EntreBlast

About a week ago Entrecard announced their plan to implement a sponsor ads program, similar to the old paid ads system that was running. However, this new program is not optional to members. Hey, I told you they were going to have to do something to make money when Entrecard removed the paid ads program originally. Instead, members can opt out of the sponsor ad program with a yearly fee of $50.

This program will being on October 5th. It has stirred quite a bit of conversation around the blogosphere and I’ll share you my view on the new program next.

Just when I pointed out how quiet it was around Entrecard…

Entrecard has announced a referral program where you can earn 300 Entrecard credits for referring a new member to Entrecard. They HAVE to be a new member and active for 14 days before you receive credit.

There are two new sections in your Entrecard user dashboard one provides buttons and banners to use to refer members, and the other lists members you have referred. This is my Entrecard referral link.

I won’t have much luck because my blog is about Entrecard – so my readers already know about Entrecard and probably have an account. But, I’m interested in seeing how much success other people will have with this.

It’s been quite dead around Entrecard these past couple of weeks, and because of that it is of course reflected onto EntreBlast since it’s our purpose to kind of report any new changes and updates around Entrecard. The last thing that was changed was an upgrade to the Entrecard toolbar, which was done on August 27th. Since then, there have been only a few new blog posts on the Entrecard blog but nothing really involving anything new.

My question is, what’s next for Entrecard? And why has it been so quiet lately? Are they working on something big? Or, for lack of a better word, just “chilling” and doing some behind-the-scene things?

So I’ve been with CMF Ads for over a month now and am publishing my results as an experiment with CMF Ads. I had about 7 ads running with 3 ad slots last month and currently have 3 ads running. The cost for a one month ad is just $0.50. Although for a the first couple of days in the month, I had just 3 ads running, more ads were purchased throughout the month and I was really pleased with the results. Now I have $2.50 in my funds. I’m not sure whether I’ll spend it on advertising of cash it out, but the beauty of CMF Ads is that I  have that option to just my funds to place ads so I never have to invest actual money into CMF Ads, I can just use the funds I’ve earned from my ad slots.

I have 3 ads running right now but hopefully there will be more ad spot purchases over the course of the month like last month. If you’re interested in purchasing a one month ad on EntreBlast for just $0.50 visit my CMF Ads profile.

Things have been pretty frustrating with Entrecard lately, everything has been loading slow, including the widgets. Luckily, they are switching over to a new and faster database server that will most likely speed things back up normal, or even faster. Entrecard will be down tomorrow afternoon around 2pm EST. It’ll take approximately 4-6 hours.

Thanks to my Top Droppers in August! Please make sure to check out these blogs:

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!