Posted by Ray White on December 22, 2010 Comments Off

It’s the second annual Traffic Exchange Christmas!

Fourteen top traffic exchanges have come together to spread some holiday cheer. There will be three traffic exchanges participating  for the first twelve days and on the last two days things are going to get a bit crazy with bigger groups and even bigger prizes.

Each day the exchanges that are involved are going to give away:

• 5 Winners of 500 Credits
• 4 Winners of 1000 Credits
• 3 Winners of 2000 Credits
• 2 Winners of $5
• 1 Winner of $10

There is nothing for you to claim, just see what exchanges are participating for the day and surf 250 sites or more in each one for your chance to win at each traffic exchange.

On the final two days there will be seven exchanges involved, in addition to the above listed prizes each exchange will also be giving away:

• 3 Winners of a top level 3 Month Upgrade
• 2 Winners of a top level 6 Month Upgrade
• 1 Winner of a top level 1 Year Upgrade

That is a truck load of prizes being given away everyday of the course of the 14 days of the Traffic Exchange Christmas but it doesn’t stop there!

All the exchanges involved are going to be getting a lot of exposure over the course of the 14 days, so during this event is the perfect time for you to get exposure for your advertisements.

We have made it even easier for you to make sure you can keep your pages in rotation through out the entire event by putting together some of the best credit deals at all 14 exchanges.

See the Traffic Exchange Christmas Blog for the schedule of all 14 traffic exchanges and the links to some very awesome Credit Specials!

We wish you a very safe and happy holiday season, and are looking forward to ringing in the new year with you!

Posted by Ray White on December 8, 2010 Comments (25)

Lately there has been some chatter among traffic exchange people about the use and effectiveness of social sites being incorporated into traffic exchange services. Since the question has been raised, a few members of Soaring4Traffic have inquired about our service and it’s lack of adding more socializing options. When I say “few”, I mean a couple.

Being so called “social” can be defined in many ways. The first traffic exchanges to add such options used chat as a means for members to communicate with each other while surfing.  My personal tracking on traffic exchanges with chat options wasn’t very good. In fact one exchange that launched in the last couple of years started out really strong.

My new subscriptions and sign ups were very good. After a couple of months they made the decision to add a chat option for members. From that point forward my own personal results were reduced by 70%.  Was that because of the chat or some other reason?  Who knows? I can only speak for myself, but my tracking indicates much less effectiveness on traffic exchanges with chat options. Hence the reason we have not added a chat option to Soaring4Traffic.

That doesn’t mean it’s not effective for others, but in my experience it was a major distraction where members basically abused the option, i.e. placing their affiliate links or bragging about their program to  all that would listen. In my opinion, it is already difficult enough to get your splash or squeeze page viewed with the respect you wish, without adding further distractions.

If used properly, traffic exchanges are already social sites in their own rite… the opportunity to add your name, photo, and encourage people to subscribe to your newsletters, therefore building a relationship which is of course necessary to truly build an online business.  Same with offline business, which is where I am most experienced. Friends buy from you, people who don’t know or don’t like you, won’t!

Now it seems that traffic exchanges are adding more social type options like FaceBook, Twitter, and other already established social sites. Nothing wrong with that, each owner has his/her ideas and should do what they feel is right for their members. My only question would be, is it necessary to try and re-invent the wheel when these well established social sites are already available?  Does it improve the results? How do you know? Does it distract from your advertising? Are you making friends to build your business or just having fun for the sake of your ego?

I only mention ego’s because sometimes I get the feeling that we forget who builds these little programs called traffic exchanges. Members of course build them. So who are the members?  Grandmother’s, Grandfather’s, working Mom’s & Dad’s, new people coming online that are searching for an easy and simple solution to advertise in order to earn a little extra income as a means of paying those ever ending bills. Maybe to eventually earn enough to quit that boring  job they only work because it’s necessary?

Now, do they have the amount of time to spend online that is required to participate in social sites? Traffic exchanges do take some time but they are so simple to use and frankly are the fastest way for anyone, especially a newbie to become known and make a name for themselves. Easy, simple, a quick way to advertise, and see their sites viewed by others.  Whether effective or not answers what direction they should take to improve results.

Is Soaring4Traffic a social site? Adding your photo and name to your splash or squeeze pages is very social in the branding arena.

