Entrecard new credit perks?

Posted by multippt

With the recent update to the Entrecard credit system, there are now more ways to earn Entrecard credits on the go.

1. Buy Entrecard credits

After much debate on whether Entrecard credits are available with cash (officially anyway), Entrecard decided to fill in the gap by introducing the option of buying credits. The buy credits link is available from the main page. Credits are only purchaseable using PayPal. Credits can only be bought in batches of 1000, 5000 or 10000 credits, with each 1000 credits causing $9.50 (presumable determined automatically via a system within Entrecard). Only 12000 credits are allocated for purchase for all users, probably as “market mechanism” to prevent rapid devaluation (or the reverse) of Entrecard credits.

While third party credits are usually offered at a lower price than the official price, there are nonetheless some great perks of the credits coming directly from Entrecard: They are much more secure, and that money spent on these credits go back to the community. The 12,000 credits quota set is partly due to a second feature of Entrecard credits - you can possibly earn actual cash from it.

Entrecard credits sold by cash are compensated to original members who have sold their Entrecard credits back to Entrecard. Hence Entrecard acts as the middleman. However, only certain members would benefit from the extra revenue, and it is generally those who are regarded as trusted and reputable. This applies mainly to active members.

2. Blog on Entrecard blog

If you are not a contributor for Entrecard’s blog, you can get your post published on Entrecard and earn credits for it. Each post successfully approved will get Entrecard credits credited to your account. The better the post, the larger the payout. The payout is largely variable, but the average suggested by Entrecard is in the area of several hundreds, but it can reach a possible maximum of 2000 credits.

Each post on Entrecard will contain a link to your site, thereby promoting your own site as the Entrecard blog receives thousands of views each day.

3. Get paid to blog on your blog

Entrecard has taken one step further to helping new bloggers get the promotion they need. The moment you make a post on your own site, you would get paid 25 Entrecard credits per every 3 days you have made at least one post on your site. Entrecard would detect if you have made a new post on your site via checking your site’s RSS feed.

Entrecard pricing changes?: Either a smart or dumb move

Posted by multippt

For long, Entrecard’s been plague by a whole lot of problems relating to over-inflated ad prices. It’s good to know they responded, but revising the ad system to go by the number of ads in the queue? That has to be one of the most absurd, or greatest moves made by Entrecard.

What’s good about the ad pricing changes

As the cost of an ad is now 2^(how many ads you have), ads on Entrecard can have the following ad prices: 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024. The good news - you can buy an ad out of a popular spot, provided if you are quick enough.

In addition, this change now rightly tells whose ad is more valuable, since popular sites tend to have ads that are highly-priced.

What’s horridly wrong

Entrecard’s move is going to mess with the entire Entrecredits economy. First off, people don’t feel the need to keep dropping cards, since they could easily snag off hundreds of ads in a day’s work. So, lesser drops means less activity on Entrecard. Sure, there will be more people buying ads, but this action severely devalues the Entrecard currency. In addition, people are now going to wait for everyone’s ad prices to fall to extremely low levels before buying.

The ad prices are also subjected to constant fluctuations. Since the ad price is directly influenced by how many ad spots that were taken, your ad price will decrease by half its original value the next day. What this means: Your Entrecard rank will plummet to the ground. If you are lucky, you’ll have someone buying your ad, and your site should stay at the top. In the past, while the Entrecard credit system has its flaws, it is a pretty good indicator of how active the owner is, and how popular a site is. Take that out and you are left with a simple system that is prone to being gamed - all it takes is for you to get 1024 Entrecard credits and you’ll be able to promote your site to the top of the ladder. Why bother paying 1024 for an ad, when instead you push your site to the top on Entrecard (a more heavily trafficked site) with the help of a friend?

Due to the changes in the pricing structure, Entrecard had to remove several items from the campaign page, such as “new”. This means that new Entrecarders will have trouble getting afloat in Entrecard at all, since there will be no one who would be willing to buy more than 4 ads on the site.

The pricing change has greatly affected the ladder. Your ranking in the ladder is influenced by:
1) Your ad price (only 10 possible prices)
2) A random factor

Due to the price change, the Entrecard community can be said to be divided further into the following groups:
-The insanely priced ones (512-1024 EC)
-Moderate (64-256 EC)
-The extremely lowly priced (2-32 EC)

Earlier any Entrecard that was priced over 400 Entrecard credits is called insane. Now, thanks to the new system, a normal user can never have an ad queue that is full.

Entrecard screwing Alexa rank

Posted by multippt

Entrecard has certain ballooned its way to the top, now having even Problogger using Entrecard as well. Entrecard is a known way of getting quick traffic, but is it worth it? Sure, Entrecard’s going to give you traffic, but it’s known that Entrecarders rarely spend over a minute in a site, often choosing the option of drop-and-run. Then again, the traffic comes in a swarm, and guess what? Alexa rank will also rise, making your site look more heavily trafficked than it would have been.

Most Entrecarders have the Alexa toolbar installed. That’s because these users are webmasters, and webmasters often compete each other by traffic. Alexa is one of the most easiest and publicly places to view traffic stats for almost every site that have existed. In the hopes of boosting their Alexa rank (or viewing it conveniently for that matter), the users would install the Alexa toolbar. There you have it - a population with at least 60% of users with Alexa toolbar installed. That’s compared to the usual 10% of visitors with Alexa toolbar. Let’s not forget that on Alexa, Entrecard’s traffic increased by a hundredth-fold within a month. Not so sure about actual statistics though.

