Thursday 3 September 2009

The truth from a traffic exchanger

Recently a traffic exchange blog asked their users if they built lists. I find this answer enlightening as it seems to hit a nerve.
 
"Hi
Wow another post cool, I do have a list 450 on my list,but not one is a buyer,so i have not made any thing from them,My downline at Maxtrafficpro is where i make some money about 15.00 every 2-3 months,and that is after 4 years of work and over 800.00 in fees from traffic exchanges,why am i telling you this,people think if they build a list/downline that they will make money,but that is not true some might,but most will not,you are going to spend more than you make."
Now if you look at this reponse it paints a very different picture:
"I have a list of about 12k people that I’ve built up over the course of 4 years of hard marketing. I’ve made a ton from my list however the key again just isn’t building one its knowing how to treat it and maintain it."
I think the real message to take away from this is that yes you can earn money from traffic exchanges but it takes a lot of time and a lot of work.


Tuesday 1 September 2009

So getting traffic is that easy?

"But! I can skip surfing other people's sites and just buy impressions, forcing people to look at my stuff without having to share or read anything. Sweet! By payng a fee, I can guarantee that 3,000 readers are going to visit the main page of my web site. I can also surf other people's sites and add even more visitors to my site. This sounds fair and cool, and maybe it could even be a way to pick up some new blogs to read." I took this quote from a forum on traffic exchanges and I fear that the author is rejoicing a little prematurely. It always comes back to the same issue and as yet I have not received any convincing answer. How can a traffic exchange ensure that my site receives targeted traffic?
In my view - and I have thought about it - it can't. Those who surf traffic exchanges will only have as clients those who spend there time surfing on traffic exchanges. It is that logical, who else?

Monday 31 August 2009

Thanks pjaybee

In response to my post yesterday on the topic of Traffic Exchanges pjaybee responsed:
"Hi,  new traffic exchanges are springing up all the time, unfortunately most don't last the distance. The Big owners have the dominance in this game.
Personally I surf more of the smaller exchanges as the surf ratio tends to be a lot better.
I do agree with you that a lot of the owners could do more for their members, to be a success you need happy customers."
Thanks pjaybee for your comment and I do agree that owners in many cases could do more for their TE clients. It is also good to know that the smaller exchanges tend to give better surf ratios. Obviously in what is a very competitive market they need to attract customers. I, like pjaybee, have also noticed that the whole traffic exchange issue seems to be divided among a few big players (whom I shall not mention). These are the people who have the power and the credibility and the numbers to market new exchanges and to succeed. If that is good or bad is another issue.

Sunday 30 August 2009

Want to own a traffic exchange? - a few tips

Traffic exchanges at the minute seem to go from one extreme to the other. Either you are bombarded by follow up emails offering products after signing up or you are ignored. I believe in fact that the good and profitable TE's are those that are follow-up their signups.
Let me just give you one example of what I find extremely frustrating and which gives a very bad impression of a Traffic Exchange. I recently signed up and when I added the websites I wanted rotated, I had to wait for their approval by the webmaster. When signing up I had already upgraded to purchase credits as I simply do not have the time to spend in sitting for hours with the mind-bending task of surfing other sites, Well I waited, waited and waited and even after one week my sites had not been approved. This to me is an immediate sign of a webmaster of traffic exchange owner who has lost interest in what he or she started. It immediately gives me a negative impression of that traffic exchange. That is simply the way things work on the Internet, it is fast, here today gone tomorrow.
Do you haev similar experiences to mine with TE's that are so slllllllllllllloooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwww to respond? Leave a comment and let me know.

Thursday 27 August 2009

Learn about your phobias!

This may seem a strange thing to say but many people who suffer from phobias are totally at their mercy partly because they feel totally exposed and at the mercy of phobias. Learning about phobias, in general, is a good idea because it does help you understand what is happening to you and it demystifies the whole thing. One always has a greater fear of the unknown, this is common knowledge.
So, my advice is read literature on the matter, look for and join Internet forums and discuss your phobia(s) with others. You will very soon discover that these terrifying situations you are experiencing are being experienced by thousands of people just like you every day.
In fact, phobias and panic attacks are extremely common and seemingly all the more so in today's stressful and hectic way of life. You would be surprised about the number of people who takes the stairs at work and not the elevator becuase they panic at the mere thought. You would be surprised about the number of people you know who prefer to eat alone and deliberately go to eat earlier or later than the rest - simply because they have a phobia of eaiting in company. You would be equally surprised at the number of people who do not go on that training course they would love to go on just in case during the class they might be but in a position of having to answer a question or get up and say something in front of others. So do me and do yourself a favour - read up a little on panic attacks and phobias and come back and tell me how this has affected you.

Wednesday 26 August 2009

Google and caffeine?

Google has announced it's next step to keep ahead of the search engine battle - no doubt there is little coincidence that this comes at a time when Yahoo and Microsoft have stated their intention of giving Google a run for its money in the search technology race. It is interesting to note what Google officially says what it is going to focus on with the new Caffeine technology:

size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions.

These sparse words from Google are of course open to all sorts of interpretation but you do not have to be a rocket scientist to make some educated guesses at what they mean. "Size" probably is a hidden admission of Google that it is having a hard time to keep up with the number of web pages in existence and that they have to index more in a shorter period of time. This also ties in well with the reference to indexing speed as this would point to the importance of fresh content. It has become a web cliche that "content is king" but this statement from google would seem to infer that new rich content is what they are looking for. This could be good news for the little guy as it is already very evident, particularly with the increase in blogging, that there is a lot of fantastic content out there in every conceivable niche but it is hard to find as the small sites do not have the visibility of thh larger sites on search engines i.e. good content is not getting the search rewards it deserves. The use of the term "accuracy" would seem to back up this statement - info is becoming less generalised and more pinpointed - google wants to get at this rich info and give more accurate results for its users.

This overall strategy could see a major step in the maturing process of search engine technology. There are many already who believe that many of the traditional SEO criteria are redundant - i.e. keyword desnity. Google is perhaps going to take the emphasis off the importance of the number of inbound links and focus more on the relevancy and quality of the information it finds. That of course is going to be easier said than done.

Tuesday 25 August 2009

Who can recommend how to learn to make and set-up a splash page.