This blog is another example. Offers members the opportunity to post comments with their link, name, therefore creating a back link to their site. Notice on previous posts, very very few comments when you consider that over 30,000 members have joined Soaring4Traffic.  On the other hand, an average day will create approximately 300 spam comments.  Thank goodness for Askimet.

In addition Soaring4Traffic has a FaceBook fan page.  Offers anyone and everyone the opportunity to join the fan page, post their comments. How many have done so after almost a year?  Approximately 1% of the total membership.  The link is available in every email sent out since the fan page was created. The link and facebook application is also on the main member page for all to see.

Now that percentage may seem low, but pretty sure it’s about average from what I’ve seen so far. For example the Hit Safari Fan Page and the AdKreator Fan Page have similar numbers based on membership. Actually the AdKreator fan page has a higher percentage, 1.7%, not sure about Hit Safari, just guessing.

Do you want to be social?  Above are mentioned 4 options to participate. Comment on this blog with your opinion about this post. Join the Facebook fan pages linked above and post a comment. And you could also follow me on Twitter.  Soaring4Traffic is involved with social sites, but not to the point of distraction while you’re surfing. 

Question, would you like to see Soaring4Traffic add a conference room in order to communicate with me and other members? I’ve attended several conference rooms that other exchanges and programs provide, but frankly the number of people attending are so small it hardly seems worthwhile.  In fact some are downright boring.   Let me know with your comments below. If enough people are interested we can certainly make one available.

Summary: Social sites are important for you to participate in, but only if done properly. My opinion is that Traffic Exchanges and Social sites are separate entities yet both very important. Does mixing them together dilute the results?

Social sites can be very time consuming. For example I should post more often to this blog, make more comments and posts on my facebook and twitter accounts, but frankly I either forget or don’t feel I have time. Or maybe it’s just that I don’t have enough to say?  lol

Now it’s your turn, let me know what YOU think!

Ray White

Posted by Ray White on August 18, 2010 Comments (4)

Below is an article just posted today by Justin Ledvina, my friend and partner in  AdKreator.  This coming from a person who really doesn’t get too involved in using traffic exchanges, but quite honestly, he said it very well. Something we have all tried to explain in our own words in the past and continue to stress to our membership. See his article below…

Here is my disclaimer before I start pulling out what little hair I have left on my head. I am not am not a professional surfer and I’ve never kreated the perfect traffic exchange advertisement. The only reason I ever surf is to see what people are advertising, how they are advertising and a few other minor things associated with the traffic exchange.

I do this so I can stay up to date on my design tactics for AdKreator splashpages. I find it far more efficient to purchase my traffic exchange credits and spend the time I would be surfing on improving my business. My suggestion to anyone who wants to make a full time living in this industry (for a lack of a better word) is to make room for a monthly advertising budget. I’ll take the time to explain my reasons for this in my next article as to not distract from the main topic of this post.

I woke up bright eyed and bushy tailed this morning so I figured it would be a good idea to do some surfing research. First site I decided to surf was Sweeva for a few reasons, they allow members to comment on specific ads and a few days ago Jon Olson said to me the best designs on Sweeva are from AdKreator. I was excited to get surfing and seeing all these kreative ads people are using to promote their products and even better what others are saying.

Right from the get go my head started to shake in disappointment, every page I surfed was never meant to be viewed in a traffic exchange and even worse the comments were generic “Great page”, “Awesome!!!”, “Keep it up!” and a ton of comments with just smiley faces. Not a single comment with any type of suggestions, no lies on this, it wasn’t until I surfed 37 pages that I came across an advertisement designed to be viewed in a traffic exchange. The design itself wasn’t very good, to be honest the design was horrible but at least this person had the basic concept of how to advertise in traffic exchanges.

First thing I wanted to do was help this person get better conversions on their design. This is why Sweeva is so cool because without even leaving the surfing page I could add my feedback. The comment I left went something like this “You’re on the right track with your design. I would recommend to add a big bold headline to the top and change the submit button to something bigger with color and change word Submit to something like – Give Me The Details”.

Notice my feedback starts by giving them positive encouragement, this allows the reader to know my comments have good intentions without sugar coating my opinion. It then goes on to suggest the changes I would make to their design, in this part I make sure my message is direct, easy to understand and as short as possible. This avoids creating any confusion or overwhelming the reader and allows others in the community to build from there.

