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.

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.

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.

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.