Category: Technology Author : Duncan Riley Posted: September 30, 2008
Tags : entrecard
Blog banner exchange service Entrecard has been withdrawn from sale after a Sitepoint auction failed to achieve any official bids for a near $1 million price tag.
The official spin on the sale from owner Graham Langdon is that there were plenty of buyers, but he decided at the last minute that he wanted to keep the site.
The good news for Entrecard devotees is that post sale, Langdon is back on the deal path, with a new partnership with OIO Publisher that will allow Entrecard members to use their Entrecard credits (members receive credits based on ad impressions) to buy advertising on the OIO Publisher network.
OIO Publisher is a popular ad client for WordPress blogs (they’ve recently launched support for other platforms), enabling web sales directly on each users site. On top of the plugin, OIO Publisher offers a publishers marketplace where OIO Publisher users can advertise their ad spots, similar to BuySellAds.com. Although it wasn’t clear from the post, the inclusion of Entrecard as a payment within OIO Publisher would seem to be an option in the latest release of OIO Publisher as opposed to a standard payment option, so the scope only goes as far as those sites with Entrecard accounts who decide to support Entrecard credits for payment.
Allen Stern at Centernetworks notes that some Entrecard users aren’t happy with having to buy OIO Publisher, despite a $17 discount bringing the price down to $30. Former Entrecard users such as Matt Packer however feel that the new changes may actually bring them back to regularly using the service.
I’ve never used Entrecard, although I did take a serious look at the service when The Inquisitr launched. It definitely works for some people, and it has a passionate user base. However, there were numerous stories around issues with the credit system, with some suggesting that people were gaming Entrecard; I don’t know the truth of that, but certainly it was enough to keep me away at the time. Either way, this is a good deal for Entrecard and its users, and can only help the service grow.
Sep 30, 2008
I'm going to give it a month or so of usage, I'll let you know how it goes. I know of a few people who are bringing in 200 unique users a day via their EntreCard advertising, I've never experienced more than 50 a day.
It'll also be interesting to see whether the gaming of the system is policed this time round, hopefully you wont be able to sit there just clicking ads on a single site to earn the credits.
Oct 1, 2008
It seems they have gone out of their way to screw their users. They apparently mailed out new TOS terms on 9/30 and began deleting accounts that very day. Any company that will screw their users this badly deserves to go down in flames.
Oct 1, 2008
Hey Duncan,
We I'd like to clear a few things up if I may, as you are reporting factual inaccuracies.
Members do not receive credits for their impressions, as you have stated. Instead, members earn credits (our virtual currency) -through a variety of ways, including commenting on each other (thanks to partnership with SezWho), selling their own ad space, publishing posts on their blog, and dropping their card for other members.
You really need to think of Entrecard more like an ad network. Members buy ad space on blogs they choose, pay with our virtual currency, and sell advertising space for our virtual currency -nothing happens in an automated way and nothing is based off impressions, so it is not an exchange in any sense of the word.
I wish you'd either interview me about the service or try it out to see how it works. After all, how can you initiate coverage on a service without ever having tried it or ever gotten accurate information from the founder?