This week saw the most significant change in the Entrecard community to date. They altered the ad rate formula from counting drops as part of the equation to only counting demand for your ad space. The new systems seems to have kicked up a lot of dust.  Once all that settles, it appears to be a far superior method for calculating cost.

In a comment on the Entrecard forums, Phirate (the programmer behind Entrecard) states this:

The new system is simply better overall. You can still work hard and get your ad price to increase, but now the work you do on your blog counts just as much as the work you do on Entrecard - the value reflects not just the number of drops you’re likely to get, but the buyers assessment of how much your blog can help them as well. [Source: Entrecard Forums]

I would have to agree. When this whole change was implemented, I had 8 ads in my queue and my price was 512 ECs. Since the change I have had two people purchase ads on my site and today my price hovers at 128 ECs. When I look at Problogger’s ad space, I see his cost at 8,192 ECs. I see this as fair. At one point, my ad space cost more than Probloggers. This concern caused John Cow to stop Entrecard and irked other bloggers as well. Why not do it this way?

How Does it Work?

The new ad systems works well, giving users a way to earn currency and an actual marketplace dictated by peers. The economy will beat down smaller site’s ad prices and bolster ad costs on popular blogs. The new ad pricing post on Entrecard details the changes in a better way than I could.

To calculate your price at any given moment, just start at 2 credits, and double it for everyone waiting for an ad on your site. For example, if you have 5 people approved and stacked in the “On your widget” column of the dashboard, and 5 people waiting for approval, you would calculate 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2, or 2 to the power of 10, which eqauls 1024 credits. And then in 24 hours, when an ad has completed running, their price would go down to 512. If no one bought an ad that day, tomorrow it would go down to 256. And then if someone bought an ad for 256, the price would go back up to 512. [Source: Entrecard Blog Post]

I know this change turned a lot of people off to Entrecard. It’s still the great service it was before, but now it’s based in reality. I’m not going to pay a premium price for an ad spot simply because the owner of the site spent an hour each day dropping cards. That shouldn’t even factor into the equation. I for one am glad it’s been changed.

It was a shock at first. I must admit seeing ad prices into the stratosphere really tipped me off to the change. Now that it’s here — what do you think? Do you like it? Have you dropped Entrecard?

Weekly Explosions

It’s been another hectic week. I did manage to post twice this week. I am truly engaged by the amount of money blogs are selling for these days. The John Cow site sold the other day for 50K. He accomplished that in a meer 9 months or so. It was a truly unique site though. I tipped my hat to the sale earlier this week.

The other post focused on death and what should be done with our online lives. I think a lot of times we talk about our reputation online for career purposes, but we often times leave out the part about after we die. I don’t know much about what happens after death, but I’m fairly certain I can’t take Twitter with me. There has to be some way to help our loved ones out in that troubling times. It’s why I wrote the post. I’ll start talking about flowers and sunshine again soon. Promise.

Other’s Explosions

For those who know Arnold, his site ChalkisCheap has gone down forever. He hosted the recipro-drops community. We dropped on each other’s sites daily. His site was hacked and he decided he didn’t want to bring it back up again. I was sorry to see him go.

Yimto keyed me in on a new RSS day. The idea is to write about, tweet, and otherwise barrage your readers with information about RSS on May 1st — the official RSS day. Dailyblogtips.com came up with the idea and they’re asking everyone to help them get the word out. So here I am telling you. It’s like Arbor day without the trees.