What's Up with Entrecard?

Entrecard has certainly gone downhill, if that is possible to believe. About half the time, when I try to do my dropping, I can't click to another blog because the ad doesn't appear in the window. I've seen other bloggers complaining about problems with Entrecard, too.



A number of times, while trying to get my dashboard to load, I get this error message:

"Entrecard is having technical issues. Any of the following may apply:
We may be suffering extreme load (lots of people)
We may be upgrading our server software
We may be suffering from a serious bug
We have on-call people watching the system, outages are unlikely to last more than 10 minutes. We apologise profusely for the inconvenience. "

Since I've been seeing that for weeks, I doubt that they are working very hard on it. I've been a supporter of Entrecard, despite their shortcomings, but these conditions are really not good for advertising.

If the ads don't appear in the widget, not only can I not click, but it means that others are not seeing my ads which I paid for with ECs. Others, who have paid money to advertise are getting no value at all. And those of us who use Entrecard know that ECs are paid for with plenty of time.

I've sent a feedback message about my concerns. But, whoever runs EC these days is unlikely to do much unless a lot of us send messages.

They also have yet to release a toolbar that works with FireFox 7.

I feel caught in a tight spot. I continue to get a lot of exposure through Entrecard and don't want to abandon ship, but I'm thinking about it.

XXX

EntreCard Introduces Mysterious EntreCredits

Entrecard has sent an email to members inviting them to sign up at a site with almost no information as to what that might mean.

They said, "In a few weeks we will be launching entrecredits.com as a new site and we can't wait! But we need help. There's a lot to test, a userbase to build, and a UI to polish. As an Entrecarder you already have a strong understanding of how a credit-based economy works, so we're offering EC users an opportunity to get in early on this new site and help us create something to expand and complement Entrecard."

Doesn't say much does it?

At the site we read, "At last! a quick, simple micropayments solution that makes it easy to spend and earn on the web. We're opening for beta soon. To reserve your place in line and receive free credits to get you started, give us your email address below."

I have to admit that I'm skeptical. I make it a practice to NOT sign up for things that don't tell me what they are about. But, I have given them my email, since this appears to be from the support team at Entrecard.

Let's hope I didn't just sign up for some scam.

Entrecard

Entrecard Slow to Approve Web Sites

Just under a month ago, Entrecard announced that it would begin accepting web sites in addition to blogs. I immediately put one of my sites into the queue, since I am trying to increase advertising there. At the time, there were about 5 websites which had already been approved in the system. There are now 61, but mine is still waiting.

So what's up? Maybe this is evidence that EC is paying more attention to the kinds of sites they approve. Here's my categorization of the some of the sites in the system as of right now:

• Romance/Dating/ Girls- 3
• Real Estate- 1
• Tech/ Computer- 1
• Crafters- 2
• Cars- 2
• Make Money Online- 2
• Financial- 1
• TV/ Celebrity- 2
• Mixed Bag- 1
• Health- 1
• Sports- 2
• Fashion/ Beauty- 2
• Humor- 1
• Expat- 1
• Not in English!- 1

OK, so I didn't look at them all. I hate the way the EC display page jumps around instantly when ads are purchased. So I looked at about half of them. One already had a popup you have to click when it opens. One is not in English. But, overall, there are some decent pages, and some that are not so great. Two of them are just really close to my line as to what is decent, but EC already has a few sites that I think are borderline, so clearly my standards are different from the owners.

But, with 61 sites approved this means they have approved about two a day. Are they so busy they can't look at more applicants than that?

Entrecard

Entrecard to Now Allow Web Sites

Let's hope that Entrecard's newest offering goes more smoothly than some previous ones and better than the title in their blog post which is "Entrecard explanding network to include website owners." Of course EXPLANDING could be a new combination word of expanding and explaining. Maybe it will be a big hit.

So much for the little joke. Seriously, Entrecard will now allow regular web sites to become part of the Entrecard family of sites. I just entered a web site into the system to see what the process is. It's exactly the same as it has been for blogs, except that now there is a pull-down list to choose web site or blog when you create a new entry. So begin by clicking on "enter a new blog" from your Linked Blogs tab (not sure where this link is if you only have one blog). Some of the questions haven't been reworded to fit a web site. Just pretend that EC was prepared before they leaped off another cliff and answer the questions, substituting the word website for blog.

Will this be a good thing? It's much too early to tell. It should help my personal traffic to web sites I want to promote. I expect that I will be more fussy about ads I accept on those sites, as compared to my blogs. Of course, if I want to have complete control, I will need to pay money to EC to block all the paid ads.