I am interested in trying out the success of splash pages on a number of traffic exchanges. Can anyone point me in the direction of a website which explains in non-technical terms how to create and set up a splash page. I assume also that for a splash page to function I will also need to be able to set up an auto-responder. Likewise can anyone let me know what is the easiest way of doing this.
The idea of setting up a splash page is to build a list of emails addresses for my newsletter. Are there websites or companies on the web that will build a custom splash page for me and have you any idea how much this could cost?

Friday 21 August 2009

Can your enemies destroy your presence on the web - Oh Yes!

I just found out this morning when my Google Adsense account was suspended. Click fraud is the accusation. Not guilty I reply. Can I proove it. No how could I? So what does a person do to keep dear GOOGLE happy. I have 10 blogs depending on my Adsense account.
I think it must be easier than I suspected to get Adsense advertisers a bad name. If I got to a blog which has Adsense and make a point on a daily basis of clicking feverishly on the google ads I bet within a short space of time teh owner will get the same email as I did this morning. ACCOUNT SUSPENDED.
Worth a try but I will be back to tell you how I got on.

Wednesday 19 August 2009

Belt and braces - traffc exchanges and social media


Whish is the more prductive source of traffic today - traffic exchanges or social media sites such as twitter or facebook. And in terms of traffic which is the best source for targeted traffic to your site. Personally I fail to see the great importance currently attacked to a site such as twitter in spite of its current popularity. It seems to reflect that we are basically lazy and that 140 characters is about as much as we can say or digest in one go.
However sites such as delicio.us and diggit do bring real results in terms of interested and targeted users to the site.
As I stated in an earlier posting I fail to understand how traffic exchanges can advertise that they bring "targeted" traffic to your site. I understand that the traffic can come pretty quickly once joining and surfing a traffic exchanges and I understand that the TE can be useful for getting a list of email addresses but again how is traffic targeted?

Tuesday 18 August 2009

Imagine you had a birthday party and nobody came?


Many many people fall prey to the idea of simply setting up a website. This is mistakenly seen by them as the end and not the beginning of a journey. Unlike other media, the Internet is dynamic and this is what few seem to understand. Your site cannot be a static element in a dynamic whole. if we consider how how the Internet has evolved in five years, the thought of setting up a site and leaving it to catch visitors as a sort of fait accompli is simply ridiculous. This, I believe, is the largest mistake among site owners today and one which is likely to persist for some considerable time.
This is simply a mistaken mindset. If I advertise in printed media I don't have to change it every 5 weeks, same for a television advert. So why shoudl I have to do so just because I am using the Internet as a marketing tool. Again the answer is simple, you are working in a dynamic medium, one that is constantly changing.
Who had heard of social networking 24 months ago? Who had heard of twitter 18 months ago? No one I believe.
Hence, figuratively speaking, why today are so many people still organising birthday parties (web sites) and then getting disappointed that no one comes?

Monday 17 August 2009

Traffic exchanges a waste of time - No way!

If one takes as a point of departure that traffic exchanges are not a viable means of getting trgeted traffic to your site but are a means of building a list of emails of possible clients for your service or your product then I believe that you are on the right lines. This is a means which does work for traffic exchanges and of course the better your splash page, the more traffic exchanges you are visible on, the greater exposure you will have and the greater the number of emails you will collect over time.
What I have seen as a result of traffic exchanges is that some of them use the emails really aggressively to bombard you every day with "exciting new offers". This I find overdone and ultimately inflationary with the result that I personally see such emails psychologically as spam and pay no attention to them.
I believe th proper way to open doors is to do so carefully in terms of sending non-commercial, serious emails to your sign-ups and definitely not on a daily basis.

Sunday 16 August 2009

Blame our spelling on spellcheck


Excellent point that I never thought of made by Cara Powers. She comments:
"I blame it on spellcheck. I almost never look anything up anymore. I don't even think about spelling when I type. I just give it a go and watch for the little red underline."
. Yes, Cara you are right, I forgot completely about spellcheck as I never use it but basically you do not need to be able to spell. The software will do it for you. So things would seem to point to the fact that our ability to spell may be rendered redundant by the Internet. This may be true when writing online but what happens when you have to write a letter, fill in a form when there is no computer available? Or do you think we will reach the situation where all our written communication is done online or by computer and spelling should no longer be our concern? Could happen but ....
I firmly believe that language is closely connected to our culture and is in fact to some degree a mirror of our culture. An inability to spell also indicates that we are losing the connection to where words come from. It is interesting to note, for example, that 51 802 words in the English language are derived from the Greek language. I firmly believe we should never lose interest in the roots of our language - ultimately we will become all the poorer for this.

Monday 10 August 2009

Mr Google I cannot spell


Off topic again but a story which I think is one which may have some truth and which I find of interest - and from a source which is not a sensationalist one - the Economist. It claims in this week's edition that google, sites like facebook and twitter are having a disastrous effect upon the spelling ability of our children. This set me thinking and basically I came to the conclusion that I have never seen as many misspellings in my life as on the Internet. I have been made consciously aware over the past years that the average level of spelling on the Net is poor. But is this the fault of the Internet? I believe not.
While I do agree that if you are confronted constantly with bad spelling then you will never learn how to spell a word properly if 9 times out of ten you see it misspelt. But I do not believe that it is at fault, I think we must look first and foremost at our school systems. I came from the old system where every night in elementary school I had to learn to spell 20 words. This is a exercise which I think today has vanished from the school curriculum.
Of course, to be fair they are individuals who would also claim that many of us learn visually and that if we are constantly confronted with a common mispelling we will assume eventually that this is the correct spelling. I have no argument to counter this as I do believe that we all learn in very different ways. Yet the social networking sites I visit are mainly populated by adults like myself and they did not learn to spell or misspell only through their use of the Internet in the past ten years.

Tuesday 4 August 2009

A millionaire overnight - and we still believe it?


Why as reasonably intelligent beings do many of us still fall for the soft sell of the promise of buying something on the Internet and start earning a five figure salary overnight. It does not happen in the real economy, does it? So why do so many of us still swallow this hype in our inboxes and, in addition, since it is a limited special offer, it is best to buy immediately to secure our position.
I mean, let's face it. If some guy were earning a 5 figure sum, he's going to show me how to do it for $47 just because I am a nice guy.
As a serious internet user, I believe we are prey to falling victim to too much extremely well written hype. But all things said and done, why then do they need to show us their testimonials, why do they show us copies of their paypal or clickbank accounts. Answer, they want to sell or, saying it another way, they want me to buy. And I have done a lot of this in the past. It is all - without exception - a lot of money-grabbing crap that I fell for.
Let us get a grip on ourselves and start deleting our membership to these guys and deleting our subscriptions to their convincing scam newsletters. They ar enot going to make us any richer, for sure. Always just ask yourself one question, why am I being offered this? Why does someone promise me a fortune in weekly income, and not just do it himself and stop dragging as many customers as he can like me into a $47 dollar sale......and another disappointment?

