EntreCard members get scammed by these members!

Like written on the Best travel pictures in the world blog, i made a "secret" test on 8th and 9th February 2009 to see who is gaming EntreCard's Dropping System.

For this test i had to remove the EntreCard widget to see if some members still are able to appear in my Inbox. I'm sorry if i caused a lot of members problems as many of you tried to search for the EntreCard-widget several times a day (it was for the best means of us).

To my shocking surprise it wasn't just a handful of members who fake drops in our inbox, it has been more than 65 members who never visit your blog.
They just use a Ghost dropper list or a program that is dropping only on the yellow drop box. With this method you can finish dropping 300 blogs in less than 15 minutes.

I decided now to show off these FAKE members who didn't physically visit your web site, so that you can decide by yourself if you still want to support them or if you dump them (no more dropping on them) to show them that WE DON'T ACCEPT CHEATERS IN ENTRECARD.

Several hours ago EntreCard deleted the Best travel pictures in the world blog from their system. But after 3 1/2 hours i got the blog reinstated and you can drop again on the Best travel pictures in the world blog!

EntreCard even wants to look now into the matter of Ghost drop lists and how to change the code, so that we members get REAL VISITORS and not FAKE DROPS IN OUR INBOX!

One list which i suspect has played the malicious part for so many fake drops, has been deleted after i told EntreCard about it and they suspended the account of this person (or warned her that it will get suspended if she doesn't remove this list).

Here are the members who scam us regularly in EntreCard, like you can see there are a lot of TOP Droppers who actually never come to your blog but a lot of you give them even a FREE LINK each month.

I just listed the members only once but 90% of them dropped on both days (9th + 8th February)!

Feb 09, 2010

Feb 08, 2010

Removed Dropaholics widget

Due to my current issues with the Internet Service Provider P1 WiMax (slow connections, several reloads until widgets are loaded, commenting in forums is a pain because of the time outs) which let me do only occasionally dropping in EntreCard with one or two of my blogs, i removed my Dropaholics widget rather late :)

Will have a look that i can honor my Top Droppers in the Sidebar with a RSS-FEED as soon as the internet connection is stable again in the coming days.

Has there been already a redirect issue like last time as the Dropaholic domain expired?

CMF Ads - My Network Ads suggestion - a better way for publisher and advertiser

In my previous post about Network Ads i complained about the low payout for publishers and the influence of my existing campaign advertisers. After i wrote that article i thought about it and how CMF Ads could make it a successful Network ad for both parties - Publishers as well as Advertisers.

What if we just fill the empty ad slots with Network ads instead of CMF House Ads?

If a widget is already full, Network ads would not show up until one slot would be empty (otherwise it hurts the actual advertisers).

In this case, you could run the CMF House ad (if you don't like any of the existing Network ads) and earn 0 cent or you could run one or more of the Network ads and earn more than with the actual 30 day-Flat-rate solution.

Sure, this will cut down the page views/clicks for the Network advertiser by a high percentage.

In this case the ad price could be set by Page impressions 10.000/25.000/50.000 and not by a time period.
The price should be 5,5555 cents for 1.000 page views with 90% of the revenue being shared to the publishers and 10% for CMF Ads (it would equal to 50% of the suggested price).

UPDATE:
Another addition would be to expand it to a certain formula:

- For each ad slot, only one Network ad
- a maximum of 5 Network ads can run simultaneously, if you have the 5 ad slot widget
- if you have only 1 ad slot, only 1 Network ad is allowed to run
- wouldn't hurt the classic advertiser (like it does NOW) (End of Update)


Why is this a fair offer?

With the actual pricing system only members with HIGH TRAFFIC (more than 7.500 page views) and LESS ADS (double amount of available slots - 4 ads running with 2 slots or 6 ads running with 3 slots...) get a significant payout (more than 3 cents) from the Network ads because the actual Network ad price is fixed to 30 days and not to page views but the payout is calculated by own ad views/overall page views!

Most members contribute on a monthly basis less than 1.000/500/100 ad views for each running Network ad! For my Network ad this would mean you would get less than 3/1,5/0,3 cents after the payout is calculated (based on 300.000+ page views - after 80 hours i got now 41.000+ page views).

If we calculated the payout by "how many days/hours the ad was running" which would be appropriate as the Network ad is for a certain TIME PERIOD (30 days) the payout amount would look differently especially for LOW TRAFFIC BLOGS (then High Traffic blogs would earn less than 2 cents or not participate at all and Low Traffic blogs could earn easily more than 2 cents for each ad)!


