Recently Entrecard sent the following email to it’s members outlining their latest changes. Since I know you are all intrigued as to the Turnip’s opinions on the subject, I’ll give them in green after each section. Feel free to post your own opinions in the comments.
In order to continue operating in the long-term, Entrecard needs make some significant changes. These are summarized below:
- Buy credits for less: Entrecard is now selling 1,000 credits for $6.00. You can buy them here: http://entrecard.com/r/buy_credits (This is actually selling credits for more. It’s less than they sold them in the past, but 6X the current eBay rate)
- More pricing increments: Instead of prices doubling every time, there are now a few more steps. The new price points can be found on the Advertising page in the wiki, here: http://entrecard.com/docs/doku.php?id=advertising (This is a red herring. Big mouths on the EC forum spout off on this topic like town criers. It’s the first sign that they are clueless. Nobody buys EC ads based upon worth. They buy it based upon either cost or popularity; sometimes niche as well. So, if someone has 1000cr to spend, you are still going to find the exact same ads available at the exact same price. Nothing changes except now your ad queue will be longer, and that’s it. Once ads are searchable by impressions, pagerank, and unique page views, then we can talk about “worth”.
- Members are not allowed to sell credits: This goes for ebay sales, posts in the Marketing forum, and posts on other forums. If you have references on your site to the sale of credits, please remove them immediately, as it is now against our terms. (This is a no brainer. Enough with the credit whores and their never updating splogs acting as credit sinks. Now the spammers have one less incentive to insert blogs.)
- Credit transfer limits: Members are allowed to make a maximum of 14 credit transfers a week, up to a maximum of 1,000 credits, whichever comes first. This means you can still run contests where you give credits away for free, and under 1k per week. Note: This does not affect linked blogs, you can transfer unlimited credits between linked blogs. (This rule is just stupid. Enough with credit transfers, just ban them. So now spammers will go through loopholes to only transfer 1000 cr a week. I guess with 10 sites, you could still sell 10k credits on the black market. Though now you’d pay tax, see below.)
- Transfer tax: From now on, all transfers, including transfers made with our new payments API, will be taxed at a rate of 12.5%. The taxed credits will be sold to members (see #1). (About time Graham put down the surfboard and monetized the one thing he had to sell. Now even spammers are working for the man, or should I say boy? This is a good thing for the majority of Entrecarders who don’t transfer credits except to themselves.)
- Blogs cannot be unlinked: Once you link a blog, it’s there for good unless you ask us to delete the blog from your account. This prevents linking/unlinking to get around the credit transfer limits, and it also stops you losing access to a blog if you unlink it in error, which happens a lot. (Silly rule to prevent coding issues caused by delinking. Why not grow some balls and force all logins to be linked. Guess what, if your wife has a separate account, either link the blogs or get a divorce and get your own IP address. Enough with the sockpuppets. Hopefully, the era of spammers finding Entrecard profitable is gone, but better to be safe than sorry. If a member spams, delete all their blogs.)
- No more coupons: You are no longer allowed to send coupons. (WTF was this added to the coding to begin with? Did we really need a built in way to sell credits on eBay? Grand design issue with little thought to the long term implications)
- Shop closed: Except for Entrecard upgrades (Featured Status, Fast Pass) the Entrecard Shop is now offline until further notice. Please do not request a seller token until the shop returns. When it comes back, it will be bigger and better. We’ll communicate more details nearer the time. (The shop hasn’t really been open since EC allowed raffles, then banned raffles. I tried selling real merchandise and my pleas to stabilize the worth of credits fell on deaf ears. People started buying my t-shirts in bulk because they were the only material item they could buy with credits. I guess the price of credits dropped so low that my shirts could be used as rags for a profit. I yanked them from the shop as I was losing money on postage alone. Way to screw over those who put faith in the system.)
So what do you think about the new changes?
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33 users commented in " Entrecard Changes The Game "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a Trackback **********I thought it was funny that everyone seemed to be for these changes but Graham’s post was voted down to zero. Obviously a huge population of sploggers at Entercard were not happy, but knew not to say anything because there’s little defense.
It’s nice to see your comments on the matter here, much easier to read when it’s not lost in a sea of other posts.
There isn’t much that has changed that affects me that much except maybe the credit transfer tax but all that means is that I’ll have to come up with a different way to reward my top commenters and droppers.
Fragile, Thanks! I too hate to try and have an intelligent discussion with so many people spouting nonsense or breaking up threads with their one liners. Like they can’t find a single nonsense thread to show off their humorous side.