Meanwhile, I'll give it a try.

Entrecard Blog

Another EC 15% Experiment

Today I followed one of the suggestions for again checking the claimed rate of "no more than 15% of your widget impressions." (from EC blog post of Oct 6, 2009.)

You will see the results of some of my statistical experiments in previous posts. The suggestion has been made by two people that I should load 100 EC blogs while not logged in to Entrecard, and check the rate under those conditions.

Today I did just that. I used the following methods to load the blogs. I began by clicking on EC widgets in my own blogs where they led to other blogs. When the chain clicking options quickly bogged down due to running into EC ads I loaded other blogs either from bookmarked blogs that I like, or from Adgitize widgets which lead to blogs that are also in the EC system. It "killed" me to visit 100 sites without dropping a single card. I could have used the points! But I also think that this is important information to gather.

The results show that of 100 blogs loaded, 99 had EC widgets. That is much better than what I found using the EC toolbar. This is not surprising, since they were all loaded from active blogers that are purchasing EC and/or Adgitize ads.

Of the 100 blogs loaded, 20 ads were not purchased with EC credits. 14 were EC sponsored ads. There were 5 ads in the system at the time, one of which is an EC ad. Interestingly enough, only 2 of those 5 were shown to me in the 14 appearances. The remaining 6 were different ads which led to Entrecard itself.

It is a little bit difficult to assess this, and it also affects my previous conclusions somewhat, although the number of ads not purchased with EC credits is simply a fact. For one thing, if a blog has no ads in its queue, I think that an EC ad is still shown. My impression is that most of the 6 blogs with EC ads were known to me and should have had ads in their queue, it is possible they did not, and I did not double check that (by looking at the price for an ad with them). The reason this matters is that now that we have these sponsored (paid) ads, They should be the showing up at a rate of 15%- and in this set of 100, they do... 14/100 is within the margin of error. But if the EC ads which have a different graphic than the sponsored one are supposed to be part of the 15%, then the results are less in line with what EC has stated. That would be a 20% rate, which I would interpret as inconclusive and in need of more data gathering.

Have I Caught Entrecard Cheating?

web ad income Nov 28 (4 blogs, 2 web sites, writing): Adsense $.20 Adgitize $.93 Project Wonderful $.02 Clixsense $.01 Neobux $.04 ______________________ Total: $1.20

Have I Caught Entrecard Cheating?

I wrote at the beginning of November about the results of some experimental clicking to see if Entrecard was delivering only the 15% of ads for their system which they claimed. Using the methods that I chose at that time to load the blog pages, the ad rate did work out to 15%.

But some questions were raised about other methods of serving blogs, so I decided to so some further research today. It was quite enlightening.

First I opened 100 blogs in the Entrecard system by using the EC toolbar. My selections for the type of blogs to open were from several categories that interest me, and the list was further filtered by "Most Popular." I often click this way, knowing that those bloggers are likely to reciprocate and visit my blog. For 100 blogs, there were 16 EC ads. This is certainly within the margin of error, although it is interesting to note that all 15 were served by the time I had opened 80 pages. In the 100 pages opened, 2 of them had no widget, which I thought was pretty interesting for a blog that had made it into the top 20 in a category (I chose 20 from each of 5 categories). I did reload each of those 2, to be sure that the widget really wasn't there.

But when I switched strategies, I really had an eye-opening result. I did two more sets of 100 blogs each, served by the EC widget. But for each of these sets I chose All and Random for the parameters of the search. This should have given me an unbiased sampling of whatever types of blogs are members of the EC network. Here's what I found:

First set:
A. Blogs served- 100
B. EC ads- 39 (39% or 44%- see conclusions)
C. no widget- 22 (one could reasonably expect that a small number of blogs would be so new to EC that they have been approved but not yet added a widget, but certainly not 22 of them. Of the 22, 2 were simply non-existent, 404 file not found errors.)

Second set:
A. Blogs served- 100
B. EC ads- 38 (38% or 43%- see conclusions)
C. no widget- 22 again (see comments above. One blog was by invitation only, one had a suspension notice. One other blog actually had a widget but I reported it for being over MY pornography threshold!)

Conclusion- if you say that I only viewed 88 (100-22) blogs in each set then the percent of EC ads is 39/88 = 44% or 38/88 = 43%! If I had discounted the 22 blogs that served no ads, for whatever reason, and continued to load blogs by this method to get 22 more valid views, even if all 22 had no EC ads, the ads would still have been 39% and 38%. Since it is more likely that there would have been some EC ads, the percentage would have gone even higher. For example, if in those 22 additional blogs, 5 had EC ads, then the percent would have been 44/100 = 44%.

