Once touted as the ad network by bloggers for bloggers Entrecard has built a membership base including around 30,000 members. Up until today I was one of them with my blog typically ranking in the top five or ten most popular blogs within the network.
Not any more as Entrecard has sold out its members.
Entrecard has announced it will be taking control of member widgets in order to sell run of the network advertising impressions to non-member businesses in an effort to monetize the network of blogs.
I was shocked when I first read this. It was impudent. Where has the network just for bloggers gone?
I can understand wanting to monetize Entrecard, but attempting to take control and sell advertising space off member blogs to outside businesses without consideration is not the way.
Entrecard is treating member blogs as their own assets. Not only by taking up to half of all ad impressions from widgets to sell for profit, but also by telling members they need to place Entrecard widgets high up on the page to maximize the prices they can charge to outside advertisers.
If Entrecard wants to monetize their site they should do just that. Monetize their site! Charge a membership fee or something along those lines. Just don’t presume to think that members blogs are Entrecard’s own posessions to utilize for generating ad revenues.
A synopsis of the changes being implemented at Entrecard follows.
First change - Entrecard will now launch a third party ad network which allows Entrecard to sell ads to external businesses. These ads will be placed in rotation upon widgets across the entire network of member blogs replacing up to 50% of all impressions. Fifty percent right now amounts to about forty million impressions per month.
Second change - Entrecard instructed its membership they will require all widgets to be placed no more than one page down on blogs. This is clearly to allow Entrecard to market the advertising space to outside businesses as premium to drive up advertising rates.
Third Point - Member advertisers lose up to 50% of ad impressions to external advertisers when they run ads on other member’s blogs.
Fourth Point - Members do not earn the advertising dollars generated for running these external, third party ads.
The Spin - A portion of the revenue would be used to purchase credits back from members. These would be credits members earn through drops or offering the remaining 50% of their widget impressions to fellow members.
When I asked Graham, the owner Entrecard if there would be a setting where I could opt out of displaying these third party ads. I was told no and if I did not like it, I could “Just take the widget off your blog and quit Entrecard.”
Well all right then.
Entrecard was fun and I met some excellent fellow bloggers through the network. For the most part though, it is a low quality traffic exchange with an exorbitant bounce rate. Most of the visitors it generates only visit to drop and run which I see getting worse with these proposed changes.
Take a moment to read what my friend Syed has to say on Entrecard.
Entrecards attempts to sieze control of member blogs to monetize them for their own gain are not being well received by the membership. I have already seen several prominant bloggers leave the network and I expect there will be more as the changes take effect.
I appreciate all the friends I met at Entrecard! The widget may no longer be here, but the most important part of the blog still is.
March 20th, 2009 at 9:24 am
I am not surprised. The moment EC started getting manipulated, I saw this coming.
March 20th, 2009 at 10:16 am
This is an excellent article with a lot of great points. Graham also gave me the “if you don’t like it, leave” line but in a rude way in the forums. Why I left entrecard can be found at http://tinyurl.com/ctw6vs For a CEO of a company who wants to make money off of bloggers without giving them payment for running the ads, this is rather a very poor way to treat bloggers.
I had 5 blogs on EC so asked to have my account deleted and all my blogs removed. The removed my primary blog but refuse to remove the remaining blogs. What it appears he is doing is leaving those who ask to be removed in the system so some paid ads might sneak through onto those blogs if the widget is still on the blog. It is a rather sneaky approach but it will work if people leave the widgets up. I too met a lot of great bloggers but decided being talked to in that fashion was definitely not worth the effort! I continue to visit my favourites and comment when I can.
March 20th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
There’s also the fact that those of us on Today.com blogs aren’t *allowed* to have third party ads. So Entrecard is driving every single one of us away whether or not we want to stay.
And even if Today.com works out some kind of deal, we’ll undoubtedly end up with even less than regular Entrecard users have. So I think we’re pretty much done too.
So while I’m still doing my drops, I’m also copying the URLS of my very favourite blogs (including this one) so I can just keep dropping by and peeking at what’s going on.