With the new pricing and change to page impressions there would be a fair price to run one or more Network ads on an empty slot (when i look at my suggested price with 77 cents and i charge usually 60 cents). If the Cost/page impression would be just 5,5555 cents, you would still get 50% of your suggested price for an previous empty slot with the actual solution you get between 3 - 25% of your suggested price (depending how many ads you are running)!

And if publisher like to increase their earnings they can use with this solution the biggest widget with 4 or 5 slots as there will be a fair price for empty slots and Network advertisers will be more than happy to buy such an ad.

What does this mean for Advertiser?

Advertiser pay more (up to 100%) but the exposure on the blogs will be better because the publisher approves your Network ad while an empty slot is available. There should be a possibility to choose one or more ads which "share" ONLY THIS EMPTY SLOT (Why more ads? When one ad has reached its page view limit there is the need of another ad running immediately).

It is better to pay more for this Network ad and have a SATISFIED PUBLISHER as they are the majority who approve at the moment Network ads (with too little to earn).

Otherwise there will or are already more and more publisher who let the current Network ads pending or cancel it immediately as soon as they are queued up!

I believe Network Ads can get a success when the payout for publishers is significant higher than with the current system and if it doesn't influence the actual campaign advertiser (like it does now if you approve additional Network ads).

To join the discussion i published this article in the CMF Ads forum, too!

CMF Ads: Network Ads - bad for most publishers, good for some advertisers

Yesterday CMF Ads launched Network Ads within their System. It's a new way to get your name out in the blogosphere. With a Network Ads you can advertise on over 640 blogs for a time period of 30 days and it costs only 10$ (similar to Adgitize, mostly rotating ads, just no need to click on your ads!).

Is this good or bad news for Publishers?

There are different opinions as it depends how many page views your blog gets in these 30 days, which ad price you have set and how many ad slots are available or empty! The more ad slots available, the better your "return" for each Network Ad. This said, perhaps you should choose the 4 or 5 ad slot widget from now on to earn additional from the network ads and the classic ads.
What about Ben's discussion about an Advertisement experiment
In short: Reduce your ad slots (to one for each ad network), so that the readers don't get swamped with ads (and you could maximize your earnings).
That's what i call double standard in CMF Ads because NOW you SHOULD maximize your ad slots like Turnip reminded some members in the forum otherwise you WON'T earn anything from the Network ads + classic ads (and your direct classic/campaign advertisers wouldn't get much exposure).
It looks now similar to Adgitize, the more ads you display, the higher is your share on the overall ad views of the specific Network Ad. Only that you could get paid more in Adgitize (even when you don't click and write just occasionally an article daily, you could earn 1-3 cents DAILY not within 30 days).

What influences do the Network Ads have on your earnings?

This depends how many ads you have currently running. In my case i run already 9 ads on 5 ad slots with 8.000 overall page views. The 9th ad can expect 4.500+ ad views (i guess more as soon as some of the other ads expire in the following two weeks).

• ADDING ONE of the Network ads reduces the page views to 4.000/month
• ADDING a SECOND Network ad the page views would be again 10% lower - just 3.600
• For each additional ad the available page views would be reduced by around 200 - 250.
  

At the moment there are 8 Network ads in the system (including mine), this would mean my classic/campaign advertiser who paid up to 60 cents for their ad would get an immediately effective CUT of 60% in page views (from 6.000 ad views down to around 2.400 ad views) for the rest of their ad period and in the end their clicks are lowered probably by more than 60%.

WOULD YOU LIKE THAT SOMEONE CUT OFF YOUR PAID AD VIEWS in this way?
In my case, i will weed out in 3 - 7 days the ads which i have previously placed as some of them are no more WORTH THEIR money because of the extremely reduced ad views!
You can look it up in your Ad history and see how many ad views you got in the last days (divide it by the days), how many ads are running now on the advertised widget and then use this formula to see the NEW daily ad views for your ad and COMPARE if it's worth!

Ad slots/running ads * page views / 30 days


How much can you earn as Publisher from the new Network ads?

Now to the earnings estimation
The advertiser paid 10$ - 1$ is for CMF Ads and 9$ will be divided by all publishers who approved the Network ads.

There are over 600 blogs in the system: 900 cents/600 blogs = 1,5 cents (average)

What does this average price mean for you?

