Changes Affecting the EntreCard Economy

With the recent changes strictly implemented by the EntreCard admin, I can see they mean serious business. As I go through the blogs I regularly drop my cards on, there have been a number of them that were already deleted in the system. For some reasons, I felt a little worried but at the same time, cautious. I should see to it that I seriously follow EntreCard's Updated Rules posted by Graham on September 16.

On September 29, Graham Langdon posted yet another entry which could greatly affect the EntreCard Economy. I deemed it best to post the article in toto as originally posted in the EntreCard Blog:

In order to continue operating in the long-term, Entrecard needs to make some significant changes. The changes are summarized below:

1. Buy credits for less: Entrecard is now selling 1,000 credits for $6.00.
2. More pricing increments: Instead of prices doubling every time, there are now a few more steps. The new price points can be found on the Advertising page in the wiki.
3. Members are not allowed to sell credits: This goes for ebay sales, posts in the Marketing forum, and posts on other forums. If you have references on your site to the sale of credits, please remove them immediately, as it is now against our terms.
4. Credit transfer limits: Members are allowed to make a maximum of 14 credit transfers a week, up to a maximum of 1,000 credits, whichever comes first. This means you can still run contests where you give credits away for free, and under 1k per week.

   Note: This does not affect linked blogs, you can transfer unlimited credits between linked blogs.
5. Transfer tax: From now on, all transfers, including transfers made with our new payments API, will be taxed at a rate of 12.5%. The taxed credits will be sold to members (see #1).
6. Blogs cannot be unlinked: Once you link a blog, it’s there for good unless you ask us to delete the blog from your account. This prevents linking/unlinking to get around the credit transfer limits, and it also stops you losing access to a blog if you unlink it in error, which happens a lot.
7. No more coupons: You are no longer allowed to send coupons.
8. Shop closed: Except for Entrecard upgrades (Featured Status, Fast Pass) the Entrecard Shop is now offline until further notice. Please do not request a seller token until the shop returns. When it comes back, it will be bigger and better. We’ll communicate more details nearer the time.

With these recent updates, I find changes #s 1, 3, 4, and 6 rather daunting for a huge number of EntreCarders especially those who are making money out of selling EntreCard credits. This move is well-meaning as it aims to create a " balance between maximizing the overall benefits for our users and getting the revenue we need to pay the bills and expand the service."

The impact of these rapid changes in the system is already being felt by the EntreCard community. It seems to me that with EntreCard's growth, it looked like they are taking FULL control of everything. This is a move that will help regulate the system and eventually shut down the members polluting the system.

I hope these changes wouldn't come as a detriment for small bloggers like me who is only trying to take advantage of what EntreCard is sharing with it's members.