As you know, You are still allowed to reward the top droppers, just the amount gets taxed. So send the top 10 1400 crdits each, and whatever they end up with is what they get after tax.
I think its a good start. Entrecard has to make money off the trading, and to do that they need to bring it in-house. Now, they should let the price fluctuate — $6 per thousand is stupid, nobody should trade at that (the most recent deals are all less than $2 per thousand).
I’ve been dropping, etc, but haven’t really tried putting an ad on as of yet. I looked for one today on a blog that I have visited often, and it didn’t work.
875 for six bucks is a long way from the 1000 for 3 bucks which is what I’ve paid on the rare occasion I had to buy credits. You’re right that the additional price points will merely lengthen the queue. though I may actually be more inclined to pay 341 than 512…
@Turnip I think you are misunderstanding the reason why many people want the cost of cards to be lower. IMO, it should be lower because frankly, sites ads aren’t worth that much. Yes, people who horde credits will pay 2048 for an ad, but that is not who this is for.
I want this for the people who join EC for the advertising abilities and buy all their credits from Graham. It is about helping to monetize the website.
Say you are a noobie with EC, and you enjoy this cool looking site called ‘Turnip of Power’. Right now, no way would someone pay $12 to advertise for one day (before, it would have been $20). Lower the incrementations, and woah, much more friendly cost of 578 credits.. only $3.50. Nice! Much more affordable.
Do you think these enhancements/changes will help EC? I don’t see how it will increase usage–how will this benefit the users?
I nod my head in agreement for most of these, except the taxation. No reason to tax transfers when you’ve limited them so much already IMO.
Also, they’re already taking 75% on ads, and “The taxed credits will be sold to members (see #1)” They really don’t respect our intelligence eh? EC is not tangible, it is unlimited and they shouldn’t expect anyone with an IQ over 42 to believe that the tax pays for anything.
And if for some stupid reason they actually coded a system to provide purchased credits out of the credit transfers tax fund, then we all need to find somewhere else to play. Seriously.
Nukeit, I think the credits they sell do come from the taxes. In the past, they actually bought credits from members before selling them.
Gary, I understand the reasons behind these changes. The only thing that will drop ad prices is fewer overall credits in the system spent on advertising. As the credit supply dries up, people will begin spending their credits more frugally. Taxes aren’t enough, as people are hoarding rather than advertising. But give these changes 2-3 weeks and see if your ad price drops. Overall, I think these changes feature more positives than negatives.
As someone who was “hoarding” it wasn’t because I was trying to sell the credits anywhere, but because I kept seeing ads messed up — sites displaying an ad for turnipofpower.com that, when you clicked said ad, took you to razzball.com or back to the offering site.
I’m not seeing that as much anymore, so bought some ads. We’ll see how that goes.
Nothing else really effects me except the shop — I had a nice little “business” going selling custom cards, but since everything except the items Entrecard itself offers is gone, that is also (other than I do have a few repeat customers who are paying cash for my work now). Hopefully that will come back fairly soon.
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I’m glad Graham has made changes necessary to stabilize Entrecard but charging $6/1000 ec’s is too high IMO.
Turnip, You spelled it out well, so a dummy like me can understand. I do not play games with entrecard, I do not buy and sell credits. I actually spend them as soon as I get around a thousand. As usual very succinct post.
I don’t like the max. credit transfer so low (prefer it at 2000) or the 12.5% tax to be honest.
Sometimes I want some banner designed, or I want to thank my topdroppers by giving them credits, but this is making it tougher. Ah well. Will have to live with it.
It’s not the end of the world and I believe it will make Entrecard better. Whether I like the rules or not.
Margaret: The shop will reopen, with EC taking it’s cut, I’m sure.
Laura: It’s only too high because the value of Entrecard credits has been driven down. If ads cost 100cr a day, buying ads on 10 good sites for $6 would be a bargain. That’s the way things used to be, and hopefully will return.
Etta: Glad you enjoyed it, we really have to get you out of blogspot!
Bas: A link is a great reward in itself. If this improves Entrecard, we should be able to adapt.
I think that changes are pretty good, but I don’t want to taxed if I transfer credits between my own blogs. I send in a feedback email asking if this was the case and I received a reply saying that they hadn’t realized that would happen and would consider it.
NathanKP - Imagination Manifesto
great shot!
However, I still believe that there should be ways so that users can control their price.
I have transfered credits between my blogs on EC a few times so I’m glad that is still around. I’ve also given credits to friends who joined EC after finding it on my blog (or me babbling about it in email). So the tax thing peeves me enough that I won’t give away credits to anyone but myself now. If it helps to cut out spammers on EC I’ll be glad for it. But spammers always find some new way to get around whatever blocks are put up. Like rodents, you just have to kill (delete) them to really get rid of them.
