Entrecard has announced that it is going to try to lower the bounce rate caused by those who drop on the sites in the system. In the June 30 Entrecard blog, Graham stated, "Starting soon, “dropping and running” will no longer give you credit. We are developing a proprietary algorithm to determine whether or not you engaged in the blog you visited in some way. If you did not engage in the blog, you will not get credit. We won’t be disclosing exactly the algorithm we use, so that people can’t game it easily."
Naturally this is causing yet another round of furor. Almost everyone is assuming that it will involve leaving a comment on every blog. This brings up a round of objections such as commenting on blogs that don't post every day, meaningless comments and more.
Other people think that it will be a simple timer. This doesn't sound very proprietary. Personally, I doubt that a comment on every blog will be required.
But no matter what the algorithm is, it seems really strange to me that the Entrecard administration would choose to shake things up again so soon after the last upsetting change (introducing paid ads). At least in my experience, things are just now getting back to some level of stability. Some traffic has returned and new connections are being made where bloggers who left created gaps in some networks.
Without a really high connection speed it isn't really possible to drop 300 EC's a day anyway. If credit now will not be given for some percentage of those drops, I think it's going to become increasingly hard to justify trying to earn enough EC's to advertise.
What do you think?
See Taking action against the bounce rate from Entrecard Blog
5 comments:
I used to be with Entrecard but now I prefer CFN ads and also adgitize. With my Alexa ranking now and cheap ads I am getitng some nice private ads on my blog. It also only costs 30 cents a month on the CFN widget and since I joined I have eight ads running on that widget and I will cash out via Paypal once I have ten bucks so that works better long term for me. Now I will work on getting subscribers and build a list of readers. This will help me get higher paid advertisers in the future and I can then up my CFN rate too. Found you on tnf..Nice blog. Hpe you visit me too. I always support the blogs I see on there.
Graham isn't very smart about these things... if my few months at Entrecard have taught me anything, they have definitely taught me that. The success of this new change will depend on just what "secret algorithms" are being used. Just have to wait and see... It will either result in a) better quality traffic (unlikely) b) more spam comments (possible) or c) a lot fewer people dropping (very likely).
It'd probably reduce everyone's concerns if Graham replied to a few of the questions which have been raised.
It could be implemented easily by detected if you load more than one page on a blog.
If Entrecard only require droppers to interact with a percentage of blog (e.g. 5%) that'd allow for most blogs not being updated daily.
If the changes reduce the number of daily drops, hopefully the cost of advertising will fall. 4096ec per day is ridiculous, why are people willing to pay it?
Great blog post! I found you when I was over visiting Lin. I am a new Entrecard user, and I think this will just make it more confusing. That is just my 2cents worth! :)
Thanks for all your feedback... Well, we shall see if EC can survive this latest.
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