Monday 3 August 2009

What makes a good traffic exchange?


What in your view differentiates a good traffic exchange from a bad one? Why are some traffic exchanges hugely successful in terms of membership numbers while others never seem to gain popularity?
Having looked at the main stream traffic exchanges, it seems very clear to me that their support for new traffic exchange launches has a lot to do with their prospects of success. Why? The answer is simple, if I contact 160 000 surfers on my exchange telling them how great some new traffic exchange is, I will obviously have some degree of success. Firstly you are receiving that news from someone who has credility in your eyes as far as traffic exchanges are concerned. Secondly, traffic exchange surfers are constantly on the look out for new exchanges and new offers. There is no TE surfer who is only surfing one traffic exchange.
So first priority for joining a traffic exchange is the number of members that a particular exchange has.
Secondly, I believe that the easy of use of a traffic exchange also is a contributing factor to its popularity. By ease of use I mean (a) the length of the timer in seconds for surfing, (b) the number of credits earned per view, (c) the number of website/splash pages you are allowed simultaneously.
The simple fact is that anyone today can for very little money (next to nothing) purchase a traffic exchange script and set up business. Yet the profits from such an exchange depend on traffic as does everything on the Internet. That is where the small start-ups fail. It is a vicious circle. Not sufficient adverising power without the advertising support and added credibility of the "big boys", little traffic, little interest. The traffic exchange fails. The secret to the success of any traffic exchange is the number of surfers/members as this is a sign of the exposure you would get by joining such an exchange. If you are on a traffic exchange and see there are currently three people online you can estimate that you get zero exposure, If, however, you are on a traffic exchange and see there are currently 324 other members surfing then this is a very different story in terms of the amount of exposur eyour website will receive. I believe it is increasingly difficult to get a foot in the door in the traffic exchange business and - I may be wrong - I suspect that the big and successful exchanges are using their power and credibility to create the new exchanges and by that I mean the new exchanges that will survive over time.

Saturday 1 August 2009

Internet and blogs - quo vadis?

The recent rise in social media and social networking through the Internet has interesting repercussions, not all of which are positive, I believe. Let me give you an example of current research which makes me, a simple webmaster and search engine optimizer, feel like a fly trying to scratch its way from the surface to the core of the Internet world - sorry, wrong perspective as we are all being told the Internet does not have a core of center.
I would deny such a statement when I look at the increasing spread of pervasive technologies with companies such as g00gle which, with its myraid email, blogging, search, news services etc. is trying to make itself the center - or one center, of the Internet - and making a damn good job of it if I may say so.
The Internet playing field is no longer level, it is very much tipped to the side of those who have the BIG money - like everything else in life. Basically, it is at present difficult to estimate what is really going on in the Internet and I see it reflecting equally the cycles of the REAL economy. Let me give you a small example.

I just discovered a company which I shall not name. This company can give you any data you want from blogs - it has indexed the full content of some 20 million blogs and is filtering and analysing the content with astounding success in terms of predictions. Blogs, basically, are an expression of individual opinion and with 20 million of them around this opinion covers a lot of topics. Blogs are equally a way of influencing and representing people. So Company X strips off the html and looks at the content, let us say of all blogs about movies. There are a lot.
Then using software which can identify what one would call positive sentiment - simple language parsing I assume - it can actually produce data from these 20 million blogs which gives a fair indication of what people are saying about a particular movie. This info can actually predict what the popularity of a particular movie will be in one week's time and has a success rate of some 86%.
Such is the current state of data mining from a blog like this one, amplified 20 million times. Now, without being paranoid, I can understand why we are all encouraged to blog, why we are given free tools to do so. The result is a billion dollar industry which is predicting successfully the future in the way I describe. What level of sophistication can such technology achieve? How ethical is such work? Are we busy creating monsters that are going to destroy us? I assume what applies to movies, as in the example I give, can also apply to cars, food, fashion - you name it.

Is it a good idea to join a blog network



Looking around to explore the various means of getting traffic to my website, in addition to traffic exchanges I have found what are called "Blog natworks". Basically these are a numbe rof blogs and owners who share something in common and who visit each other in much the same form as in a traffic exchange. Please correct me if I am wrong.
To me these are something which have grown out of necessity in the little of it getting increasingly difficult to get traffic to a website.
While such formulae, such as the Shiny Media group in the UK, seem to have lacked success - the latter has gone into administration - there do seem to be several others which are doing OK.
Recently, however, I see reports from bloggers that g00gle has virtual launched a Jahad on blog networks treating them in much the same way as link farms. Several of the leaders have had their PR sliced by g00gle in recent weeks.

Who can help me - what is autosurf? and why?


To date we have looked only at manual traffic exchanges, by that I mean traffic exchanges where you receive credits for the number of other sites you surf. This is usually on a one to one or one to two ratio. My question is: what is the point of autosurf traffic exchanges. As I understand the issue - correct me if I am wrong - an autosurf traffic exchange is one where automatically you see a new site every so many second without having to physically click after a certain number of seconds?
My question is why would someone want to do this? It means virtually your site is rotating but basically although being visited no one actually looks at it.
Maybe I am stupid but I cannot understand why someone would want to do this. Sure it is also a means of getting traffic but if no one looks at the content of your site what is the point of this traffic. G00gle will realise where the traffic is coming from and will not reward you in terms of improving your page ranking. So I come back to the same point, what is the use of auto surf exchanges? Answers very welcome!

Friday 31 July 2009

If not traffic exchanges - what else?

