SidekickBlog

After several weeks (if not months) of speculation, Entrecard has finally announced that members will be able to cash out their credits immediately (starting today).  The initial cash out rate has been set at $1/1000 credits.  This rate is about midway in the range that people were guessing ($.20 to $5).

The issue here is that currently, the money available to cash out is only enough to cash out a small percentage of the outstanding credits.  The cash out system will prioritize members that actively support the community by letting them use the cash out system first.  Community support is determined by factors such as:

• Drop frequency
• # of paid ads approved
• # of credit based ads approved
• Market listings
• Credits transferred to others
• Credits spent on ads

I assume that if you see a cash out option on your dashboard, you are one of the prioritized members.

Also, the cash out rate is likely to change in the near future.  Whether the rate increases or decreases depends on a variety of factors.  If the cash out is able to remove enough credits from the economy so that the value of credits increase, and Entrecard gets consistent revenues from paid ads then the cash out rate may increase.  If the Entrecard member community is unhappy about the majority of the members being excluded from the cash out option, then the rate may have to be decreased to allow a larger percentage of users to cash out.

Do you think the the rate and the cash out prioritizing system is fair?  Is there any other way Graham (Entrecard’s founder) could handle the cash outs?  Please let me know your opinion.

I received an email from Entrecard today mentioning changes that many members of the blogger community were expecting sooner or later.  Entrecard has always been criticized as it never had a robust revenue model and there was no official way to convert the credits earned from Entrecard to actual money.  This has led to many bloggers moving away from Entrecard to competing ad networks.  Entrecard has been struggling to come up with a solution that addresses publisher concerns while still maintaining their particular advertising exchange model. (continue reading…)

RecipeMobile does not have any advertising yet.  I am waiting till the daily visit count reaches a decent level before monetising the website.  Meanwhile, I am researching advertisement methods that provide good value while being unintrusive and actually helpful to the readers.

However, I did add an entrecard widget there.  No harm in earning some free advertising credits and it actually helps me pull in some visits as other entrecard users visit the website to drop their card.

I want to add an entrecard widget to this blog also, but currently entrecard only supports 1 website per account.  Ill figure out a solution and post a more comprehensive article here when I do.