All it takes is basic math to see why Entrecard will never succeed as an income earning advertising medium for bloggers. Simply look at the “best case scenario” and the “worst case scenario”.
Best Case: 300 real bloggers casually dropping on other real blogs. What is a casual dropper? Any number works, but lets say 100 blogs a night. Can you read that many? It makes no difference for this example. So lets do the basic equation.
- Step 1: 300 card droppers dropping 100 cards= 30k credits for both the droppers and receivers. A total of 60k credits enter the system out of thin air. Each blogger receives 200 credits for their nightly efforts.
- Step 2: Each blogger spends their 200 cr buying ads on another good blog. Thanks to the 75% tax, each blogger ends up with 25% of 200 cr, or 50 cr.
- Step 3: Entrecard now buys this 50 cr surplus from each blogger. 15,000 credits total, and the economy balances, right? Wrong!
Worst Case: 300 pay per post sploggers dropping on other splogs. It doesn’t matter if they have multiple accounts that drop 300 as the math still works the same.
- Step 1: 300 card droppers dropping 300 cards= 90k credits for both the droppers and receivers. A total of 180k credits enter the system out of thin air. Each blogger receives 600 credits for their nightly efforts.
- Step 2: Each splogger hordes their 600 cr knowing they can make some easy money from the system. If they are lucky, some sucker bought ads on their splog, increasing their nightly take. But we won’t take that into consideration.
- Step 3: Entrecard now buys this 600 cr surplus from each splogger. 180,000 cr total, and the economy balances… Almost
Look what just happened: Combine the best case and worst case together. Entrecard created 270k credits out of thin air. It taxed the good bloggers 45k cr for having the nerve to buy ads. That means Entrecard still has to purchase 225,000 credits a night to balance the budget. If Entrecard makes $1000 a day selling paid ads, then it claims it would return 75% of profits to the members. 75% of $1000 is $750.00. $750 / 225K cr = .0033 per credit paid. (For any given day, we will take 75% of our revenues and pass them on to you by way of cashing out your credits)
Total Income
Good Blogger: 50 cr x .0033= $0.17 per day
Bad Splogger: 600cr x 0.0033= $2.00 per day
Now, don’t spend that $2 so fast. That’s assuming there are only 600 Entrecard active members. Though Graham still claims over 30k members, the real number is between 2400 and 17k blogs. It also assumes someone would be willing to pay $1000 a day to advertise on Entrecard blogs. Changing the advertising dollar amount doesn’t change the ratio of who gets paid. Sploggers still get a 10:1 advantage. Is the ratio of good bloggers to bad bloggers 1:1? I’m sure it isn’t. But is the real ratio better or worse, even after the supposed cleanup?
Bottom Line: If sploggers find out they can get anywhere close to $2 per day per blog they will be trying to sign up by the thousands, further worsening the ratio of good to bad blogs, and also making admission standards impossible to enforce. Then again, I think even $1 a day would be enough for them to increase their scripting/spamming efforts. So what will it be? A system where nobody makes any money because noone wants to advertise to rubbish traffic, or a system that is only profitable to spammers? Either way EC takes it’s 25% cut, so it won’t matter to them.
By the way, what about the ads in the sidebar, the sleazy front page affiliate ads, and the Google Adsense scattered about the site. Are those profits also distributed to the members? If so, how are they divided up? Ah, so many questions. Don’t you just love these last minute fixes? Even if you don’t care about the money, you had better read the Entrecard terms of service.
“We reserve the right to adjust the credits in the economy as a whole, as a percentage increase or decrease equally across the entire network.” That means if Entrecard wants to buy 90% of all credits in the system, it will. Like it or not, folks.
Now I’m sure Asshat has a perfectly good explanation how this math really works. Just like the “It is obviously a bug” response to the last gotcha…
Entrecard is ridiculous. From sites with viruses, to people with umpteen blogs dropping til kingdom come. I am glad I left, but I miss meeting the few people, like yourself, that have awesome blogs.
Yerh The twat is a spoiled brat, Entrecard has been a thorn in my side since the banned me (yes for no reason) but one reason was to pocket quite a few thousand EC’s, maybe thats how he makes his profits kicks you in the danglers when your making good EC’s.