I have received a lot of criticism of my comments of traffic exchanges recently. I do not mean to give the impression that I am an enemy of traffic exchanges, as this is not the case. I believe they have their place in the correct context as you can deduce from my previous posts. The real dilemma is a different one in 2009. It is reduced to the following question - how can I get (targeted) traffic to my website. That, ultimately, is the bottom line.
It is becoming increasingly difficult to get exposure for any website/blog on the Internet. Do not forget there are over 100 million of us. I am one in 100 million and those are about my starting chances for getting traffic to my site if I am fair - Now that is what I call a pretty formidable challenge - somewhere near to winning the lottery?
So back we go to how can I get (targeted) traffic to my website. In the context of traffic exchanges yes this will give you some traffic which, I agree, is better than no traffic. as discuessed in previous posts, no one can persuade me that it is targeted traffic - how can it be?
The main problem I see is that TE's can only get you noticed if you use splash pages for list building - to do this professional you are going to take a lot of time and effort to collect those emeil addresses.
An excellent success story for this strategy is Tim Linden the owner of Startxchange. Tim's uses his traffic exchange to attract subscribers whom he then emails on a regular basis with all sorts of tips and tricks related to traffic exchanges.

Thursday 30 July 2009

traffic exchange - blog exchange - the differences


In recent posts we had a look at the difference between traffic exchanges and blog exchanges. I want to add an interesting experience I just had. My blog has just been refused on a blog exchange. Why?
The answer I received when I was declined was that my blog on search engine optimizaton was not really interesting enough. Now there is a nice objective decision for you! This has never happened to me on a traffic exchange. We all know the various reasons we can been banned from traffic exchanges but not that it is not interesting enough.
Yet on the other hand while I find such a policy discriminatory, it does show that blog exchanges seem to put a greater emphasis on the quality of content - this cannot be said of traffic exchanges who have fairly low criteria for approval of the site and in many cases is even automated.

Monday 20 July 2009

Google and linkreferral - answers welcome

A few posts ago we had a lot of discussion on G00GLE's position on the use of traffic exchanges if your website contains Adense adverts from g00gle. The conclusion we came to was that they are very foggy on this topic in their guidelines and basicaly they do not like it but do not say you will be banned for using traffic exchanges.

linkreferral to get traffic to your website. Again I can find no information in the Adsense guidelines so I was wondering if you have any experience oor comments on this. Next question for me - does g00gle allow you to use linkreferral. Basically linkreferral is a free site. You sign up with the url of your website and you categorise your site according to topic. This puts you on a ranked list. Then if you visit 30 sites, review 5 sites and make acomment or a question in the forum within a 24 hour period you move up the list. By doing so you move up the list quite quickly if you do this on a daily basis. And the higher up the list the greater the chances you have of receiving traffic. They claim you can receive up to 60 visits per day through this system. But my question is will this ban me from Adsense?

Friday 17 July 2009

Traffic exchanges - what are you looking for?

Just good a relevant comment from Elizabeth Barrete about why she uses TE's. Elizabeth states:

"What I seek from a traffic exchange is not direct cash but rather ... traffic. Exposure. New people. After a while, I find that some folks who surf by will stick around and become regular readers.

Also, I surf by multitasking. It doesn't eat up nearly as much time to open the traffic surfing page, leave it up, and just click occasionally between other activities. Sometimes I find cool stuff that way.:




Valid comment I believe but I just think that the numbers who actually stick around are comparively small - I am only speaking of my own experience. I think we all know how tremendously difficult it is now to get good traffic to a website. There is no magic recipe. Buying traffic is really a scam - one click and off they go. Getting good search engine racnkings is the real answer but the work that involves can be quite offputting. I have written a lot on how one can help search engines to find your site. Any ideas on other means of getting traffic???

Sunday 12 July 2009

Link exchanges - the life blood of websites

By the way, if anyone has a blog related in any way to this one and is interested in exchanging links, please leave your details in the comments box below and I will be right back to you.

Thanks Carrie for the comment about blogs


I find it really great when I get comments on my blog postings. Here is one from Carrie who writes:

if you use traffic exchange sites to find new blogs, leave comments on those blogs, yes, you might find new readers. you have to network.
search engine optimization? how does one do that? can you give some info?

And I could not agree more with you, Carrie, if you find blogs that interest you then do take the trouble and leave comments - as in my case you can see they are appreciated. Concerning your question on search engine optimization, I have a separate blog which explains the basics on getting higher rankings on search engines.
Final point, if you are interested there are special traffic exchanges which only accept blogs. Here is an example.

Saturday 11 July 2009

Traffic exchanges and Adsense - making money?


Elizabeth just commented on an earlier post I had on using Adsense and traffic exchanges. She writes:
I agree about traffic exchange, it's not only that with the viruses (I use linux so they don't work), but if you want to earn money with google adsense using traffic exchange isn't going to work. I had 10,000+ visitors to my site but I only earned 0.02.
Thank you for your comment Elizabeth and what I take from it is that Traffic Exchange traffic is simply not a trageted audience so they will not be interested either in your site content or your ads. Making 0.02 cents on 10 000 plus visitors is hardly what anyone could call a good conversion rate.
Motto for me is that to get good Adsense conversions you have to work really hard to get your site noticed on the big search engines - and that we all know is easlier said than done.

Thursday 9 July 2009

Throwing a sprat to catch a whale - traffic exchangers tactics


I take it we all know what an opt-in Splash page is. Basically it is an attractive web page on a traffic exchange which, usually through offering you something for free, will ask for your name and email address. and that, I believe, ladies and gentlemen, is where Traffic Exchanges play a very useful role. Not by trying to sell something directly to the surfer but by collecting his/her email address to contact at a later date for the sales pitch. This is known as list building. There is a common saying among Internet marketers that a potential customer has to see an offer a total of seven times before deciding to purchase.
Anyone who has experience of traffic exchanges are very familiar with these tactics - their inboxes speak for themselves.

Wednesday 8 July 2009

Some more info on the discussion on traffic exchanges and using g00gle Adsense

A number of posts ago I raised the topic if google Adsense will ban you for using traffic exchanges to promote their website. This is what I found on their adsense blog.

We occasionally receive questions from publishers interested in using traffic exchanges to bring traffic to their site. While these services may help advertise your site, we don't recommend using them, as they may also result in similar invalid activity. We realize that you may have questions about a specific traffic service and whether it could potentially create invalid impressions or clicks. However, please understand that we're unable to comment on any particular third-party service.


Well, I sure love clarity and these statements are about as helpful as this road sign. The answer is basically a non-answer and when I think about it invalid. Using a traffic exchanges in no way induces people to click on Adsense ads. Or am I wrong? Secondly their following sentence basically says do not ask about individual cases as we won't answer. Thanks for that G00GLE.