For this level of ads, which is 2.5 times higher than they claim, there would need to be 500 blogs loaded with no EC ads at all to bring the percent back down to 15. Statistics is all about probabilities, and although this is possible, it is highly unlikely! Is there some little known way to load blogs whereby few or no ads are served? Perhaps I should try more sets with Favorites and Most Expensive?

To look at this another way, of the last 200 blogs I tried to open, only 156 of them had an EC widget on which to drop. Of the 156, only 79 actually had ads from other blogs in the system. That is 51%. If EC members are only shown ads from other blogs half the time (admittedly by this one method of blog delivery), no wonder they are upset.

And this is all on top of the fact that there are currently 10 paid ads in the system. I simply counted them as valid widgets that don't go to EC, but still reduce the amount of control that a blogger has over the ads which appear on his or her blog. One can choose to have up to 5 of those not display, but to remove them completely, you have to pay $48 a year and subscribe to Entrecard. This seems pretty far removed from the means of "free" blog promotion that Entrecard touts to potential members.

Checking up on the Entrecard 15% Ad Placement

web ad income Nov 24 (4 blogs, 2 web sites, writing): Adsense $.05 Adgitize $.72 Project Wonderful $.02 Chitika $.03 Clixsense $.03 Microworkers $1.00 Swagbucks $10.00 Neobux $.065 ______________________ Total: $11.92

web ad income Nov 25 (4 blogs, 2 web sites, writing): Adsense $.03 Adgitize $.72 Project Wonderful $.02 Clixsense $.05 Neobux $.07 ______________________ Total: $.89

Traffic From Entrecard

It has seemed to me that my blogs get fewer clicks from Entrecard widgets than they used to. I have no way to prove this since I haven't saved early data, but I was able to collect some statistics from the last 20 ads which I purchased on other sites for each of my blogs.

The 15% EC ad placement has really put an end to effective chain clicking. I used to do this myself. It was a quick way to get in a number of clicks and a good way to see some new blogs. Now, you get hung up very quickly. If you have the EC toolbar you can click to see a random blog, but I have found this frustrating because a rather high number of the blogs served don't have widgets.

By choosing the Ads tab and then "turbocharge" I was able to look at the stats from the past month, not just the top 10 which are presented in the regular statistics tab. I looked at the past 20 blogs on which I bought ads, and how many clicks total I received.

name of blog	blogs advertised on	number of clicks
My Quality Day	20	56
Just Throw Money	20	27
Get Off The Couch News	20	55
North Country Trail News	20	15

Subjective Observations:
There were a lot of ads that received no clicks at all.
Most hits came from blogs where I had not run an ad before, or at least not for a long time.
To aid in any conclusions I should explain that I haven't been buying any ads that cost more than 64 ECs for this entire time. (OK, I might have bought a couple at 128.)

Subjective Conclusions:
EC is not a source of very many hits. It definitely gets your banner out for people to become familiar with. (This is similar to CMF ads, which also results in very few actual hits.)
I should place ads on more different, and unfamiliar blogs. I continue to be frustrated by the small number of nature and outdoor recreation blogs on EC. And as long as they refuse to add an appropriate category, they won't attract many. And quite a few of the ones they did have left as the result of one of the many rough spots.
I will continue to use Entrecard because as long as I don't invest very much time into trying to accumulate points by dropping it's still a good way to earn "brand recognition."

Entrecard 15% Ad Checking

web ad income Nov 5 (4 blogs, 2 web sites, writing): Adsense $.00 Adgitize $.56 Project Wonderful $.04 Pine Cone Research $3.00 Chitika $.03 Neobux $.04 ______________________ Total: $3.67

Second Day of Entrecard 15% Ad Checking

I did another check of 100 Entrecard pages, but without any of the pages being clicked on from an Entrecard source. Let me explain.

I wondered if the rate of display of Entrecard ads (supposed to be 15%) might be weighted so that it was higher if viewers came from somewhere other than clicking on an EC ad box, or from the EC widget, or other internal source such as in a user's dashboard.

So today, I clicked Adgitize ads, but only counted the pages that opened if they also had an EC drop box. Not all do, but with 212 ads in the Adgitize system today, it was fairly easy to find 100.

Of those 100, exactly 15 had Entrecard ads. Pretty good margin of error, I'd say.

I've probably satisfied myself that no matter what it may seem like some times - when it feels like you've just seen 5 EC ads in a row - they really are only delivering them at a rate of 15% of the time.