March 20th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
@Mom’s Cafe - I read your post and it is another excellent commentary of what is currently going on at Entrecard. It is too bad you had to go through that, but I think how they treated you goes a long way in saying how they really feel about their members over at Entrecard.
@Phyl - I feel your pain. Today is another whole issue which Entrecard currently is choosing to ignore. They would rather rush to treat member sites as their own assets and monetize them for their own gain rather than respect the members blogs as the property of the individual blogger.
March 20th, 2009 at 2:40 pm
I’m not surprised. Graham had good intentions but lacks the business and social skills to take EC to where it could have gone. I was there from the start and there was a really positive input from members but most of the valued members have gone after bad forum moderation and lack of direction let things degenerate to where they are now.
March 20th, 2009 at 5:19 pm
@Steve - I agree as Grahams lack of experience in business shows in his public treatment of the members of Entrecard. Sad as Entrecard has potential it will never realize.
March 20th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
Good post. But Entrecard has never been by bloggers for bloggers. Said owner is no blogger. That is why he has never been in touch with his members.
March 21st, 2009 at 3:39 am
Pardon me, I thought the displaying of third party ad has been removed due to feedbacks from members. But I will be monitoring closely on this. As soon as any third party ads appear on my widget, I will remove the widget immediately. The widget is there for fellow bloggers to advertise their blogs and not for the selfish gain of someone who is trying to play ‘Almighty.’
I was quite turned off by the fact that they actually ‘force’ members to place the widget at top fold up to one page down; they don’t own the blogs of the members. My widget was placed at top fold much earlier then when they suggested because I want to make it easier for fellow bloggers to spot it.
March 21st, 2009 at 8:47 am
Even though they seem to be backpedalling on a lot of this, the whole thing has definitely left a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths…
I’m still using Entrecard for now… but probably not for much longer… as a today.com blogger, I likely just won’t have a choice
March 21st, 2009 at 10:58 am
Since the marketplace opened I have stopped advertising via other widgets, any I have booked will run their course and then all my credits will go towards buying ‘real’ services such as advertising, blogroll links, and so on popular blogs via the new marketplace. I can see a lot of people doing this, I was disgusted by the way Entrecard glibly announced they would be rejecting almost all of their core ideals for the sake of a fast buck.
I only wish someone with the programming skills could clone the site, allow people to sell credits and let the “market” as in the people who use the system value them at their true worth. What they have done is disenfranchised their users and offered the very same service (which they originally banned) to corporate advertisers with more money than sense. It will end up like a poor man’s Adsense, and I for one and dismayed at these recent developments. I do hope Entrecard continue to backtrack and APOLOGISE!!! Wouldn’t that be a great change of tack?!?
March 21st, 2009 at 11:14 am
@Paul - I completely agree.
March 21st, 2009 at 11:34 am
And I haven’t seen any mention yet of the fact that this affects everyone whose blog is hosted on WordPress too. (Hosted on the site, not blogs on people’s own sites that are run with the WP software.)
They don’t allow third party advertising either, which is why none of my 5 blogs there can even have Google Adsense or anything like that.
I know that quite a few blogs I drop on are on WordPress. I wonder if those people realize that their own blogs may be shut down if they keep Entrecard on there after this. They don’t usually get much warning, but are expected to know what they can’t put on there.
March 21st, 2009 at 4:57 pm
It’s a painstaking task but as I too am part of Today.com’s network, I’ll be recording my favourite blogs (those I drop frequently I do actually read… just not every day!) before leaving entrecard altogether - there’s quite a few though but their lovely content will make it worthwhile…
I’m at least thankful for entrecard to land on interesting blogs like yours Bruce!
March 21st, 2009 at 7:26 pm
Thank you for posting this information. I’ve struggled with all the back-n-forth-isms I’ve been seeing from EC. I currently have 2 blogs (one is a today.com site) and could not quite figure out what the changes meant for me. I’ve learned a lot from not just this article, but from the subsequent articles as well.
Thank you!!