Many Kudos to the Sweeva team for bringing a feedback system to a traffic exchange. I see a huge opportunity for advertisers properly using it to rapidly increase their incomes and stick with this industry for the long haul. The problem is I didn’t come across a single comment with any sort of suggestions or opinion, it was like a giant hug feast.  Can you see the potential damage this can have to a knew traffic exchange advertiser? When they fail to make any kind of profit and all the feedback tells them they’re doing it right the conclusion becomes traffic exchanges are worthless.

Some of them move their advertising budget to a different medium never to be heard from again by us. While others take it another step by blogging and writing about their negative experience. In reality who’s to blame them for telling others about how this advertising medium didn’t work for them. Yes some of the blame lays of them for not doing enough research but some of the blame comes to us for letting them think they were doing it right.

This not only hurts people new to traffic exchange advertising but even seasoned advertisers like myself. When I login to check feedback on my splashpage and everyone of them is a generic “Nice Page” I’m not getting the information I need to better my designs. This hurts my business by not maximizing the effectiveness of my designs, in turn this leads to lost income. The less income I make the less I have to spend on advertising and development of my product. That’s lost income to the traffic exchanges and now they’re in the same boat I was in, it becomes a vicious circle.

Eventually this trickles down to us the happy little surfer. We love the prizes we win and the scraps we are thrown to keep us happy and to keep us surfing. We’re the ones who benefit from the programs and tools that are developed using advertisers money. It’s in our best interest to help advertisers successfully use traffic exchanges because with a stronger traffic exchange economy leads to better prizes, better games, better tools and better profit potential for us.

Successful advertisers go out spreading the word about this hidden little gem of an advertising system. Leading to more advertisers wanting to get in before their competitors do. Imagine if advertisers were throwing wads of cash and fighting over views like they do on Google. Traffic Exchange owners would do almost anything to keep us surfing so they could meet the rising demand. Heck some owners do almost anything now to get us to surf never mind if this became reality.

I challenge you to become a leader and change the mindset. Start today by logging into to Sweeva and leaving feedback users can better their advertising from. Not only are you helping the advertiser you’ll also become an authority within the community. People will see how you’re making a difference and they will mimic you in hopes to be like you.

Don’t be afraid to say what you think about the page as long as it’s polite, honest and professional. Sweeva was built for this and people like me want as much feedback as we can get, especially the feedback that makes suggestions. I rather read 100 comments of what people think I’m doing wrong then 100 comments telling me great job. My ego has never been able to feed my kids so I still rely on the green paper.

I’m going to leave you with two questions.

Are you a take action leader or do you follow the crowd? and why?

Justin Ledvina

Posted by Ray White on August 13, 2010 Comments (1)

Surfing traffic exchanges forces me to plan and focus.

I know that sounds funny, but it’s true. I can get lost for hours on the exchanges if I don’t decide ahead of time what I want to get done. If there are contests I want to participate in, if I need to login to assign credits, or I want to do some quick and dirty research, I have to schedule the time. I have to decide what to do where. More on the research part below.

I can spy on my competition.

Just 15 minutes of surfing and I can see what everybody else is up to. Splash pages tell me the new promotions at other exchanges. I see some great opt-in pages made with AdKreator. I can see which program is “hot” with traffic exchange members by the sheer number of sites I see promoting them. That can tell me a lot about what traffic exchange members are interested in, and what they are willing to spend money on.

I can collect stuff for my swipe files.

Let me explain swipe files. It’s not for copying other people. That’s so wrong on so many levels. Swipe files are for storing ideas that I can adapt or make better. The file can be as simple as a Notepad file that you copy and paste stuff in. You would be amazed if you knew how many great programs were created by people who saw something and said, “I can do that better.”

I find all the up and coming marketers that I want to keep an eye on.

A lot of people get their start on the traffic exchanges. I want to know who is coming online and what they are doing. There may be people worth getting to know, or at least to keep an eye on.

You can learn a lot by surfing the traffic exchanges. I know I do.

Posted by Ray White on August 9, 2010 Comments Off

Every time I see a “free download” link, I chuckle to myself, because I know it really isn’t free. I am going to click the link and be sent to an opt-in form. To get the free download, I have to fill out the form with my name and best email address. Cost in dollars, zero. Cost in time … well I guess I’ll find out after I get the free download and see how many new emails a day I get in my inbox for the trouble.

Once time is “spent,” it’s gone. You can’t get it back. You know the saying, “Time is money.” Time spent opening, sorting, and deleting email is time that could be spent on other things. Things that could make you money. Activities that you could be sharing with your family and friends. Or just plain old “me time” to watch a movie or take a well-deserved nap.