Checking Up on the Entrecard 15% Ad Placement

web ad income Oct 31 (4 blogs, 2 web sites, writing): Adsense $.01 Adgitize $.60 Project Wonderful $.04 Clixsense $.03 Chitika $.07 ______________________ Total: $1.05

 
 

web income Oct actually cashed out (4 blogs, 2 web sites, other writing): Adgitize (income - ad cost) $1.36 Textbroker $65.69 Shared Reviews $15.37 Associated Content $2.89 ______________________ Total: $85.31

Checking Up on the Entrecard 15% Ad Placement

Entrecard seems to have stabilized pretty much again. I'm fairly glad that I've ignored most of the waves of change and anger, and just kept using it, dropping when I could and simply out-waited the roller coaster.

Today I decided to do a little experiment to check on their claim that 15% of the blog ads will be replaced with Entrecard Ads (since Sept 28). This will need to be repeated a few times to get a really accurate check. In fact, for statistical calculations 30 samples is considered a necessary number. I doubt that I'll repeat this 30 times, just because it's a pain to do the counting, but then again, the left side of my brain might make me do it!

So, I opened 100 blogs that claim to be signed up on Entrecard. This was done with a combination of first opening 15 blogs from the "Campaign" page of my interface, then I chain clicked until all those threads ran out, and finally I had the toolbar choose random selections from all blogs one at a time until I had opened 100. (I am specifying this because, perhaps by chance, I got different levels of EC ads from the methods).

None of the first 50 opened had an EC ad! In fact of the first 60 blogs, only 2 had EC ads. Seven blogs had no EC widget (suggesting that admin is not checking up on that very well)

However, by the time I got to 100 blogs, 18 of them had EC ads. So for today the EC ads appeard 18% of the time. That is certainly close to the expected 15%, and not far enough off to raise any red flags or make me obsessive about getting those 30 samples.

However, I do want to explore whether it was simple chance, or if the percentages are set differently for different click sources.

What is Entrecard Up To Now?

web ad income Oct 30 (4 blogs, 2 web sites, writing): Adsense $.02 Adgitize $.53 Project Wonderful $.04 Chitika $.25 ______________________ Total: $.84

What is Entrecard Up to Now?

All Entrecard users received another cryptic message from the new owners yesterday. It says "We are pleased that many members are taking advantage of Entrecard services and that Entrecard is able to help users increase traffic to their blog. However in order to continue providing this free service, we will be taking 15% of our entire ad network inventory for sponsors as of Sept. 28"

It does explain that we will be able to "disable sponsor ads" that we don't like.

No one knows what this means, really. There is some discussion going on at the forum, with the return of paranoia too. Several negative posts have not been approved, and people are wondering if we are back to the old days of censorship.

I am concerned that "disable sponsor ads" means that they will run until we see them and block them. Two of my blogs are specifically focused on quiet outdoor recreation, and I don't want certain kinds of ads there. EC has promised no nudity, violence, or anything illegal. Well, there is a lot of sleaze that doesn't quite fall to those levels that I really don't want to advertise.

Most people think this will mean that 15% of the time an Entrecard paid ad will show instead of one purchased by another blogger with EC credits. So the value of those credits, which are already the lowest since I joined, will go down even more.

My blogs get very few click-thrus from other EC ads any more anyway, even though total hits from all sources are up. The value seems to be mostly in banner exposure. I hate to have that reduced to 85% of what it is now.

I would be willing to display paid EC ads 100% of the time IF they were something like this mockup. No links here... this is just to give an idea of what it would look like. These would be my conditions:

1. There was an ad or ads appropriate to my topics
2. I could choose what ads to display ahead of time
3. It was a two-box system- similar to my mockup.

What do you think?

web ad income Sept 21 (4 blogs, 2 web sites, writing): Adsense $.29 Adgitize $.55 Project Wonderful $.01 Shareapic $.01 Chitika $.31 ______________________ Total: $1.17

Entrecard's Latest Fiasco?

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

Concerning the Tax Number and Entrecard

I actually received an answer from Entrecard support in reference to needing my tax ID number. They said "Entrecard requires the tax information for all participants in the cashout." There was no comment on the insecure form.

As I said in a previous post, no other online site that I earn from requires that information until the $600/year threshold is reached. I've decided that I'm not willing to give that information out for the very few dollars I might make in a year. Whether many of the allegations of poor management are valid or not, I won't submit that information via a simple online form. The few other sites that I earn more money from had me submit a regular W-9 tax form, a much more business-like method.

