Ok Entrecard, I’ll Pay $50 To Opt Out Of Sponsor Ads, But Here’s The Deal
Posted by
eli
on 10/12/09• Categorized as Consulting
Chinaren, my favorite blogger with a razor-sharp intelligence, wit and humor, commented on my blog post recently that Entrecard is fun to talk about, saying that it’s the total lack of professionalism from them that makes it so, and their PR work is laughable.
And Chinaren is perfectly right, chorused the best and respected users like Caledonian Comment, Symphony of Love, The Painted Veil, Is A Mans World, to mention a few, who recently removed their EC widget in protest and left Entrecard due to their objection to the sponsor ads.
Indeed, I want to keep quiet about Entrecard, but today how can I when I could no longer post my doable recommendations to improve their services in the Forum as it was already closed?
Neither could I make intelligent suggestions through the EC blog, since the comments are also closed.
Ok, Entrecard, I’ll pay the $50 to opt out of sponsor ads, but here’s the deal:
1. Create a new Category in the Campaign to be composed of all paying users.
The category could either be titled as Preferred Users Blogs Category OR Sponsor Ads-Free Blogs Category.
This way, users or members looking for blogs to put their adverts would know that they can get 100% ad views and full exposure of their hard-earned credits from these Preferred Users Blogs or Sponsor Ads-Free Blogs.
2. Reduce the exorbitant 75% tax paid on running an advert.
The 75% tax currently impose from members for running an ad is the highest tax rate in the virtual and real world. A 25% tax would be better.
There is no rhyme or reason paying $50/year while at the same time charging users the 75% tax for running an advert.
For this alone, Entrecard services is not free, contrary to what it claims. It is not free because Entrecard automatically imposes a 75% tax —again, the highest tax rate in the world.
3. Put a price ceiling on the ad price, at 2014 ec maximum.
This is to level the playing field of ad pricing, and avoid the absurd and ridiculous regime of some blogs, especially the top 10 popular blogs, costing at 4096ec / day.
Therefore, the price ceiling will put order and sanity in EC’s virtual, credit-based economy.
Certainly, a price of 4096 ec /day is no longer a cost-effective way of blog promotion, where a member has to drop 300 cards maximum daily for 13.8 days just to advertise for a 1 day ad exposure.
Even an ad price of 1024ec /day, which is the usual price of the blogs in the top 30 most popular blogs, is already too expensive, as it requires 3.4 days of dropping 300 maximum cards daily.
With the 15% sponsor ads running now, a member only gets 85% ad views for the hard-earned credits.
The price ceiling is important now to regulate the pricing mechanism, and EC should not solely left the pricing on the dictates of the law of supply and demand where the more users advertising on a blog, the higher the price, and conversely, the less advertisers, the lower the ad price.
A dynamic EC community once more
I hope the Entrecard management will also listen to doable, intelligent, and sensible recommendations coming from its users, since no one has the monopoly of ideas, management expertise, business know-how and talents.
There are still many users who love Entrecard and have EC’s welfare, financial viability and sustainability at heart.
In the last analysis, it is only by constant listening, exchange of ideas, and dialogue between the EC management and its users that can make Entrecard survive as an ad network, and becomes a vibrant and dynamic blogging community once again.
lol! Now you’re just making me blush here!
Thanks for your kind words, but I’m just responding to your own well written articles!
As for your comments above, they are logical, common sense ideas, which no doubt is the reason they will be ignored.
I didn’t realize they had closed their forums until just the other day, not really being active on them, but that act is one of folly for sure. Does customer service mean nothing? Apparently not.
I lament for the EC managmenent style*, but I’ll remain in EC as long as it does the job of brining me to other blogs, and others to me. When it fails in that endevour, or becomes too much work, we’ll part ways.
*Autocratic, mixed with a few teaspoons of stupid.
Hi,
For me EntreCard proved not to be beneficial. I had a return on investment of less than 50% for 2 to 4 hours every single night. The second point is that I have no call on the ads they display. I got burned by one advertiser that said to “trust them”… My readers were out to have my strung up….
That being said, in February, I started my own non-incentive based traffic system that is completely transparent. I invite you to have a look and join if you like it.:
http://matthiaschronicles.tanaya.net/AFTR/
Also, thank you for your daily visits to my blog.