I asked fellow bloggers at the time on ENtre BS if they found anything on my blog detrimental to the rules and regs of Entre BS. Nope all ship shape. So F him and I think the robots that drop on ENtre BS will realise one day they are wearing down the click button on their mouse for no reason.
Good to see you hate Entre BS more than I do, is there a club we can create, I think it would be a great talking point and see just how many people out there actually have been stung by that idiot
You seem to have alot to say about entrecard.
Right now, I have nothing against it. However, some of the things that were done on entrecard could have been done a bit more smoother/better, but it is what it is. Entrecard is the greatest thing I have found at the moment, and will probably stay there. I don’t see any comparable alternatives.
You should try CMF Ads. It let’s you netowrk, earn some money, and not deal with the spammers and other BS. Best part is no card dropping. Or is the card dropping the part you enjoy most?
What are you looking for Megaphase?
Basically something like entrecard, just handled better. Maybe something that lets me earn money too. I’m just trying to see what is out there.
The funny thing is, I signed up for CMF ads and tried to get approval on my two blogs a nice while ago but have received no notification yet on either ones approval and I cant find a pending list.
Megaphase: I have approved your blog megaphase.info. I think the issue was that you only had one post on your homepage. It appears at first glance that you didn’t meet our 5 post minimum. However, checking your sidebar, I see you do indeed have more than 5 posts. I apologize for any inconvenience. If you have a second blog, what is the URL? I will manually check the URL myself.
I have always admired anyone good with math. I may not be good with math but I knew it was going to be a lose lose situation for everyone except EC.
In turn eventually I think they too will lose. I am keeping my widgets on because my friends are so loyal that even though I have quit dropping they still aren’t canceling on me.
I have 5 or 6 days left with one blog and 12 left with my main blog and then EC and their widget will be out of my life forever.
I am very happy with CMF and can’t wait to get my commercial site up and advertise via CMF!!
~Jackie
So I was booted out of Entrecard at a good time, then? Ah well. I will have to find a new way to keep my bounce rate as high and the time on site low.
My other blog url is mysitecometrue.blogspot.com
mysitecometrue.blogspot.com did not show up in the database. If you log in under megaphase, you should be able to add the 2nd blog on that account. It should be approved since I saw no outstanding violations.
Love your work, but you need a name change. you should rename by deed poll to mushroom as you live in the dark and thrive on the bullshit of others.
Well Ghostgirl, when you are a blogger, you recognize when a non-blogger feeds you BS. When you are an advertiser, you recognize when a bogus ad network is feeding it’s members BS. Whether or not you are addicted to the traffic exchange is a side issue to how the members get paid. Clearly a network that want’s to pay it’s members using non-transparent methods and secret algorithms is not being honest. For f__k’s sake, what does dropping cards have to do with how many dollars my traffic earns for an ad network? If I earn $10, then pay me 75% of that if that is the agreement. In fact, those who drop cards should be paid less, not more. Because that traffic is rubbish, while search traffic is very valuable.
Yo Turnip, Happy Easter – I’m droppin by to see who’s ass you tore today. Whoops looks like another bit of Mystery Math from Entremath is cleared up.
I really enjoy your calculations and explanations; guess that’s why I keep comin to see what’s up. btw, you know I’m repostin this on my site on saturday. Uh Huhhh..
whoo hooo it looks like Ghostgirl, is now ghost.
hey turnip, when you gonna advertise on BadGalsRadio with cmf, we always keep an ad on your site,, or the adm site.
cause we respect the TURNIP !
now go get that ad, pronto mes aime.
btw, we do have two sites for your choice.
and for anyone else looking for a nice ad venue
for your cmf ad – hit us upppppp…
yeah we soliciting on your post, that’s how a smart blogger would do it. hit it while it’s hot.
Hi! Well! I’ve learnt quite a lot about Entrecard today reading it on your post together with comments from other bloggers as well. It is really sad situation, I like visiting most of my EC bloggers. I normally read most of the blogs and that is why I cannot compete with the droppings. It is ridiculous just to drop and go (hit and run) with reading at least the latest post. In fact, I improved a lot by reading most blogs. Let’s just wait and see!