Since this means that I will not be cashing out any credits, I may decide to not accept any paid ads. To date, I haven't really objected to paid ads in theory, although I don't care for some of the particular ads. However, I've just rejected those ones.

I need to think about this a little longer. But if I am not going to benefit monetarily at all from the ads, I'm thinking that I don't feel a need to display them.

Entrecard

web ad income today (3 blogs, 2 web sites): Adsense $.01 Adgitize $.77 Project Wonderful $.02 ______________________ Total: $.80 Total to date in April $14.10 Total in March $4.88

Entrecard Answers Question about Cost of Approval Views

Since Entrecard has begun the paid ads being placed in the widget rotation 50% of the time two important questions have been answered in the forum.

The specific question, that many have been asking, was posted "If I'm an advertiser, am I paying for the clicks associated when an blog owner clicks my ad PRIOR to approving it? You know, clicking the ad to check out the site, PRIOR to the ad being actually approved by the blog owner. Assuming I've chosen to to pay by the click in my campaign vs the impression."

The answer: "Posted by Entrecard: nope, you don't pay for that. you only pay for impressions/clicks as served through the widget, and never the dashboard."

And the other question concerns the accuracy of paid ad views vs EC purchased ad views. In the flow chart EC provided, they referred to the decision about whether to show a paid or EC ad as a "coin flip." This terminology was perhaps unfortunate, because that is a 50-50 probability curve, not a promise.

In the forums this was also posted on April 6. "Entrecard: No, it is not a "coin flip" in the precise sense of the term... it is guaranteed 50%"

Just hoping this clears up two small pieces of the confusion.

web ad income today (4 blogs, 2 web sites): Adsense $.01 Adgitize $.88 Project Wonderful $.04 ______________________ Total: $.93 Total to Date in April $-2.00 Total in March $4.88

Why I (Used to?) Like Entrecard

I joined Entrecard (EC) in January 2009. I was hoping to find some way to seriously increase traffic to my blog, and this particular networking tool is different from most of the others.

If you have noticed on any blogs a box with a 125x125 pixel banner with a black and orange box beside it, or a band below it with a single, capital E, that is an Entrecard Drop Box. I have added one to this blog today.

The idea is that you can earn credits by clicking on those boxes in other people’s blogs. You also get credit when other EC bloggers click on your box. With these EC credits you can buy advertising space on other blogs in the system. That’s how your blog’s banner gets on other blogs.

My traffic immediately increased. I began to make several friends in the blog world, including a few blogs that I make an effort to read and comment on every day. Pretty soon, people were stopping off at My Quality Day and leaving interesting comments. And my two news blogs were getting a lot more traffic even if no one was leaving comments. For the North Country Trail News blog this was great exposure. The news is mostly pertinent to those who care specifically about the trail.

One of the general complaints about Entrecard is that people just drop and run and don’t read the blogs, and thus it makes your bounce rate go up. This is true enough, but it’s obvious that if you have things worth looking at that people eventually slow down and look. Before EC I had one regular reader of My Quality Day. Now I have double digit followers and every post has multiple comments. This is what blogging is supposed to be!

A couple of days ago EC announced a major shift in its emphasis. They will be attracting outside advertisers whose ads will be running with blog ads up to 50% of the time. The up side of this is that finally those with extra EC credits can cash them out for real money. There was great hue and cry about the down sides. First of all, all EC widgets will need to be either above the fold or within one scroll down from there. This has not yet been tightly defined since this will vary on different monitors. (After initially saying that the widget had to be above the fold, this standard has been relaxed.) This is a design issue for some people, while others are upset because many advertisement brokers insist that their ads be above the fold. There is only so much real estate at the top on any blog.

The next biggest complaint is that bloggers would have to pay via EC credits to decline to run ads of which they did not approve. EC has since decided that they will not require people to pay in order to refuse certain ads. Bloggers on Today.com (and others?) will be given an option to run no ads except the traditional blog ads. Today.com does not allow any commercial ads other than their own, so the new EC plan would have eliminated anyone using the Today platform from their network.

Some bloggers have already left Entrecard. I know of one who left in protest and is back already since EC actually listened to some of the complaints.

Me, I’m going to stick around and see how it works out. Two of my widgets were already high enough on their respective blogs, and I moved the third one up a bit. The one on this blog I just added today after it was approved. Perhaps there will soon be another small tally of cents per day listed below.

web ad income today (4 blogs, 2 web sites): Adsense $.01 Adgitize $.20 Project Wonderful $.05 ______________________ Total: $.26 Total to date in March: $4.88