From the old ranking system by page views (which was ironically discontinued in early January) i remember that around 1.800 - 2.200 page views have been necessary to reach a rank of 300 out of more than 600 blogs. But this rank was just a page view ranking, not the real ad view ranking (more ads running than ad slots available reduce the ad views)!
But overall page views of your blog is not everything like i mentioned before, it depends how many ads you have already running!! And with actually 8 NETWORK Ads these page views will get reduced by more than 50%, even with a 5 ad slot widget, not to mention when you have only a 1 ad slot widget (from 2.000 ad views down to 222 ad views/month with previously ONE AD running).

Someone with 5 ad slots and 2.000 page views earns more than someone with 1 ad slot and 5 running ads and the same page views because the Network Ad would get just 20% (400) of the 2.000 page views. In the end you get less than the average 1,5 cents.

My Network Ad gets at the moment around 12.900 ad views/day (it's the first day so there will be a lot of blogs who have not yet approved these new Network ads or who will reject them during the 30 day period after reading this article!). This would equal to 387.000 ad views/30 days.

Here are real numbers from my campaign in terms of ad views of my ad on other blogs!
If you run my ad and you might get at the end of the 30 days (i will update this section daily)

• 2.000 ad views (daily: 67), you could get 2.000/387.000 * 900 cents = 4,65 cents,
• the person with just 400 ad views (daily: 13) will get 0,93 cents and
• the other member with 100 ad views (daily: 3) 0,233 cents.
• To get the average price of 1,5 cents 645 ad views (daily: 32) would be necessary.
  

I'm curious, how much ad views did my ad get on your blog in these days?


Now lets look at Turnip's Electric Car Blog -
16 ads running (canceled mine as i'm in his opinion an attention seeking jacka$$ because i show off the negative things for publishers/classic advertisers - my tone is just more aggressive than from the other members who complain) -
480 page views - 4 ad slots = 120 ad views gives him a whopping 0,28 cent for each Network ad instead of the 2 cents which he usually charges.

Isn't that a lot of money for a 30 day? It's faster to get this 0,28 cent by clicking one more Spikes each month, isn't it :)

My advice:

Network ads might be worth the money for members who

• have not many ads running and expand their widget to the maximum of 5 ad slots
• have empty slots
• will have empty slots in the next 12 days (this means, don't put your ads on auto-approval, let the ads pending until they get auto-approved after 12 days or cancel the ad on the 11th day or approve the ad within the 12 days as soon as you have an empty slot)

If you approve a Network ad you should cancel the Network ad when you get again a classic/campaign advertisers because they give you the REAL EARNINGS and for them each CLICK/Page view is counting (more ad views for them, higher possibility of a click, better return, might advertise again), a Network Advertiser doesn't care about your earnings (earnings from Network ads will be at least 70% less than what you usually charge).

Another tip for your CMF PROFILE!

Write it detailed in your CMF Profile description if you allow Network ads or not and if allowed how many you approve and if you cancel the Network ads when a classic/campaign advertiser buys an ad space (which just filled out the usually "empty" CMF Ad house slot)!

As soon as the first payout will take place in March (as there are several members who don't approve the ad, so it will take 42 days until payout), less members will approve the Network ads when they see that they earned less than the average 1,5 cents and lost traditional advertisers for which they charged 5, 10 or even 30 cents.

EntreCard: Another Ad Scam! In your queue, too?

As i logged in my EntreCard Dashboard to see which ads have been auto-approved in the last days i came across this ad on the left side. It was paid with ECs (it's not one of the sponsored Ads!).
This is NOT an ad for a blog. This is an ad for Sponsored Tweets from Izea. It means it's an affiliate ad. If i would run this ad on my blog, you would be redirected to Sponsored Tweets Sign-up page.

It's similar to the ads which showed up in the previous month. Someone just edited the landing page and EntreCard does not check this change of your landing page!

If you see this ad in your advertiser queue, PLEASE REPORT IT to EntreCard.
So that they can delete this blog and of course you should REJECT the ad!

Tomorrow i will blog about the new feature in CMF Ads - their Network Ads for 10$ (what's good or bad about it for publishers and advertisers)

In two days i will post "Facts about Sponsored Tweets and other money-making programs for Twitter - how to be successful with these programs".

Small Adgitize update: You can already login and do your clicks, the stats haven't been updated yet but you still CAN'T renew your ad! -> follow me on Twitter for realtime updates from Adgitize's forum!