Basically, the message I take is - if we (g00gle - that is - feel you get too many clickthrus using a TE you're banned? Comments are more than welcome.

Tuesday 7 July 2009

So why DID I join blogexplosion?


There would seem to be a general feeling that I am coming across very negative on the use of traffic exchanges - traffic exchanges are for people who use traffic exchanges to promote traffic exchanges.

Sites which show blogs have very different content and I believe a very different user. Many admit they are there to get a little traffic to their blog but not to promote or sell anything - which is not the case for traffic exchanges where profit is the object in one form or another.

For bloggers who are starting out with a new blog, it is simply an additional means of giving it a kick start until organic traffic builds up.

Monday 6 July 2009

A super thank you to Jerry and Fuzzy Grey for their help

Concerning the issue in an earlier post about the legality of using Traffic Exchanges when your website contains Adsense, we seem to be getting clarification.
Fuzzy Grey comments:
"No monetary gain is generated with legitimate traffic exchanges that require the user to intentionally display a given web page. Unlike the auto-surfers that run a java app to display pages without end user intervention.

I suppose the big G would be the only one to provide the definitive answer to this. An email requesting clarification from them will be forthcoming shortly, I'll post any response here as well."


Now that is what I call helpful. Refreshing to learn that there are people on the Internet willing to work and share their knowledge with others. The same goes for Jerry whose comments you can also read under the relevant post. Much appreciated, Jerry.

Sunday 5 July 2009

A comment left on the blog - and a good one!

What about links on forums, it shouldn't be bad idea to get traffic from any web. Not sure if all things you say are true.
Firstly, let us be absolutely clear what we are talking about - a forum is a group of people sharing information, opinions, pictures, whatever on a website which is password protected. Traffic exchanges - well you would not be reading this if you did not know what they were.

Participation in forums is a legitimate way of getting an inbound link and traffic to your website. But be careful and do not make the mistake that many are silly enough to post their web address with their comments on any forum - by that I mean forums that are not relevant to their particular subject. Even on this blog a lot of comments are simply links to websites that have nothing to do with this topic. I leave them because these people are just wasting their time. Google, for example, checks for relevance and I believe actually punishes such spammers.

So, Yes, post to forums - but only to forums that are relevant to the topic of your website.

Saturday 4 July 2009

Traffic exchanges and Adsense - I need an answer

Can anyone tell me definitively if using traffic exchanges with a site that has Adsense leads to one being banned by Adsense. I have looked carefully at the advice given by google Adsense and there is no explicit mention of the use of traffic exchanges as being prohibited. What are your experiences?

Thursday 2 July 2009

Maybe I am just plain stupid but ....

Very often when I see traffic exchanges advertise they frequently state this is an excellent means of getting trageted traffic to your website. I understand that it is a means of getting traffic to my website but can someone explain to me how and in what way this traffic is trageted? The visitors are surfers of traffic exchanges so I woudl call them a target group if I was trying to get visitors to a new traffic exchange. However, if I want traffic to my blog on holidays in Ireland or moving to Greece is this my target group?

Monday 29 June 2009

One of the most important factors in getting a good position on search engines

It is doubted by no one that knows anything about search engine optimization, one of the most important factors is the actual number of web sites which have a link to yours. Which of the sites (smilies) on the left do you think has the best ranking on a search engine. Yipe, it is the yellow one because of the number of sites linking directly or indirectly to it. Of course it is not as simple as that. If you have a site on travelling in Thailand and you manage to get a link from a site dealing with drug addiction your link will not count for anything - indeed, it could even count against you. Why? It is not the link alone which is important - the site linking to you must be in the same context i.e. a forum on people thinking of going to visit Thailand. That is why webmasters are very interested in getting good "inbound links" to their sites. Alternatively you can exchange links with other websites on a similar topic. Although such an exchange "reciprocal link" does not count as much as an inbound link, it still does count.

Sunday 28 June 2009

Just a scrap of useful info on the length of title and keywords

(Title = around 65 characters, Description = around 160 characters) Remember, your title and description should not only be keyword targeted but these are the first contact/impression anyone will see of your site - make sure you use them to draw and entice interested visitors to your site and content. Also make sure your title and URL are keyword matched for maximum effect.

A little bit more on search engine optimization - three very important html tags

Continuing with what I said yesterday, it is important to follow certain recognised rules if you want to be found on search engines like google, yahoo, etc. Never forget that for most users that is their door to your site. How else can they know you exist?

Some basics on getting your site indexed by search engines: Pleas edo nto laugh this is really basic and though who know a bit more about optimization should simply skip this.

In your browser, go to a page on your website and then on the top menu click "View" and in the dropdown menu click "Page code". What you see here is what the serach engine is looking at. Here you will find towards the top of your page three very important tags:

TITLE Social Phobia - Light At The End of The Tunnel TITLE

meta content='Help for sufferers of anxiety attacks, panic attacks and social phobia' name='description'

meta content='panic attacks, anxiety attacks, social phobia,' name='keywords'


Let us take these in turn. Title, dexription and keywords are what the search engines will read when visiting your site. If these are empty the search engine cannot recognise your sit'es content and most probably will nto index your site. So who is going to find you. Lesson No 1 for today. And we will take this optimization process one day at a time.
I am sorry that this is a google image but it has the big piece of the pie among search engines. If you are now saying to yourself, geeh, this is tricky stuff, I will get some one to do it for me, my answer is DON'T. The web is full of quacks saying they will have your website ranked on the first page of google for $49. To be honest I have worked on SEO for quite a number of years and if you were to offer me $49K I could give you no promise that your website would be ranked on the first page of google in six months. SEO you will come to see if you follow this blog is an on going activity which is never complete. There is no such things as perfection in this area.

Now in trying to show you this, this blog detected the html tags and would not let me publish so I will explain in a latter posting what you have to add.

Friday 26 June 2009

A happy blogger here - pleased as punch with my work on traffic exchanges

Not as pleased with myself as I am with you. One of my postings got 17 comments - so I am over the moon and I want to answer some of the questions and comment on your ideas. On my posting on the bad news about traffic exchanges
Carrie
made the following comment:


If you use traffic exchange sites to find new blogs, leave comments on those blogs, yes, you might find new readers. you have to network.
search engine optimization? how does one do that? can you give some info?

