EntreBlast

Archive for August, 2009

The Entrecard Toolbar has finally been updated and released to be compatible with the latest version of Firefox – version 3.5. The Entrecard Toolbar has been unusable for a while now because newer versions of Firefox have been released and Entrecard has failed to keep up with the updates to ensure it’s still compatible with Firefox.

Click here to download the latest version of the Entrecard toolbar. (Note: this isn’t the exact download link, it will take you to the Entrecard page where you can download it.)

Early this morning Entrecard sent out an e-mail to all users describing a change that will be made to the Entrecard system in order to battle the rising inflation. Entrecard credits are becoming less and less valuable because there are more credits coming into the system than there is going out. While Graham attempted to solve this inflation problem by allowing users to sell credits back into the system, this feature has been removed. So, the new proposed solution is:

Members will only receive credits for dropping their cards, not for cards dropped on them.

So go ahead and continue dropping daily and you’ll receive 1 Entrecard credit for each drop you make, like always. However, you won’t receive any Entrecard credits for those who drop on your blog. The goal is to bring credits to a higher value.

Today, Entrecard users received an e-mail detailing a couple of improvements made to Entrecard.

• Login/Logout Bug Fixed – Apparently some users were having trouble logging in and out. This has been fixed.
• Auto-Approve Ad Feature – A new option to automatically approve all ads has been added. This can be found by going to your Dashboard and then clicking on the ‘Advert settings’ link under ‘Your Account’. This is a great new feature to help speed up ad approval times.
• Campaign Directory Cleaned – The Campaign section serves as a directory for all of the sites you can check out and advertise on. However, there were some sites in there that no longer had a widget on their blog that still showed up in the listings. These have been removed so there is no worry about accidentally advertising on a blog with no widget.

These changes have also been posted on the Entrecard blog.

While I was browsing through Entrecard blogs today, I noticed something new about the Entrecard house ad. Instead of the plain black image that says ‘Entrecard’ on it, the new house ad looks like this:

This is a definite improvement from the old house ad and will certainly entice visitors who have never heard of Entrecard before to click on it. This ad appears on widgets that don’t have any ads purchased by a user to place on the widget. Of course, if you see this ad, you should check out that person’s Entrecard profile and buy an ad on their site to help them out!

I’m adding a new page to EntreBlast -  a list of blogs who reward their top droppers monthly.  Requirements for joining this list: post your top droppers every month and have done it for at least three months. The purpose of this list is to reward those who reward their top droppers and to encourage Entrecard users to drop on these blogs for some backlinks.

I need your help! If you reward your top droppers, submit a comment and let me know! In order to join the top droppers list, you must have done this for at least three months. I’ll check through your blog to make sure you have. If you haven’t, no worries! Start this month and three months will pass before you know it. It’s a great way to encourage daily dropping on your blog!

I received a PM over on the CMF Ads forums from Paul who owns Technically Easy, a tech blog, about a fix for a problem I, and apparently others, have been having with OIOPublisher. When I announced I was raising the ad prices on EntreBlast, I included a mini rant about how I can only charge 999.99 ECs max. Whether the ad price was set for 1,000 or 10,000 ECs, it would only charge people 999.99 ECs (technically 999 ECs)…

With that said, the price for a one month ad will be rising to 1000 ECs. Well, technically 999.99 ECs because Entrecard has ridiculous, annoying trading limits that I don’t understand.

I thought it was due to the 1,000 EC max trade limit Entrecard has used to have.  But, it turns out even after the increase to 25,000 ECs, the problem with OIOPublisher charged 999.99 still existed.

Well, there is a solution. And it’s simple too.  All it takes is a simple edit to one of the OIO Publisher databases and voila! However, I’m giving credit where it belongs so head on over to Technically Easy for the solution to the OIOPublisher 999 EC limit.

Thanks to my top droppers in July! As a way of saying thanks, here are linkbacks to their blogs. Check them out!

Today marks the official first day of my experiment with CMF Ads. CMF Ads is an advertising platform for bloggers, similar to Adgitize. A little while ago I ran a one month test with Adgitize and found really good results, so I’ve been sticking with them. However, I always am looking for new things to test out, and as with Adgitize I see CMF Ads pretty often on blogs. Thanks to suggestions from my readers, I have decided to test for a full six months. This is because the system is a bit different from Adgitize and I would get the best results of a long term experiment. I will report my results and findings every month and after the six months, I determine whether CMF Ads is worth using or not.

You’ll see a follow up post in a few days with more information on how CMF Ads works.