March 21st, 2009 at 8:04 pm
it seems they’re changing moods every other day
March 22nd, 2009 at 10:24 am
thank you for this succinct explanation of what is going on in EC. your blog is a treasure trove for struggling bloggers like myself =]
March 22nd, 2009 at 1:10 pm
Yeah EC’s working idea has been good till now, but now that it has become very popular, while the owner hasn’t matured enough to handle popular website’s so he may lose his position in this http://WWW.
March 23rd, 2009 at 5:41 pm
There were better ways to monetize this. I don’t think most bloggers will appreciate the bait and switch.
March 24th, 2009 at 9:03 am
Nice - Entrecard must not have liked this post. I made a comment in a post at entrecard about leaving.
As soon as I did that I received a warning on not having a widget on my blog. Now today they deleted my account.
I had been trying to spend up my credits to other members in the marketplace. So they deleted me with probably 10k in pending transactions in the marketplace. Now the market place members are losing out on a lot of credits I was spending in the market place.
March 24th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
And today they made it official: Today.com bloggers can’t stay with Entrecard.
I wonder who will actually be left there, after this? I guess all the Blogger people won’t notice anything. But I know it’s not just Today.com people who are leaving, or who have already left.
March 24th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
And sorry to hear they’ve ripped you off, Bruce. What a shame. And what a lousy business practice.
March 24th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
I feel bad for all the Today.com bloggers Phyl. They were a huge part of what drove Entrecard and it is just not right to get swept out the door.
Spend any credits you have quickly, because they will delete your account and leave you and any members involved in a transaction with you hung out to dry.
March 24th, 2009 at 5:51 pm
Hello,
How an owner can be so stupid and continue to be so stupid really does not surprise any one any more, this statement by the wonderful fearless leader is in regards the today.com decision to part way
“I suppose people will probably be upset at us for trying to stay alive vs. being upset at today for dictating what they can and cannot have on their blog..”
http://forums.entrecard.com/showthread.php?p=32095#post32095
Now he makes this statement on the back of making decisions to have paid refusals of advertising and a forced placement of the widget, and even though the payment for rejection was removed after an outrage, the forced placement stands.
yet this clown now writes that, does he remember what he ate for lunch yesterday ? is he just plain brain dead.
these statements are re today.com deciding to part ways, yet some are still saying i hope it can work out.
The truth may be more like that ec is todays modern titanic that has hit the iceberg and while it’s going down the band are trying to play a bullshit song on their trumpet to quell the ill fated end. today.com can see this and have launched the last life boats for those clever enough to get on board.
March 24th, 2009 at 7:33 pm
Oh I know who the GhostGirl is
Agree with you too and it ties into many other comments here which go to the underlying problem with Entrecard right now.
The decisions being made show a lack of business judgement and perhaps more importantly a lack of skills to interact with clients/members/partners to drive Entrecard forward.
March 24th, 2009 at 10:05 pm
As soon as I did that I received a warning on not having a widget on my blog. Now today they deleted my account.
Ouch, not nice.
Well, at least I don’t have to worry about signing up…
March 26th, 2009 at 7:02 pm
@Bruce, lucky you they deleted your blog even though it is obviously a feeble attempt at censorship. I have asked them repeatedly as well as told them the widgets were removed from all five of my blogs. They deleted the main blog but refuse to remove the other four AND they continue to send me traffic! It’s rather funny really.
@GhostGirl my vote is on brain dead and titanic without a life raft or even life jacket
March 29th, 2009 at 9:49 am
[...] You can read more about those recent changes in Entrecard Sells Out! [...]
March 29th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
I’d like to point out you completely failed to mention the fact that you can reject 100% of ads. So, if you so choose, you may reject both 3rd party advertisements and regular ads.
-Jawsome / Andy T
March 29th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
Thanks for stopping by Jawsome - Head Moderator at Entrecard Forums
Actually I did mention the response I got from Graham when I posed the question of being able to decline all 3rd pary ads.
July 11th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
i know there is some control over the ads, but it’s not a great way to treat people…