I think to start with on the topic of SEO it would be a good diea if I were to focus on the question on search engine optimization and how one does that and why it is important for your site. Basically you have to make a major mind jump and know that a search engine sees your site very differently than we humans do. Ask yourself what is the most important thing I want from my website. The answer will always be VISITORS. They are the lifeblood of your site. What is the point of having information on your pages when no one visits them, simply because they cannot find your site.

If you start a new site you have just joined the other 101 million websites - estimated at Febaury 2009. So how are visitors going to find your site. Easiest answer - through search engines. Google is a monster with very specific tastes - if it likes how you handle your site it will praise you by giving you a higher visibility - If google finds you are being naughty - this I will come back to later - it gets very angry and will punish you by giving you a lower ranking. Basically the search engines are the front door to the web. Nice position to be in.

Thursday 25 June 2009

Sorry - some comments I just received

Traffic Exchanges, most ineffective advertising on the internet?

"I have tested/used traffic exchanges for over 4 years and have read suggestions, made researches etc. I have made following serious conclusions.

-WHY INEFFECTIVE?-

*Average Sign up ration: 1500 hits for 1 sign up - think about how much time you need to earn these hits. (Sometimes one user visits your site 20 times a day, exchange like Ts25.com)

*Suggested Splash pages aren't better, this isn't a miracle, like they all say.

*People are surfing several exchanges at the same time(8+). Most of these people aren't looking your site at all.

*Targeting options that they use are worthless.

*No unique real visitors. Someone who is surfing very hard can earn these credits from your site without any problems, they are just fanatic surfers(no customers), think about it.

*Traffic exchanges are too many, most of these people who use them don't see the different between "real effective" advertising and traffic exchange hits.

* Autosurf exchanges(clickevolution etc), are more fun than manual traffic exchanges, because you don't need to click(no time needed) and they bring you more visitors(traffic) and sign ups.

*Too much money schemes surfing an exchange, also too much misleading text, like FREE etc but it isn't. This misleads the traffic exchange audience.

-GIVE IT A TRY?-

*if you make a simple traffic exchange, its a way to promote. Traffic exchanges are only for traffic exchanges.

There may be more...

Thank you, and please feel free post your comments etc."

The real attraction of traffic exchanges for their owners

As I mentioned in the last post, the real goldmine of the traffic exchange owner is your email address. To surf, as I stated, on a traffic exchange, you have granted the owner permission to send you emails. Remember in my first posting I advised you to set up a separate email account for traffic exchanges on account of the number emails you will receive from them. . If you study carefully the psychology of these emails, all of them are calls to action and they can be quite forceful - in terms of the offer is time-limited. Equally many of the larger exchanges have adopted a strategy not of war but allegiance with each other. For example, you will get an offer to surf 100 sites on three exchanges in the next 24 hours and you will receive 40 free credits. Quite a clever tactic, on their part. Also I have noticed that the new traffic exchanges coming on to the net are entirely dependent on the "big boys" to advertise them. An interesting question for me is who owns these new exchanges. It is a fact that without a heavy marketing clout to the correct public (targetted), it is virtually impossible for a new exchange to get visibility.

Wednesday 24 June 2009

Traffic exchanges - ultimately a question of credibility

When all is said and done, the reputation of any traffic exchange and its credibility will decide it's success. If you think about it, there are top traffic exchanges with some 125 000 members. That means the owner of such an exchange is free to email these surfers. And they all do. What is worse, most of the packages they try and sell have little pertinence for traffic exchanges. In fact, I am put off when I see they are simple clickbank products. So you can imagine if 1% converts into a sale that is 1 250 sales - let us say at $47, a time. Boy is that money.

Tuesday 23 June 2009

Blogging and making money on the Internet


The average traffic exchange surfer - and here I do not intend to be cynical or rude - easily becomes addicted to being the top surfer, to getting the prize for this, that or the other and often actually loses sight of why he or she is surfing so much in the first place. By this I mean if you are surfing 12 exchanges - i.e. six today and the other six tomorrow, this I can tell you takes up a great deal of precious time - time which perhaps could be spent more properly and indeed more profitably. If like my grandmother here you are a little disillusioned with the whole traffic exchange business and it has not brought you either traffic or revenue, think of opening a blog. Why? It costs nothing more than your creativity and your persistence and if you have been seriously surfing TE's for months then you have qualified on the persistence issue. Creativity - simply ask yourself what interests you passionately? What do you know that would interest others? What would you enjoy writing about? And when you can answer these, then you can start earning money with your blog (I'll show you how).

Monday 22 June 2009

The most popular traffic exchanges - do they make cash for you?

In a word my answer would be no. Simply ask yourself why you are surfing these exchanges for hours - that's if you are not spending money to buy credits. Some of the statistics from the top traffic exchanges I find amazing. There are surfers who will spend 12 -14 hours a day surfing traffic exchanges to gain credits - does this convert into dollars and cents? For the life of me I cannot see how. Actually if you look at the prizes TE's are giving away to top surfers, they tell their own stories. These are prizes of $5 - $10 dollars for being one of the top surfers on a particular day. This is not a way to make money if you work out what the hourly profit one makes for 12 /14 hours surfing.

Tuesday 16 June 2009

The other reason I would like to own a successful traffic exchange

All traffic exchanges operate with optin registration. This means basically you have signed up not only to add your site and surf on a traffic exchange, you have also signed up to receiving emails from the owners of these exchanges. This is why I recommended in an initial posting in this blog that you open a separate email account because if you join 10 or 12 TE's you will be swamped with emails on a daily basis.

Bear in mind that the owner of a traffic exchange has one main interest in mind. You get you to surf his/her exchange and to buy credits. So one of the first things you will be inundated with are an abundance of free offers. Such offers are usually time limited to encourage purchase of credits or some other activity. One of many examples - found particularly in my experience at weekends is buy double credits for at half price. As youc can imagine if such an email goes out to all 54 000 members of a traffic exchange it will have fair conversion rates.

But the second less appetizing thing - and I have nothing against special offers - is that you will constantly receive emails selling you clickbank products on secrets of traffic exchanges, etc.

Monday 15 June 2009

Traffic exchanges - the jury is still out!

Taking a look at the response from google when I type in traffic exchanges, I feel confused. For example, the query "traffic exchanges explained" has as number one ranking a particular traffic exchange. Strange but true. Then comes "traffic exchanges secrets" - which I read but did not discover the secrets at all. My basic view is that surfers busily spending hours surfing away to get credits could be using their time more effectively. No, you will argue, at least google will be impressed by the number of hits I am getting to my webpages. WRONG! Very, very wrong and I would even put forward the hypothesis that on the contrary google is anything but impressed! WHY? you may well ask.

