Earlier tonite I wrote a response in the comments to this post on Entrecard. I’m sure I’ll be put through the shredder for the hard stance I advocate.

but my honesty should not be a suprise to any of my regular visitors.

I am totally against Paid Posts Blogs being in Entrecard; as well as Clickfarmers – who only live to hit the magic 300 on each of their many accounts daily, without any regard for the bouncerate or content of the bloggers they rob daily.

Please take a moment and read grahams post by clicking the link below inorder to get clarity on my response below. I know it may suprise many of you that I am taking this tone, But I Am a Blogger and I Love BLOGS.

Taking action against the bounce rate

(Written on June 30th, 2009 by Graham)

Graham:
just a few thoughts after giving this a few days to digest more fully:

IMHO, the real problem is that EC’s are being treated like Money;
and they’re NOT.

if people could learn that; we’d have Less “300 click a day” clickfarmers; and a whole lot less splogs in the categories.

Quite Simply, paying people to cash out in cash, instead of recycling the ec’s back into the system is what really feeds the problem.

the remedy is simple

1. Return To a Non Cash for ec buyout ; and stop selling EC’s.

2. reduce the maximum amount of clicks per day to a more managable maximum for the system; closer to 50 per account.

3. hire some behind the scenes techs to clean up the splogs and eradicate the dead blogs in the categories – get it back to what it should be if you really want to count your Active population, Accurately.

click the image to read the blog telling you why you should not use entrecard as a clickfarm if you use adsense

4. Remove any duplicate or paid post blogs immediately, since they are not blogs inessence; and are the biggest pay-out items; This is especially a conflict of interest with bloggers who blog for the love of writing; and they see the problem clearly, since these splogs are ADS, and that is a direct violation of the existent tos. a Paid Post is an AD. there is no way around it.

Then Graham, you can put entrecard on the auction block as a clean and lean social networking machine.

that’s what makes a sale, not consistent policy changes that do nothing to stabilize the economy or political structure of the unit itself.

Remember to Listen to the People; As They Support Themselves. To Put the Spark back in – Make it once again about the members, instead of CASH OUTS.

end the payouts and you will be making the first step toward strengthening the whole. then stop approving multiple blogs which are clearly splogs, that dilute the pool of quality blogs. those splogs drop the value as quickly as the clickfarmers.

IMHO, then – entrecard can recover and rebound as a member driven and fed unit.

The People vs Entrecard: Exhibit A – The Founder Is Not A Blogger.

I Have no idea who sent this to me, since their account was removed from Entrecard By the time I got it.

probably as soon as they started to drop cards today..

check this out – there are clues. some of the blog cards shown in the favs column no longer exist on entrecard; most notibly The Turnip of Power.  Hmmmmm ????

This is from tonite 05/05/09 at 01:00 am

Other blogs by this author

Interesting Read To Say the Least, and the other three posts are also worth a short peek

I don’t think I feel tempted enough to try to find out who wrote this, as It looks like a trap. ; )

Sunday, May 3, 2009

Exhibit A – The Founder Is Not A Blogger

at 1:54 AM

Sneaky eastern world card dropper caught in the Act

Social Networking | Turnip of Power: The CMF Ads Side Dish.

WE Read Turnip of Power weekly and tonite we caught this post.

WOW !!! No doubt we shall see this open attack on asian entrecarders rebutted I am sure. Just as soon as some of our more well written Asian Entrecarders See This Post. they will no doubt contact others and compose their own response to the attack, by Entrecard’s CEO Graham Langdon.

WE Hate Racism, and this just Stinks

Graham must know better..

Entrecard Blames Problems On Foreigners

In a startingly racist April 11th blog comment from Graham Langdon, Entrecard blames the “Eastern World” for it’s problems.

“we are going to move as close to a free market as possible, but with the potential to abuse of the drop system, black markets and “farms” in the eastern world bottomed out the price of credits to about .25 cents per thousand, at which point it became clear that we needed to nationalize until further measures could be taken to safeguard proper issuance of credits.

Sneaky eastern world card dropper caught in the Act

Eastern World, Huh? So apparently some rice farmer in Vietnam destroyed the free market. What kind of racist crap is this? Wouldn’t a “free market” allow everyone to buy and sell credits? Anyone can currently buy and sell US stocks, should we blame those “damn Japs” for our current United States economic issues?

Don’t red blooded Americans also abuse the drop system? Seems to me Entrecard could check the referrers of who is dropping cards. Why don’t they release the stats of who is abusing the drop system? Cournalists should investigate the facts before engaging in such yellow journalism.

Here’s an idea, instead of blaming foreigners for problems you knew existed over a full year ago, for once in your life accept the blame. Your failure to have a proper business model is what screwed up your virtual economy. Your failure to put in a full day of work and rely upon unpaid labor is what filled your network with spam. BTW whiteboy wearing the asshat, there are both American spammers and “Eastern World” spammers clogging your network, in case you never looked at your demographics.

Now I wonder what Graham was referring to when he mentions ”black markets”.

Anyone who wants to understand the REALITY of the Proposed Entrecard Payout, needs to read this short but informative post I’m reblogging from The Turnip of Power.  he btw is from CMF and was formerly on Entrecard.

Entre-Math: How Entrecard Pays Spammers

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.

When we dropped in on our friend Laane on the World, earlier today she had a very special message posted. WE SUPPORT HER SUGGESTION.

DIG THIS,

calling a strike of entrecard droppers.

april 8 2009

An interesting discussion is going on at the entreblog.

Graham: (The BOSS)

The plan is to give members with the highest ratio of paid ad approvals first dibs on cashing out their credits.

Well, I don’t know the word dibs, but I understand the meaning here.

I feel the efforts of the droppers are completely neglected.
And I also feel the loyalty many have for the ads which were approved before the paid ads were introduced is not respected.

Maybe it’s a good idea to chose a day we don’t drop, so Graham can get an idea how much we mean for the system.
When there are not enough droppers active he can’t do enough with his paid advertising.

I’m calling a strike of entrecard droppers!!

Maybe friday is the perfect day for that.

Get your graphic here.

To be clear: I’m not against contributing towards the continuation of the system. Not at all.
And I’m not against paid advertising.
In fact I’m all for two sided widgets, or even two widgets.
But that someone sees it fit to break an agreement and displays advertisements on my site without my consent really makes me mad.

When we want to keep the system going and all have a good time droppers need to be respected to (by someone in his twneties who’s in it for the money. Let’s be clear about that.)

Come back on friday to see links to alternative activities. (No ads. LOL!)

update:

This morning I had a different ad in my widget than should be there.
When reloading I got another one; not the one that should be there.
Right now I’m surfing with blogexplosion. Bit of music, cup of coffee.
I’m even able to drop now and then.