I’m not the biggest Entrecard user on the Net, so it took me until early this morning to notice the ad price inflation that has taken place on the service.

The change was intended to make EC more of a marketplace rather than a popularity contest, but the result, at least in the short term, was to devalue the Entrecard credit as a ‘currency.’

Right now, there are very, very few sites that it would be smart, from an economics point of view, to advertise on with EC credits because they are simply a BAD DEAL.

I’m not talking hypothetically, here.

Take ProBlog Reviews, for example. A site with four months of archives and a PR0, is currently at top of the Make Money Online price list at 262144 EC credits per day.

Given the average market price of credits on Ebay for the past month, which is approximately .0045 per credit or $4.50 per thousand credits, advertising on this blog would cost $1,179 per day in real cash value.

Problogger.com’s ad price is currently listed at 131,072 EC credits per day, which in real value terms is about $590 per day or more than $17,500 per month. I think you can get a better deal on his regular ad space through B5 Media.

John Chow’s blog will cost you a much lesser amount… 8192 EC credits per day. Still, that’s a monthly ‘real cash’ rate that’s double his ‘get reviewed by’ price. You’d be better off buying direct.

My estimate is that the Ebay price for EC credits is currently way too high. The ‘real’ price - based on advertising value - under the current credit system is .00125 per credit, or $1.25 per thousand.

So, what to do.

First, don’t buy EC credits from Ebay until the price stabilizes under the new system. Second, don’t advertise on any sites over 128 credits until prices stabilize. Till then hoard your credits or exchange with other EC users for things of real value like reviews or permanent links.. Finally, keep reciprocating and dropping, since this is still, and will remain, a very valuable way to grow traffic to your blog.

ONE FINAL THOUGHT

I recall reading somewhere that EC will begin selling credits for $10 per 1000 EC credits. Under the current credit advertising system, I don’t think this will work for them.

Assuming the biggest and best blogs out there charge $10,000 per month for an ad –and that’s way more than I’d be willing to pay, but just go with me here — then the ‘real money’ daily price for an EC widget ad shouldn’t be more than $333. If the folks running EC want the value of 1000 credits to be ~$10, then ad prices for any blog should max out at about 33,333 EC rather than the hundreds of thousands of EC they are at right now.

Does that make sense, or is my math off?

All other thoughts, opinions, or disagreements are welcome in the comments.

5000 Entrecard credits US $9.00 (0 Bid) End Date: Sunday May-18-2008 9:44:57 PDT Bid now | Buy it now | Add to watch list

2000 Entrecard credits(cheapest ever!! start at 1cent!) US $0.56 (2 Bids) End Date: Sunday May-18-2008 21:37:41 PDT Bid now | Add to watch list

2,000 Entrecard credits US $5.99 (0 Bid) End Date: Tuesday May-20-2008 9:36:13 PDT Bid now | Add to watch list

5,000 Entrecard Credits For Sale US $5.50 (1 Bid) End Date: Tuesday May-20-2008 22:31:19 PDT Bid now | Add to watch list

2000 Entrecard Credits US $4.75 (2 Bids) End Date: Wednesday May-21-2008 12:24:51 PDT Bid now | Add to watch list

Add Ebay to YOUR blog

Ebay has started offering blogs to its sellers to help them sell their products, wikis to collect informative articles about products, and a tagging option for the blogs, reviews and guides.

Ebay isn’t the first retailer to dip a toe into the waters of social commerce. Amazon has introduced plogs and tags into their store to tap into the power of social networks to drive sales.

And Yahoo has the Shoposphere which attempts the same thing, with personalized shopping pages and funky tag clouds to encourage further exploration.

What’s next in the world of social commerce? I’m not sure, but with the increasing popularity of blogs and social networks, this is definitely one of the “Next Big Things” that will soon expand out of the elite and trickle down to smaller ecommerce sites as well.