So, if you managed to tap some traffic from Entrecard, your Alexa rank would increase by a lot, even if as few as 20 to 50 (same/reciprocal/etc.) visitors come from Entrecard. Getting those visitors doesn’t require much work - all you need to do is to allocate about a few hours and start mass-clicking those “drop” links. Sooner or later, reciprocal dropping will occur, and presto… you have your Entrecard-driven traffic. Though, that traffic is like stumble - you’ll need to keep the ball rolling. On average, an Entrecard that is worth over 100 Entrecard credits would get a chance to appear in Alexa’s top 100,000. That’s nice… only if Entrecard traffic were not as bad as Digg traffic.

Of course, not forgetting the sites that are not able to participate in Entrecard. While Entrecard doesn’t actually restrict what sites can be submitted, it is generally blogs that are accepted by the community. In addition, due to the bulky design of the Entrecard, the Entrecard looks modestly unsightly on anything that is not a blog, but looks cool on blogs. 

These non-blogging-related sites are disadvantaged, because they won’t be able to tap to Entrecard’s “potent” traffic. One by one, sites that were formally once in the top 100,000 are slowly being displaced from their position by blogs that had the luck of having owners that are willing to spend hours each day clicking on “drop”. The winners - Hyper-active Entrecarders, the losers - everyone else. These blogs need not have great content, just owners with a lot of spare time.

Lastly, let’s not forget that Alexa is fairly accurate, but inaccurate as well. Measuring only 10% of Internet traffic, you can’t really say it gives a fair picture of a site’s traffic, especially if a large chunk of Alexa users participates in Entrecard.

Entrecard controversy

Posted by multippt

My earlier post on Entrecard didn’t capture much attention - it was a plain old boring post about a few Entrecard contests. The second one did better (technically the third one, but since the first post was rejected anyway for being too controversial…) - funny to think that Entrecarders will feel so uncomfortable at having suggestions for them to lower their drop rate. What inspired the controversy was none other than a post from John Cow (not John Chow), who decided to temporarily drop the Entrecard because they feel that it isn’t appropriate for them.

I have to agree with John Cow*, even if that meant taking a stance against Entrecard. While Entrecard gives a large amount of traffic, what good would it do if they just went to your site so as to click on “Drop”? Entrecarders are too concerned with optimising their Entrecards, the EC market, etc. Others spend hours dropping cards, in the end actually forgetting about their blogs they were meant to promote.

Entrecarders themselves also feel the pinch. Everyone is so obsessed with dropping that if you were to take a day-off from dropping, the value of your card will fall tremendously (and so will the Entrecard rank).

Naturally, most Entrecarders will not comment on a post that says otherwise. They’ll prefer to stick to the topic of Entrecard/community optimisation (seriously, even if the Entrecard blog were to have hundreds of those same-old posts, it won’t matter since the community will read them anyway).

*Great… I fell for his link-bait

Entrecard opens up blog to contributors

Posted by multippt

I might be a little late to announce this, but I’m going to do it anyway. Entrecard has decided to “hire” regular bloggers to contribute to their blog. This is probably a perfect opportunity for any blogger to try their hand at guest posting (if they haven’t).

In order to register as a guest blogger on Entrecard, you will need to send a message to their support E-mail, with the title as “Contributor”. Of course, you would need to give a portfolio of your blogging experience, which includes your blog. They are also looking for idea-generators as well, and the creative sort of bloggers. There are only 10 slots available, and at this point in time, it does look like there are probably lesser than 5 contributor slots left. Even if you missed your chance, you need not fret as Entrecard would probably be not sticking to permanently 10 contributors - more slots would eventually be released to the public in due time.

Posts wanted by Entrecard: Those that cover on anything with “Entrecard” in it, as long as it is not too controversial or off-topic. Posts made by contributors would be subjected to vetting (i.e. moderation), and if it meets the (very) high standards required of it, it would be approved and scheduled for posting. Nonetheless, it’s a great experience and honor to contribute to the Entrecard blog.

Entrecard mini updates and Wishlist

Posted by multippt

There are some minor changes in the Entrecard dashboard. More statistics are displayed, and sadly, some were moved away from the front page. The following (statistics) additions are pretty nice:
-Credits earned via ads
-Credits earned via drops
-Currently running ads (i.e. ads that you buy)

Some other changes
-Pending Ads/Your Ads moved to its own page

The changes are pretty minor, so don’t expect much from it.

Wishlist

To make it short and sweet, I decided to put it as a list:
-Entrecard API for plugin makers like me
-Make it possible to view other people’s recent drops (without asking the user)
-Template glitches to be fixed (Internet Explorer)
-Support for more ad sizes
-Support for customizing of the card beyond the black-yellow-white design
-A more “nicer” design of the ad, to cater everyone’s taste

I hope that Phirate will be listening. I’ll be using Entrecard for a while more to see how things go.

Entrecard falling under pressure

Posted by multippt

Deciding to try Entrecard out, I registered and used it for a while. However, it does appear that Entrecard is getting pummeled to the ground - with traffic increasing almost exponentially, it’s no wonder. Alexa may not be accurate, but it sure shows a nice increasing trend.

Sounds like it’s time for Entrecard to upgrade its servers, for they are now the top 2000 sites (now having half the traffic of Reddit, or the same traffic as Netscape). Entrecard’s now a fad.

Visiting Entrecard will sometimes result in a so-called “maintanance” page. On other times, it doesn’t. Fortunately, even with Entrecard down, the ad system will not go down with it. Thanks to trusty Amazon, Entrecard hosted the entire ad system there, making the advertising network online 24/7, and unbothered by Amazon.

Hopefully, they may release an API (or plugins for that matter) for their ad service…, so that it can make approving ads much faster. :)

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So far, things have been running smoothly. Expect an Entrecard review soon.