Here let me add that I have spent a considerable time over the past four years in looking at how it indexes (my) pages and what counts and what does not count. But in a nutshell I would put forward the following simple statement and await your response. My statement is that today in 2009 we greatly underestimate the sophistication of google technology. May I give you a simple example and perhaps you can transpose what I say to the world of traffic exchanges? I use the example of Adsense. For those of you who do not know about Adsense it is a feature set up by google to advertise their sites on yours. You get paid on a clickthrough basis. The amount you earn depending on the price of the keywords which the advertiser has bid. [Again an explanation in a nutshell and Adsense has become a science in itself].

Google had major difficulties with this baby as it incurred a lot of clickthru fraud. By this I mean call your Aunt, cousin, whatever in Australia and ask them to click on your google ads. It worked for a while but google soon got clever. Very clever, it monitors and remembers every action of yours on the Net.

And this starts with monitoring the IP adresses from which you are getting your traffic. Hence I apply the example to traffic exchanges. You might think the traffic you get is impressing google. It isn't simply because on a Traffic Exchange your traffic is coming from a single IP. Google knows this and ignores it when ranking your site.

Why I wished I owned a traffic exchange . . . . .

Simply because the big players in the traffic exchange world - about 10 count in my reckoning make money by selling nothing - well, not exactly nothing - they do not sell a product. Ultimately they sell credits - i.e. the cash you pay for not having to click manually for hours to accrue such credits. Neat concept!

Secondly, overheads for a traffic exchange are relatively low. There are even traffic exchange scripts on the Net for nextt to nothing to build your own. As an owner your major investment is time. The ultimate goal of the TE owner is list-building. Creating a large list of people who have consented to receive emails from him/her. This is worth its weight in gold. And this is where earning really start for the owner.

Saturday 30 May 2009

The bad news about traffic exchanges - my opinion


This post is concerned with the issue of how useful surfing a traffic exchange is for your overall visibility on the Net. Many believe that the increased number of hits to their websites is good for their ranking on search engines. I am cautious of such assumptions. Firstly, such assumptions fail to understand the sophistication of search engines such as the all powerful google. I believe that google actually tracks the IP addresses from which you are receiving traffic and if a large percentage of traffic is coming from one single website - and at the end of the day any traffic exchange is nothing more than a website - then it gets suscipious and can flag your site.

I equally believe that the same holds true for most of the large search engines today - they are not easily tricked and it they think you are cheating (in their eyes) you will be punished in your search engine ranking. Basically the only advantage yo have form having your site on a traffic exchange is that you have an inbound link. Mind you the value of an inbound link from a or multiple traffic exchanges is very questionable in my eyes.

I always come back to the same painful truth, attracting visitors to your site with good content, frequent updating, good search engine optimization is the key. And that, dare I point out, is work.

Friday 29 May 2009

A word of warning - viruses


What I write is not directed against any particular traffic exchange nor is it meant to deter the would-be traffic exchange surfer. I quote from a forum at whydowork.com.
" Hi:

I hate to have to do this but traffic exchanges can't be trusted anymore. It isn't because of the exchanges themselves are crooked. How can they be when they're free? The problem is that many users who are putting up sites on these exchanges are putting up sites with lethal tojans and other viruses. Because exchanges get so many submissions they just can't keep up with a site after it is approved. Once that is done, the owner of the site puts the trojan in place and unless you have a firewall installed with security, you won't even know it.

People, this is really scary stuff. I kid you not. "

I think that the author "swagan" is absolutely right that it is not the fault of the owner but the sheer amount of manual working checking all pages frequently for viruses.

And it is really scary stuff. A friend of mine in the web design business got the latest trojan on his server 2 weeks ago - not from a traffic exchange. These new generations of viruses are really frightening in that they mutate while on your server. My friend is really stuck. He talked to a network security guy and named the virus. What would it cost to get rid of it? Anywhere between one hour and one month and I charge Euro 120 ($150) per hour was the response!

Even worse my friend had all the necessary software to detect a virus attack - it did not find it!

Thursday 28 May 2009

What is traffichoopla all about?


Basically, traffichoopla is a website which aims to help you get free web traffic. It has over 68 000 members and the traffic exchange surfer uses its facilities, for example, to store his login's for the traffic exchanges he or she surfs. It is like a central storage space and point of departure when you start your surfing and keeps you organised.
All traffic exchanges love traffichoopla because it rates on a weekly basis the top 20 exchanges and as I said in an earlier mail competition at the top is fierce. Naturally the TE surfer is always anxious to know which are the best exchanges to surf so to this extent is a very useful source of information.
The website also has its own affiliate programm so you will often see splash pages on traffic exchanges as surfers try to refer other surfers to reap the rewards. Traffichoopla is a useful tool, membership is free.

Wednesday 27 May 2009

Cheating on traffic exchanges



Please beware, there are surfers who spend their time creating programs to cheat on traffic exchanges. Any traffic exchange owner will tell you the number of cheats he/she has to remove everyday.


Cheating on these exchanges is nothing less than theft. You are stealing from the surfers who are either paying for credits or spent hours surfing the exchange to collect credits.

If anyone offers you software etc to cheat, ignore them. I am not posting any url's here of cheats and those who offer cheating software - you are clever enough yourself to know how easy would be to find that. Please don't!

Website Visitors

How can you gain more traffic to your web site?
If you like to know the answer to this question, you have to keep on reading!


The main aspect of Internet Marketing is traffic. Traffic is also the most fundamental aspect of any marketing campaign on the internet. If you ask a professional internet marketeer, he will as well tell you that nothing is more essential than generating enough traffic on your website.

Generating traffic to your website, can be achieved through numerous ways. Using a Traffic Exchange program is the most easygoing way to gain traffic. Link Referral and Traffics Swarm are examples of Traffic Exchange programs. If you visit these sites, they will provide you a good measure of traffic in exchange. For website owners, this way of traffic isn’t very useful. The amount of website visitors is rising, but in reality it’s unworthy. This is because the visitors are merely glancing over your web site and in just a snap they have left. So it’s an easy way to generate traffic through Traffic Exchanges sites, but you will not genuinely gain a lot of profit through it.