Let’s talk about free traffic exchange accounts. Free advertising is great. It is how most of us start out online. But after we join a few (hundred) exchanges, we get into a bit of a pickle. We find out that we can’t possibly surf all of our exchanges effectively. It’s too time consuming. So then we start picking and choosing, but that cuts down on our exposure. Less exposure could mean less income. Now what?

Just like you budget your money, you also need to budget your time. You want to use your time wisely. Think about how you want to spend your time. Personally, I love surfing traffic exchanges. I like discovering what people are doing with splash page design. But I have other things that I need to do. I have programs to run. I have blogs to write. I have new projects in the works. Then there are my personal obligations to family and friends. Oh yes, sleeping and eating are also on my daily to-do list.

I bet you are in a similar situation. Everyone needs to figure out how to schedule themselves. Here are my suggestions for quick and dirty time management.

• Figure out how much time you have to devote to your online business
• Break down the activities that you do to promote yourself (surfing traffic exchanges, writing to safelists, writing and distributing articles, blogging, forum posting, etc.)
• Don’t forget to figure in time spent on administrative stuff like email and Skype
• Then there’s the educational stuff like conferences and webinars
• Don’t forget time for networking. You never know where your next big opportunity might come from.

You will be shocked when you realize how much you really do for your business. Now comes the hard part. You need to take a hard look at what you do and decide if you are effectively using your time. Where can you cut the time costs of your business? Ask around for time-saving tips from more experienced people. And cut the “free fat”: Track your results and delete the free accounts that aren’t getting you sales or signups. That’s the kind of free that you can’t afford.

Posted by Ray White on August 2, 2010 Comments Off

Several traffic exchange owners have been dealing with a particular person who refuses to follow the rules. He, as he goes by a male name, joins traffic exchanges multiple times a day with different email addresses and surfs and surfs and surfs. Sounds great so far, except for the multiple part, since we all know that every traffic exchange allows only one account per member. The problem is with the URLs that he submits. They are framebreakers, and they set off anti-virus software. We keep suspending him and his sites, and he just comes right back and does it again, and again, and again. He is a nuisance for owners. The real pain, however, is to the other members, who send hits to his URLs and get back heaven knows what on their computers. And all the surfing that he does just wastes other members’ credits, because he is not looking to buy or join anything.

So what do we do to solve the problem? He uses a new email address every time he joins, so banning his email address won’t work. His IP address changes, too, so we can’t ban that. He has made it very hard to keep only him out. And let’s face it, where there’s a will, there’s a way, and he seems very determined to keep up this silly behavior.

We can cast a wider net by banning whole blocks of IP addresses. But then that blocks out a lot of innocent people. Seems a bit drastic to keep out one bad apple.

Owners do what we can to keep our exchanges clean. Some of us are lucky enough to have good support people. Some of us are blessed with wacky sleep needs and are able to stay online for a majority of the day. For the rest of us, please help us out and send in those site reports so we can get rid of the garbage. We are always grateful to hear from our members.

Posted by Ray White on July 16, 2010 Comments (2)

Most of you may be aware that Paula (Hit Safari) and I have chosen to sponsor two children in need through the Children International organization. This is a commitment we undertook in January of ’09 and remain committed too. Children International, a well established and reputable organization allows anyone to get involved easily.

We felt that our two high traffic volume sites would bring more awareness to the millions of children around the world in need of basic day to day needs. Children in need hold a special place in our hearts for sure!

The mere $22 per month provides basic needs for our sponsored children that would otherwise not be available to them. Of course our commitment goes beyond the minimum. In the past we have run special promo days to allow members of both exchanges an opportunity to add more funds by surfing xxx number of pages. And we have sent extra funds on special occasions to help improve their lives even more.

Chester, the child I sponsor lives in the Philippines. You can read more about Chester Here! Chester will be 11 years old on August 12th, 2010 and we thought it would be a great time to do something extra to make his birthday more memorable. We have already sent some funds to ensure that, but we also wondered if members of our exchanges would like to contribute as well, to make this a SUPER special day.

Paula’s sponsored child, Joshua will be 11 on November 13th, 2010!

No, we are not asking you to send us money, however we did come up with a simple solution for you to contribute to these children. You can use the cash in your accounts to contribute… here’s how.

