Over the last two weeks, Entrecard dropped some major news to its members primarily changing the way we are going to look at Entrecard moving forward. The move is Entrecard’s launching of a third-party ad network ‘imposed’ across the board that will affect all its members. Consequently, they are also going to offer cash-out service to those wanting to convert their EC credits into real money.

Since its launching in 2007, Entrecard was a virtual currency based network for bloggers. A member earns a credit every time she/he “drops” a card to another member. The process can be repeated 300 times a day making it possible to collect/earn credits to buy an ad space to another member’s site. Thus the exchange of ads and traffic from one blogger to another.

The Bold Move

Entrecard today, wants to add a third party network paid ad to run 50% of the time in the members ad space. This means that when you buy an ad to a specific site, you will now only be ‘buying’ 50% of the ad impressions for the day because the other half will be run by the paid third party network, which by the way- Entrecard gets 100% of the profit.

However, however! Since they make a profit out of its members- they are “sharing” some of it by opening its doors to exchanging credits into cash!

Like any drastic change, such bold move is bound to receive a variety of feedback both positive and negative. For the greater part, Entrecard received some resistance from members who are not willing to just take everything in without a question or two. They received over 200 comments from that announcement from passionate bloggers and since then have made some reasonable and acceptable compromises.

Still, many were not happy and were unwilling so they dropped Entrecard from their sites. Their reasons are valid and we admire them for their stand.

Our two cents

We have thought this long and hard before passing on judgement. We weren’t sure initially we wanted to go with the flow. We are a group of bloggers who were among the first to join Entrecard. We bought this domain over a year ago but hold off putting the site up until we were sure we wanted to support Entrecard by promoting its members here as a gallery of quality Entrecard sites. This site is pretty new and we have not invested much time and money on it (yet!) but with a heavy heart, we were willing to let it go had Entrecard pushed through with their dictatorial plans as is without the changes made such as where to place the ad widget or having to pay to reject an advert.

As we study everything and take it all in- Entrecard is still very much for its members and we see that they are doing their very best to weather the economic storm affecting all of us. Clearly, they need this move to survive in this economic slump. Like any growing business with staff and bills to pay, they need the money to maintain and operate the site- to keep it alive online.

It is not a perfect strategy but a reasonable one. Remember that we start out with nothing in Entrecard- just our time and effort for dropping cards everyday. In turn we get credits. These credits have no monetary value other than grow and use it all up to “buy” ad space to the Entrecard network. What they are giving is a chance for those who want- to exchange their credits into real cash. We think it could really help bloggers who blog to earn more from their sites.

We know there will be other issues that will come up once the ad network goes live. We will reserve critique when the time comes. For now, we are staying with Entrecard and are  keeping this site alive. We have faith in them that they will stay true to its members- the very community that helped them up and the very community that will keep them going…

Postscript

In the coming days, we are going to make some clean up in our gallery. We have featured some bloggers who are no longer with Entrecard because they opted out or they are part of the Today Network that does not allow third party ads on their sites.

We will not delete them. They are featured here because we found something on their sites that are noteworthy so they stay but we will put them in a separate category and will clearly say that they are not part of the Entrecard Network anymore.

Google Search

Our site is growing in traffic, thanks to all who support us! We do appear on Google search and other search engines and that goes to all the links and sites listed on this gallery. The linklove is working.

If your site isn’t listed yet, give us a hoot and we’ll put them in queue. To fast track and highlight your site, you can always tip us!

Good luck to everyone on this new Entrecard venture!