Planet Google, Adgitize, CMF and Bye-bye Entrecard
This was supposed to be a post about Planet Google, Randall Stross’ engaging and well-written history of the Internet services company with the audaciously stated goal of “organizing all the information on the planet”. I have no problems whatsoever Recommending this book to any Internet users who want to be informed about what this rapidly growing company, that at least some of the time seems to live up to it’s official “do no evil” philosophy is really up to while dominating online search, making huge forays into e-mail with it’s G-mail service, and taking on Microsoft in a free software fight with its online documents and spreadsheets service and it’s recently released Chrome browser.* But today I have a different post instead. Over on the CMF Ads Forums, Turnip of Power posted his regret at not being able to find and Stumble a post comparing the costs of advertising on Adgitize, CMF and Entrecard. So I did some checking into it and here is what I found:
- Adgitize charges advertisers $14.00/month for one 125 x 125 advertisement displayed across their entire network of blogs
- CMF Ads charges between $0.25 and $1.25/month for one 125 x125 advertisement one one blog of your choosing
- Entrecard charges as little as $0.012 per day for one 125×125 advertisement on one blog of your choosing**,***
- Enrecard’s highest priced ad as of this writing costs 3,072EC which works out to $18.43 per day or an utterly astounding $571.39 per month****
So looking only at the cost of advertising on these three networks, CMF Ads offers the lowest possible rates and keeps total advertising costs quite reasonable, even on the most popular sites. Adgitize by comparison charges you $14.00 per month to participate in a very Entrecard like system that is all about visiting other members’ blogs to gain popularity and page views. And then Entrecard where the cheapest ads are almost as cheap as CMF’s lowest priced ads, but the highest priced ads are charging truly astronomical rates that almost can’t pay off Except in terms of junk traffic that stops by each day to click the widget and never really stops to read the blog or participate in comments.
The fact is that the junk traffic from Entrecard can be downright addictive. When I was getting 150–250 visitors/day on average just from maniacally going out and clicking widgets on at least that many and often as many as 300 widgets/day. And my Alexa went down below 100K and my pagerank went up to 4 and those numbers looked so nice that I just kept on clicking and clicking. Until finally one day I just said, “hey, wait a minute. My time could be much better spent reading books and putting out a better blog.”. While a few of my Entrecard ads have produced some traffic, the ads effectiveness seems to have gone way down since I got off the 300 click treadmill.
Which leads me to announce that sometime today when my last sold ad has been displayed and the spot becomes vacant I will be removing the Entrecard widget. If you have a blog and have not already signed up at CMF Ads, I urge you to click here and go register and submit your blog RIGHT NOW! While you will certainly want to participate in the forums and get to know your fellow bloggers and their sites, CMF Ads credits are all, 100% paid for in cash, via PayPal. There is no reason to mindlessly visit every blog every day, no widgets to click to register your visit. YOU get to set your own ad price for as little as 25 cents per month or as much as you choose. Then YOU get to keep ALL (not just 25%) of the credits that were paid to advertise on your site and you can SELL your credits back (at 50% of the then current Sales price) any time you want. There is NO QUESTION that CMF Ads offers the best value for every blog publisher.
To all my Entrecard friends, I hope you will continue to visit even though the widget is going away. There were some great times in the early days of Entrecard and I wish every blogger on that service every success. And to all my friends on CMF Ads, Semper Excelsior. Ever Upward.
*and let that sentence serve as my 2009 entry for Longest Run On Compound Complex Sentence when it’s time to select nominees for the Grammar Awards. My previous entry can be found here.
**The quoted daily rate is based on the ad selling at the minimum 2EC sale price and calculates the EC to USD conversion at Entrecard’s official $6.00/1,000EC exchange rate, that very few users have ever actually bought any EC at.
***The monthly equivalent cost of a 2EC ad works out to $0.36/month although it would only theoretically be possible to buy a full month of advertising on any given blog at this rate if you purchased each day at the moment the previous day’s advertising ended AND no other advertiser bid on the site during that entire month.
****Of course this outrageously priced ad also could not be purchased for an entire month without further driving up the daily rate Exponentially for each day booked
on 
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1chilly
wrote on 4 March 2009 at 14:05
Dang! Another favorite down the drain.
Take care and enjoy going down your new road. See you around.
2Turnip
wrote on 4 March 2009 at 14:15
Good critique Alan, I’m stumbling this for sure. Just to note, CMF Ads run for a period of 30 days. The price can be as low as $.025 (1cr) per month, but there is no maximum price. Almost all members charge $1.25 or less though. CMF Ads does not have any scheme to encourage clicking on each others ads. Though all members are certainly welcome to do so. It’s not like Google where we penalize members for checking out who is advertising on their blog.
