Entrecard.com has begun buying back credits from members for $7.50 per 1000. What effect does this have on the average Entrecarder?
- A more balanced playing field. Some of the “top” blogs got there by buying credits, not by quality of their writing or popularity.
- Ad prices will drop in half. That prediction isn’t so dramatic as it sounds. Remember, each bid on an ad doubles the price, so we are talking one bid per ad across the board.
- Contests for credits will once again be worth something. As credits become scarcer, someone giving away 3k credits would now be giving away $22.50.
- Spammers will be forced to sell through the official exchange. Once their current supply dries up and bids approach the official rate, people won’t even bother checking eBay.
- Entrecard will begin eliminating credit farms. Even if I have to do it for them, most will be gone within 2 months. Can’t have these people spoiling the economy, AGAIN.
- The shop will begin to come alive again. Every time the credit sank to a new low, I had to recalculate the price of shipping on my t-shirts to see if I was losing money. The shop is also the fastest way to get credits. Let’s close up shop, clean it up, and reopen it all new and shiny.
- Your time is now worth more money. The spammers are right about one thing, you should get paid for your time. The problem is they took it to an extreme by expecting to get paid for exploiting the system. Thus lowering the value of your own time put in.
- Pay Per Post Sploggers will cry on the forums. The last one is hardly a prediction; it’s a given. Entrecard’s “dirty little secret” is that a large majority of the blogs get paid for their posts that masquerade as articles. Nothing wrong with PPP, even Graham wrote a paid review for the Entrecard blog. These people just cry the loudest and most dramatically about any change, good or bad.
Check the price of credits on eBay. On eBay right now there are 5 sellers with one auction each. You can already see the effects of EC buying credits. The auction closest to finishing suddenly has a price of $4.40 per 1000 and competitive bidding. Auctions 4 days away have a price of $2.50.
People were happy to pay $15 per 1000 cr. They were happy to pay $12, $10, $7.50, all the way down to $2. If you are not one of those people, your opinion really doesn’t matter, does it? And if you were the person buying for $2, pretty damn obvious you’d be annoyed by any increase in the price of credits. Buying credits is for the lazy. You are saying your time is worth more money spent doing other things than dropping cards. Most of you should welcome the chance to go from buyer to seller. Even if I am completely wrong, at least the forums will heat up as we all get blue in the face arguing about it. Fun!
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19 users commented in " Entrecard Credit Exchange Predictions "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a Trackback **********I have always been against buying the credits. I really don’t care too much about others. I work for mine and I doubt if I will sell them. I never keep a large balance, I spend them on ads. Also I do look in the store.
Turnip, I have made 1 credit buy in my frustration over the categories, my category being one of them. My intent was to increase popularity in the same way some others obviously had, even when they did not belong in the same cat. It didn’t work, and now my intent is to lobby constantly for changes to the category system. It really sucks!
I’m with etta rose…
but I do like that Entrecard is going to give 25 credits every time you post on your blog…and I like that they will be limiting it. Sometimes I post several times a day. I don’t make any money on my blog (though I’ve considered signing up for Pay Per Post, just haven’t followed through). Sometimes I long for the old Entrecard…the way it used to be….
Nicole: The category system is a bit outdated. I’d be happy to see it removed and replaced by a tag system, where people can choose 3 tags for their blog. It’s not really related to the buying and selling of credits, other than the case where you buy to try and become #1 in your category.
Etta, I’ve always been a seller, only bought credits twice because the price was too good to pass up, and I knew I could resell them. I stopped selling because the price dropped too low. I knew credit prices would be restablished eventually, so I saved mine for a rainy day. If you are smart about advertising, it really takes very few credits to promote your blog wisely. I spend about 300cr a day on ads.
Linda, I’m not a PPP fan because of the way it lowers pagerank. IZEA ads annoy me as well. Review me is what john chow uses. They have a record of paying. If you only choose the reviews that fit into your blog, so it’s not obvious you are swaying your opinion to please a sponsor, then go for it. Some sponsors even allow negative reviews.