Four great idea which would improve Entrecard. Zero chance of the Entrecard management listening.
With you first suggestion, I think it would be better to keep paying blogs in their original category as well as in the ad-free category. That way all photography blogs can still be found in the photography category, etc.
Tax could be reduced to 37.5% now we don’t receive a credit for a drop. There are better ways to take credits out of the system, e.g. Entrecard offering account enhancements for credits (like the gold border).
It’s about time they brought back the forums
Hi Eli,
wouldn’t it be better if they just make a new check box in the campaign “ad-free members” with this option you still can look in the specific niches and find ad-free blogs easily.
The tax could really be lowered. I don’t care if they take from me 50% when my ad price climbs above 1.024 EC (in Germany we have a system that starts with 14% and ends with 45%), Low cost ads would be taxed with less because they can’t buy much ads with only 50% of the ad price.
Before 4th August Ads with 64 EC and below where taxed with only 50%. Give them more chances to advertise with much lower taxes as the Big Players will have daily the chance to pay for good ad spaces even with 75% taxes.
EntreCard is still the best Traffic Generator for other ad network income (Adgitize and Adsense) that’s why i stay with them but will never pay money just to opt-out of sponsored ads.
As long as we can opt-out of 50% or all sponsored ads (except one), it’s a fair game.
Would like to see the rates for advertisers, perhaps a very good bargain if our own ad could be displayed on thousands of blogs (could be cheaper than CMF Ads and Adgitize).
Let’s see!
Great post, Entrecard is very hard to keep quiet about because of all the reasons you gave. There lack of professionalism is just pathetic. I’m really enjoying my time away from Entrecard, Its a move i don’t regret as i still visit all my favorite blogs and usually on a daily basis, OK, I don’t get Entrecard credit for the visits but who cares.
Thanks for the mention in your post as well.
Good ideas, but I was never interested in the economic benefits of the promise. I wanted to read stuff and have people read my stuff.
I was also interested in the technical operations of the site, and I’m guessing I filed ~100 tickets in half a year about obvious bugs in the system.
All I got in response — when I received any response at all — was that I was wrong or didn’t know what I was talking about. I kept on filing tickets, despite the shoddy QA process until EC cut off of the ticket system, presumably because they began to understand what liability means.
Then the assholes shut off blog comments.
When these bimbos started flailing around a couple of weeks ago, I began capturing as many threads on the forums as I could because it was obvious the forums were going to get axed next, and I posted one of those on my blog.
I haven’t had the widget on my site for a week because I didn’t want to remove it until after the last EC paid ran. Since then, I contine to show 14 drops a day, although I have no widget.
These people are lying gunnies of dung.
Don’t waste your time with the system. Bring the system down.
Great post, Eli
What you propose makes a great deal of sense.
Unfortunately, I can’t afford to pay the $50.00 and leaving EC isn’t an option for me just yet.
Besides, I’m trying to follow your lead.
Sincerely,
Mike
Great post! Can you include me on the best and respected users? LOL! Just kiddin’! This is simply the main reason why I also left entrecard.. Lack of professionalism. I agree with what dave said and I also enjoy my time off without entrecard. I don’t think I’ll ever put EC back on my technochase blog again.
Having recently been thrown out of Entrecard and robbed of over 12,000 EC credits in the process, my opinion on your suggestions is irrelevant. I would however strongly urge you to stop talking so much common sense or else you might well get kicked out too !
New Update:
On another blog a EC Moderator wrote that the new owners stopped her to delete blogs who didn’t update frequently (like EntreCard advises us in their Blog Quality Standards… one blog post each 90 days).
With this knowledge it’s clear that they just want to improve the ad views/price even when the blogs are (i guess) dead and no more frequently visited.
Violating their own rules is not a good strategy for the own company. But that’s EntreCard or better to say ZipRunner (just focused on getting the numbers into positive ones).
I do miss the old days when EC was fun and beneficial. I won’t be paying them and don’t believe anyone should. They get a lot of benefit from all of us dropping on each other, they get lots of free advertisement from all our 125 x 125 adverts…everytime someone who’s not a member comes to our blogs they see it. The get far more than they give and it’s done nothing good since I joined. They continue to make bad decisions and it’s going downhill daily.
Sandy