I’m glad you found the servcie CMF Ads provides to be a valuable one. Thanks Alan!
3Jennifer
wrote on 4 March 2009 at 17:00
The only problem with the above analysis is that most people, such as myself, never spend a penny for Entrecard ads. The only cost is the time visiting other blogs, which I don’t mind at all.
4StanHayes
wrote on 4 March 2009 at 18:23
Great review! I think anyone that values their time will see that a twenty-five cent ad for a month is a lot more productive than a 64-128-256, etc. credit ad on Entercard for a day that you need to take 20 minutes to a few hours/day to click around to earn.
5skepto
wrote on 4 March 2009 at 22:05
I find Entrecard as something to start with when it comes to promoting one’s blog, but once you get a hold of consistent readers, you can be more secured that leaving these kind of scheme at any time doesn’t matter. Content is the king.
6Sarah
wrote on 5 March 2009 at 13:38
Personally I like Entercard, I like the fact that it is free. I don’t know about paying money on something that might not build you up a regular readership, seems iffy to me.
7Alan
wrote on 5 March 2009 at 17:19
Chilly,
Thanks for your kind words. I will certainly continue to visit On The Bricks and Blog 2 Sides. Love the recipes.
Stan, Turnip, Plot Dog,
Thanks for the Stumbles. They are much appreciated.
Jennifer,
Do you really feel that your Time has No value?
Skepto,
I think you are right that Entrecard may be much more suited to brand newbie bloggers who are still working to be discovered and find their first readers and commenters.
Sarah,
Do you realize that as a blog owner you can put up the CMF widget at no cost or obligation and sell ads that earn you credits that worth real money, rather than credits that the issuer prohibits you from selling for cash?
My sincerest thanks to all who commented on this post. I really, Really, REALLY appreciate it.
Alan
8StanHayes
wrote on 5 March 2009 at 17:46
@Sarah — CMF is free. You can just earn real money, if you like.
9Ian
wrote on 20 March 2009 at 19:10
I’m over Entrecard now. I’m just letting the ads already booked run out then the widget goes.
It was good initially and I found lots of interesting blogs through it. But the dropping grows tedious, and unproductive, and I found it just difficult to actually use all the credits I accumulated. Plus, a lot of the interesting blogs I’d found through Entrecard eventually dropped out of it and I wasn’t really finding any worthwhile new ones.
10Sheila
wrote on 25 March 2009 at 6:33
A late comment here, sorry. In a further reply to Jennifer, I’ve joined CMF Ads and have never spent a penny on placing ads either. I ran ads on my site for a month and then I had enough credits to “buy” some myself. And it’s SO much less effort than Entrecard.
I’m running down Entrecard now, mainly because of the rather bullying attitude of the owner when people disagree, but since the decision I feel quite liberated!
11Shu Fen
wrote on 10 April 2009 at 15:09
hello!
liked ur post a lot!
i joined entrecard recently and it’s been my main source of traffic…
the appeal of entrecard i think is tt u can advertise w/o spending a single cent
for me ppl like me who won’t spend money for a hobby ^^
cheers!
Vicissitudes of Life
12Wenko
wrote on 28 May 2009 at 21:05
Howdee….Good point! Entrecard is free but when you get down to it, it eats up so much of your time. But I will never trade all the knowledge that fellow Entrecard bloggers have given me.
But blogging should be about…blogging! What’s the use of traffic if your blog sucks. Content is king. And bloggers can tell if your site has sense or not. So now I have added CMF to my site because it’s nice to join another community. I’m sure CMF bloggers are more relaxed than Entrecard members. But I will welcome all of them because I wanna share my thoughts to as more people as possible. It’s all a metter of time management, don’t you agree?
God bless,
Wenko
MassSongs4U.blogspot.com
13My Caddy
wrote on 6 July 2009 at 5:18
EC has now dropped the price to $1.00 for every 1K of credits and buys them back from the users- although the backlog is so huge and “making credits” so easy I think most people won’t ever see their credits turn into cash.
14Man Over Board
wrote on 8 October 2009 at 17:29
I saw your profile on Blog Catolog and stopped by. Great, great blog, you do a wonderful job. I thought to respond to this post as it is more relevant now, then when you first wrote it. Things are heating up in the battle for the almighty 125 by 125 widget
15Michael Aulia
wrote on 20 December 2009 at 21:38
I’m about to quit Entrecard but I still need to see whether I’ll join CMF ads