I’ve never bought credits and don’t intend to do so now. I usually don’t have enough to be worthwhile selling, but I have accumulated a few since I haven’t been purchasing ads lately.
I’m paid to do some blogging, but not through PPP — been there and their crap was too much to put up with, so I only blog for one company now.
I work EC pretty hard — running two blogs is REALLY hard and I’m not sure if I’ll keep that up, but will try a bit longer.
I hope your prediction about ad prices comes true. There are blogs I would like to advertise on that would literally take over half the credits I’ve accumulated in the last couple of weeks as I never seem to catch them when their price is down. Anyway I’ve also never earned enough from the ads I’ve placed (that were VERY carefully chosen, btw) to make up for the credits spent on them, but I guess that’s the case for everyone.
What I don’t really see happening is the popularity changing much. I think those that are in top spots will pretty much stay there.
It’s only when all this power dropping and dropping without reading stops (never) that the popularity of blogs that don’t update in months and months will drop. When people start choosing upon whom to drop a card based on the value of the blog, that’s when popularity will be have a true measure.
Just my .02
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That is a great price. I reckon there will be some bloggers making quite a good income off entrecard now!
I think the changes are going to be a good thing for the overall community. You’re never going to please everyone…so let’s go over to the forums and see what they have to say.
I do not know much about the buying and selling credits, since I spend most of mine on ads, however I’m not against selling them if I had enough to sell. However, that may change if they’re giving blogs 25 ec every time they update.
Although, my concern (and I know I need to contact admin. about this) is that Entrecard is behind on my updates. I update every other day, if not every day, although I’ve noticed that Entrecard is days behind.
Anyway, thanks again Turnip for a great post. Also, I will be back later to ask you a question.
Ann
I guess I’m kind of a credit farm. I let my credits build awhile and then decide to spend them when there are several thousand. I just find it takes enough time to visit the blogs and drop cards, I forget about using the credits I generate.
Still, can’t see myself selling them, not even back to Graham. It is nice going on a spending spree every now and then. Did it today.
I hugely agree about the categories. It does tick me off quite a lot to see money making blogs lumping themselves in with writing and personal blogs, etc. There is a category for them and they should be forced to stick to it. I consider them litter at EC. Someone needs to clean it up.
Where is the location to sell credits? I can’t find it…
James: The exchange system is being added in two parts. Part 1 opened yesterday. The ability to buy credits is on the dashboard. The ability to sell credits exists, but you have to be contacted buy Entrecrd directly. Part 2 of the exchange will open soon. This will add buttons to sell credits directly to Entrecard.
Hi Turnip, just noticed that your link to Entrecard in the post doesn’t work. You might want to fix it.
Delta:, thanks for the heads up. That should be fixed once the page refreshes. I left out the http:// part and it was directing somewhere instead of entrecard.com.
Great post! I totally agree on every point. The problem with the private sellers selling for cheap pennies will be rid of soon after they allow all users (minus those who got credits unethically) to sell credits through the exchange.
I actually don’t really like the fact that the most popular blogs are the ones that get tons of dropping, and not because the blogs are good blogs.
Maybe there’ll be some voting system one day while dropping
what is a credit farm?
A credit farm is a blog that exists to gain credits. Usually it’s tied to a “made for adsense splog”. The Adsense splog is a site with limited content that is designed to show up in Google search results. the idea is that people go there expecting to find content, don’t see what they want, and then click an adsense ad to go somewhere else. Slap an entrecard on one of these and you have a credit farm.
A credit farm drops cards in hopes you will reciprocate the drop. Dropping 300 cards from your main blog and 300 cards from a credit farm is better than being able to drop 600 cards from your main, even if you could.
The reason is you can drop on your other blogs yourself, plus you can maximize your drops by dropping on known reciprocators, guaranteeing 2 drops in return instead of the usual 1 drop returned.
This was atleast I am not expecting from entrecard.As this gonna no way help the real droppers….As I also remember one with a orangish pooh as a pic on the top of evryone in popularity and dint drooped a single card..!!!
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