Purchased traffic is another way of generating traffic to your internet site. With the help of purchased traffic exchange programs, you will get the luxury of not viewing web sites on such programs. Unluckily, this way isn’t that useful either.

Traffic generated through search engines. This is the best way to get traffic to your website. Let’s say, an internet surfer is surfing on the internet. Casually he falls upon your web site. This visitor is most likely to click on the advertisings on your internet site. In conclusion, search engines traffic is what we really need!

It is not easy to gain search engines traffic. It requires lots of time and patience, but firstly you have to understand a few basic principles of Internet Marketing. You have to optimize your web site for the search engines. There are 2 types of search engine optimizations: onsite optimization and offsite optimization. We will explain onsite optimization to you:

First, you need to look for the correct keywords for your particular niche. Afterwards, you need to make sure that the title of your internet site contains your keyword(s). In this way, you can be easily found on the internet. Still, it’s a good idea to optimize with Meta Tags, although the Meta Tags have lost their importance. Do not put too many keywords in your Meta Tags, because the search engines can look through this tactic. At last you need to look carefully at the header and footer.

It’s very fundamental to have as much text as possible and as less images as is needed. This is because the search engines understand text, they simply love text. Images, they don’t understand. It’s effective to spread your keywords throughout your pages, so don’t put them all in one paragraph. You can as well utilize links to affiliate programs or advertisings. If this is the case, then make sure that your advertisements blend into the pages and not stand out.

In conclusion, your internet site should have a remarkable navigation to all the pages. Also make sure that your web site contains lots of a text, which is simple to read and understand.

Sunday 24 May 2009

Either dominate a Traffic Exchange or be dominated!

I just came across a very interesting article on the future of traffic exchanges authored by John Guanzon and Jennifer Herold, definitely no newbies to traffic exchanges.

When looking at the tactics for branding ourself on an exchange, they ask the following (and I quote them) Further, how much time do you have to spend daily on important traffic exchange
dominance tactics such as the following:
• Forum posting and relationship building with key owners
• Account management across multiple traffic exchanges
• Tracking and testing of pages/sales/signups
• And, clicking, clicking, clicking, clicking and clicking some more

Secondly they usefully identify the vast majority of traffic exchange surfers, putting them into five categories:

• People interested in how to get traffic to their website
• People interested in how to build their list of opt in subscribers
• People interested in home business opportunities
• People interested in webmaster/website related services
• People who are complete online newbies who are looking for a guiding light.

On that basis and before I continue, I have one all important question you have to ask yourself. Are any of the five groups the target traffic you are looking for?


Digg!

An interesting take on traffic exchanges - and the more you think about it, it even makes sense

Yes, I am sure it is not the first time that you have seen such an eBook - and no I am not advertising for this or any other traffic exchange. Most traffic exchanges worth their salt, offer not only the manual surf capability. There is a growing trend that they get together in joint ventures to encourage and motivate the surfer. Actually as at least several of the top traffic exchanges have the same owner, one can understand why.

So pretty soon after opening your email account you set up for all traffic exchange mail (remember?), the offers come rolling in.

"Its a bumper day at xxxxxxxexchange. We have teamed up with xxxxxxxx so surf 200 sites on both exchanges within the next 24 hours and you get 50 free credits"

Do not forget what I told you earlier, this industry is cut throat particularly for the big players - those you can count on your two hands compared to the hundreds if not thousands out there.

So what are you going to do - sit down and surf for another two hours for your 50 free credits? Is that the best way of getting visibility for your site? No it isn't.

Saturday 23 May 2009

OH Dear! I am being punished


You aren't going to believe this - I didn't either - but it's true. I have this site on a number of traffic exchanges - just the first page to see if any newbies were interested in learning a little more about getting traffic to their site. And know what?

One of the sites actually has stopped rotating my site for no apparent reason. I do not feel this blog on traffic exchanges is threatening any business - but obviously others think differently. Actually not a very clever move when you think about it. If I was writing absolute crap then why should they care - or are some of the things I am saying actually true and the owners of some exchanges do not want it known?.

At this stage I will not name and shame but readers it makes me all the more motivated to tell the truth and the whole truth about Traffic Exchanges and those owners so anxious to get us more traffic - or more money in their pockets!





Digg!

Friday 22 May 2009

Exposure yes - but to whom?

Like many of you I assume, I am also a fan of twitter though I am not sure where it is really going at the moment. Anyway I receive daily a digest of all tweets on "traffic exchanges" and unfortunately most of them follow the example I have just picked up:

heartbeat1 One of the biggest traffic exchanges. Huge exposure...http://tinyurl.com/pk9fr8 Monday, 18 May 2009, 11:10 am - Reply - View Tweet - Retweet - Direct Message

I do not know which traffic exchange the individual is trying to promote and that is really not the point, the point is exposure - but not to a trageted public. I mentioned this in earlier postings but I feel I have to stress again that Traffic Exchanges are a source of traffic but mainly for those wanting traffic to other Traffic Exchanges.

Do not get me wrong, I am not knocking Traffic Exchanges. They are valid in their own right and for certain purposes - but if I have a little website trying to sell antigue furnishings, I would not be too optimistic about finding customers through a Traffic Exchange.

Sunday 17 May 2009

A little off topic but do not be scammed by Vinefire

Perhaps a little off topic but it shows you the extent people will do today to get some degree of visibility for their websites or the products/services they are trying to sellon the web.





Recently a site appeared on the net called Vinefire. Basically, the idea is simple. Once every 60 seonds you can post a short text add for free. How news of the site spread so quickly through the Internet beats me but it caught on big time.

But this is where the story gets interesting. And shows how gullible many of us are. As a second step for 5 dollars you could have an additional option - earn up to $100/daily. Shortly afterwards for $20 dollars a week you could add a little symbol to your text add to make it stand out more.

And then - for $200 you could become a sponsor, meaning your text add would be sticky at the top of the page for the amout of time you bought.

Now the story becomes even more interesting - you could earn high returns for clickpping on other adverts, voting them up or down etc. The $5 initial supplementary fee allowed you to increase your earning to $100/day. How many people looking for free traffic on the Net fell for it. Thousands!

And what about payout dates - that's the interesting part - there is none. The story they sell you is that if you keep earning with them and bringing traffic, they are negotiating to sell the company and then you get all your dollars! Yeah, I bet!

Now do a search on the Net for vinefire scam and read the results - those boasting of the thousand they had made and was waiting for them have gone very - very - silent.