But how does Entrecard make money??

Ok, ok, the cat has been out of the bag for some time now. Entrecard doesn’t make any money. This is a problem, because we have hefty expenses like a dedicated server and a best-of-the-best developer :). On top of that we’re growing quickly, and we want to implement a monetization strategy to start paying all our costs, and to make sure we can continue to develop great features.

So, I have been considering many options for how I am going to monetize Entrecard. My number one goal in successfully monetizing, is doing so in a way that we do not offend all of our members. I’ve tossed a lot of ideas around that I’d like to share with you, and get your feedback.

Option 1: Upgrade to “pro” account
One idea was to develop some features, like multiple blog support, enhanced statistics, alerts, and some other bells and whistles, and charge people to upgrade to a “pro” account. All the features you have now would still be free.

Option 2: Sitewide advertising via “Sponsored Inbox”
This would be implemented in conjunction with the “upgrade to pro account” strategy. The idea here is to clear up the right sidebar throughout the Entrecard site, and offer sitewide paid placement for a members card on a rolling basis. These cards would go into a “Sponsored Inbox” that would appear on the right sidebar, and all members would receive five credits for visiting the sponsor each day.

Option 3: Take a slice of the impressions
Our third idea is to sell a fraction of the impressions on the widgets. If we went this route, we would reserve 5% of the impressions served by our widgets and sell them to 3rd party advertisers. The nice thing about this approach is it could be used singularly, meaning we wouldn’t need to put ads on the rest of the site, and we wouldn’t need to charge people for all the fancy features that are in the works.

My question to you, our loyal Entrecard members, is whether or not you would be upset if we displayed independent advertisements 5% of the time on your widgets. The other 95% of the time, the usual “entrecard” would be displayed. The other option, as I mentioned above, is to have some ads throughout the site itself and having an upgrade necessary for some premium features.

What do you all think? I’d like as many opinions as possible, so chime in!