@Turnip you are right about the overall supply of credits, but that is a problem right now and once the supply does go down, changes will have to be made to the pricing system anyway otherwise the amount of ads queued will be too low.
Thanks, as always you are on the ball. I don’t know yet what I think of the changes. Let me ask you something…
What do you think about the partnership with OIO?
Check your e-mail…
Fool, I have something better than OIO, but I am sitting on it until it is released. Give it a week or two for that news. I don’t like the idea of paying $30 for the chance to get more credits.
Over all the changes were a good, and necessary move. Now if people would just use their heads on advertising instead of complaining about the cost to advertise on a blog. Honestly, there is no blog currently on EC that I’d pay more than 512 credits to advertise on, mine included.
The discount is a joke, OIO was $37 two days ago. They jacked the price up to compensate for the discount code…
Thank you for regularly dropping by my site “My Life’s A-musings”. I have placed a widget of your card on my sidebar that will last for a month. This is to show my deep appreciation for your regular visit.
Hey Turnip, thanks for the suggestion but the problem is that I haven’t been hoarding my credits like I probably should’ve been so I have less than I need to reward the amount I want to (and still leave enough ‘in the bank’ so to speak).
It certainly is difficult to have a serious conversation over there (myself being one of the culprits). lol
I can understand why a lot of the changes were made. I also never understood why in the beginning selling credits on eBay was even allowed.
The new rules are good and will do a lot to maintain the overall good that EntreCard does for those who care. I’d left EntreCard because of the sploggers and I’m glad to be able to come back to that fresh, clean environment.
The only thing I do not agree with in the new rules is the unlinking of blogs. I can understand not allowing it because people can use that to get by the whole tax thing, but what if Google decided to drop page ranks on EntreCard blogs or something to that extent where people would no-longer want to be seen on entrecard… or what about people who don’t want any EntreCard traffic to their blogs.
I welcome the changes on Entrecard.
Setting an actual rate on the price would deter all those people from selling EC’s real cheap. Banning selling outside of Entrecard is also most welcome.
The value per dollar may not be high enough but I think it is fair as at least they are starting to make changes.
It will actually give their service more value other than being a traffic exchange as what it really is now.
An honest commentary regarding screwy changes!!!
While two blogs may be linked, you can always just take the widget off of one of your blogs, should you want to remove it from Entrecard. A simple letter to support would probably solve any situation like that quickly.
Hello Turnip.
I think the transfer of ec’s bites pretty bad. And feel it will hurt people sending ec’s to others for top drops, which is pretty much part of the fun with Entrecard. Now why should anyone care if they are ever a top dropper on any ones blog. Entrecard is really starting to get boring and looks as if all I see anymore is marketing and making that dollar.
Oh well…
I am actually surprised that Entrecard did not stop people from selling credits long ago. I do not like the idea of taxing transfers but I understand that it will help keep people from selling them. I really thought about giving my top dropper credits but I will not be paying taxes. I assume that Graham sees how popular his website has become and is frustrated that it does not make more money than it does. The problem is and will probably always be that people using a free service will not part with money no matter how wonderful you try to make things look. The only way it will make more money is by getting people to sign up for, download, and click on free offers. There are companies that pay for that.
Well Turnip Me and You don’t seem to be the only smart veggies in the pack.
some of the changes are good, some are just plain nonsensical. I blogged on it when I submitted my entry to the big contest.
most of the issues with credits could have been figured out without a blanket no sales; BAM “Without a grace peroid”.
I had several thousand credits in process with coupons which instantly became worthless - and guess what no refund is possible when a user has left entercard. so I got screwed real good by graham. and he didn’t even bother to respond to me personally; when I wrote him directly.
that is what you call one real stank onion..
anybody who owns anything that is worth something is going to suffer to support it. so why does it make sense to penalize the users ?
that’s one of the mysteries of EC;
It think it’s also one of the things making me look at the power of my blog in a whole different light.
Thanks Turnip for Shining a Light on This Cabbage Patch
It just seems to me that there are so many things going on with Entrecard right now. First Graham has a line of financing in place that makes him a millionaire and moves EC to the next level, then he doesn’t. Then he is despondent about the how the financing collapsed and wants to sell the site at auction, then he doesn’t. The Stumbleupon bans Entrecard. Then we get the OIO deal.
Its just like they say about Texas weather. Don’t like it? Wait about 15 minutes and it will change. I don’t like Entrecard very much right now, but I am willing to wait for the next change.
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