EntreBlast

Archive for October, 2008

Check the Entrecard blog for the winners of the Traffic Quality and Outage Giveaway Bash blogging contests that went on early last week. Maritiza is the big winner taking home (well, at least to the dashboard) 30,000 ECs. There were 13 total winners between both contests, with well over 100,000 ECs given away. Wow!

To recap, the Entrecard Traffy Quality contest was blogging about why you like Entrecard traffic. It was supposed to be announced last Friday, but it was decided to announce both sets of winners together. The Outage Giveaway Bash was about choosing one of your favorite Entrecard bloggers and blogging about them.

Congratulations to the winners!

Another weekly event here on EntreBlast is called the Entrecard Weekly Roundup. Every Saturday (well, almost every Saturday, depending whether Entrecard is busy or not) I’ll summarize what’s been going on in the Entrecard community, from new blog posts to hot forum discussions. The goal here is to give you the latest Entrecard news in a tidbit post.

This week was super busy at Entrecard- a new partnership, economic system changes, and Graham giving out free ECs like crazy!

Changes in Entrecard Economy

Eight changes have been made regarding the economy of Entrecard. The shop is closed temporarily, selling credits is not allowed, and there is now a tax and cap on EC transfers. Visit this post to learn more:  New Entrecard Economy Changes.

Entrecard is NOT Being Sold

After an overwelming response to the listing of Entrecard on sitepoint by Graham, he has decided not to sell Entrecard. I think it’s the right descision because Entrecard is something Graham is truly passionate about. Instead, he plans to continue heading thus huge community and furthur improve it. An insight into this can be seen from the latest changes involving the Entrecard economy.

Entrecard Partners with OIOPublisher

With the latest 2.0 release of OIOPublisher, Entrecard has been integrated into the ad serving plugin. This means you can now pay with Entrecard credits for ads depending if the seller has activated it. This is so far the best site Entrecard has teamed up with to bring a useful feature. OIOPublisher is just $47, and most people make that up and more with the plugin. You can buy a header ad spot for just 4000 ECs/month on EntreBlast now!

Free Entrecard Credits in the Forums

Graham has been on a free Entrecard credits spree lately on the forums. Quite a few threads have been posted recently titled, “first person to reply to this thread gets x,xxx credits”. The amount of ECs have varied from 1,000 ECs to even 3,000 and although most have been found in the community section, they have been spotted in other sections as well.

Graham is Homeless

Another topic in the Community Entrecard forums is Graham’s current home- or lack of. The gap between his old apartment and his new place is 5 days. Instead of staying at a hotel, he’s been camping out on the beach. Recently Graham was even attacked by a sea lion! Only one more day to go, you can do it Graham!

Whew! One of the busiest weeks at Entrecard certainly! That’s your news for this week! What do you think of this new feature here?

You cannot transfer more than 1000 Entrecard credits a week – a new change in the Entrecard economy as of yesterday. If you are a member of Entrecard with a lot of Entrecard credits, you probably sponsor contests around the community. Now, it’s harder to do that. Not only that, but how about giving away Entrecard credits? Most Entrecard contests (about 90% of them) contain over 1,000 ECs in prizes.

In response to this problem, Graham says:

we can give them elevated status easily enough and have already contacted almost everyone running a big contest. no worries. contests will be paid out without a hitch.

We want to see contests continue and will do so in a slightly more sanctioned way.

I then left a comment asking for more information on the elevated status.

Here is Graham’s reply:

We’re working towards a method of sanctioning contests and will update everyone on the blog once its ready.

It will involve some sort of inspection, to see where your credits came from, some sort of planning so we know the exact day you’re giving them away, some sort of accountability -that you’ve been active in the community and we know who you are vs. someone who just shows up today with a million credits suspiciously and wants to hold a “contest”

So once we have some firm ground rules in place, the huge contests can continue because we do not want to see the contest culture of Entrecard die!

Alright, so that gives contest holders breathing room, but what about those who sponsor Entrecard contests? The ones that truly make huge EC contests possible? This not only limits them on how many contests they can sponsor, but also how much can they sponsor. For the Summer Credit Splash, I rewarded those who sponsored 4000+ Entrecard credits. This influenced people to donate more, and also helped make the contest a lot larger.

The purpose of the cap is to eliminate the selling of Entrecard credits, which is now against the rules, and I understand that. I think it’s legitimate and useful. However, I propose the transfer limit to be set at least to 5,000 ECs/week. This is fair to us and yet still helpful in getting rid of credit farmers.

Please share your thoughts on the EC transfer limit and on my proposal.