!
May 1st, 2009 at 5:25 pm
Based on the ads I’ve seen come through there is no way I can trust your judgment.
May 4th, 2009 at 11:47 pm
^_^
May 12th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
I actually stick with Ec because I believe I help my own blogs this way…. In any way the EC way is still a helpful way overall… no matter how many protests are swarming around.
May 18th, 2009 at 9:53 am
I’ve enjoyed Entercard and dropping on various sites, but it would be nice if there was more credit given per drop (more than 1 ec) considering how ec expensive advertising can be.
May 22nd, 2009 at 9:57 pm
I have been with EC since October and I never left. Though I declined from too much dropping because of a busy offline life, I still find EC traffic precious. And I met great people here!