For Chester, our Soaring4Traffic sponsored child, send me a support ticket with your username or referral ID, how much of your account cash you wish to contribute (minimum $1). We will reduce your cash by whatever amount you wish to contribute and add it to the total amount to be sent when all are completed.

We will then list your name and amount contributed on Chester’s page, unless you want to remain anonymous, in which case we would certainly respect your wishes. Request to be anonymous in your support ticket if so desired.

For Joshua, Hit Safari’s sponsored child, go to this link for all the details of how to contribute. Joshua Contributions.

We will keep a running total of all contributions posted and send the total amount with a receipt posted to verify funds have been sent. Cut off time to send your request is Monday, midnight CDT, July 19th, 2010!

Please understand, no one, and I mean no one is obligated to contribute your hard earned commissions or cash in your account. Giving is a free will and only you can decide if you wish to do so. However, with that said, we would love to send Chester a nice Birthday wish!

Member’s have responded, to date we have $45.05 for Chester’s Birthday. Details posted on Chester’s Page!

Posted by Ray White on July 5, 2010 Comments (3)

Lately, I’ve been unsubscribing from rather than subscribing to lists. Like you, I have a lot of email to go through. And of course, I asked for (most of) it. If you’ve been reading my posts, you know that I am a big advocate of using the delete button when going through the inbox. Now I want to talk about using the unsubscribe link.

It used to be that signing up for a list meant that you could look forward to an email series with some good content, information that you could use. Nowadays, you can pick up a free ebook to give away to people for their best email address, which is great, but then what? It seems now that giving up your email address just opens yourself to someone who will send you ebook after ebook after ebook, and never takes the time to develop a relationship with the list members. Every email message is, “Check out this link.” To me, that’s just lazy marketing.

Now, I don’t need your complete life story. I don’t want to know what you had for lunch. I would, however, like some inclination of why I should listen to your recommendation. Give me a couple of crumbs to let me know that you know what you are talking about. You turned me on to one ebook, and I thank you for that. But when your next email, and the next one, and the next, say nothing more than go to this link and watch the money roll in, well I have to start wondering about you. And that unsubscribe link is starting to look mighty tempting.

I’ve written a previous post about affiliate marketing. It is a topic that is near and dear to my heart. Since that post, I’ve gone one step further. Justin Ledvina and I have put together an entire ebook on the subject. It’s called Affiliate Marketing Revealed. Among other things, it discusses list building and providing quality content for your list members.

If you look over to the right side menu bar, you will see a navy blue banner ad for Affiliate Marketing Revealed.  Yes, it’s another ebook. Yes, you can get a free copy. Yes, it has information that you need and may want to share with other marketers. What sets it apart? It’s from me. I hope that, by now, that means something to you.

Posted by Ray White on June 28, 2010 Comments (3)

When you are surfing the traffic exchanges, are you ever tempted to click on any of the hyperlinks on the sites that you see? Well, I most certainly hope you are! Here’s something to think about though. When you click the link, do you want the link to open in a new window, or within the surf frame? My personal vote is for a new window.

If the link opens in a new window, then surfing is not interrupted. The visitor can easily check out what you have to offer when she is finished surfing. Let’s face it, when we are surfing, we have a goal in mind, and we want to reach it as soon as possible. We also don’t want to miss any good opportunities. Opening hyperlinks in a new window lets busy surfers “save” the opportunities that they want to take a closer look at. They can continue surfing on their schedule, then go back to the pages that they want to spend some time on. No one wants to rush a business decision.

Another thing to consider, especially if you are using an affiliate page, is whether the hyperlink goes to a page that will break the surf frame. You aren’t breaking any terms of service if a link on your submitted URL goes to a frame breaker, but it really does mess up a surfer’s day when she clicks a link and loses an exchange. It ruins the rhythm of surfing. And it kind of sours a person on the offer that upset her surfing schedule.

A simple thing to do is test the links on any pages that you want to rotate in a traffic exchange. Click on every link that is on a page that you are considering to add to your traffic exchange account and see if the link opens in a new tab or page. If they do open in a new window, great! If not, and you don’t want that, then consider making your own splash page for the opportunity to use in the traffic exchanges.

By the way, did you know that in adKreator (that green box over on the right side of this page), when you create a splash page, that you can set your link to open in a new window? Simply check the box next to “Open URL in New Window,” then click the blue Apply button. No HTML coding on your part required.

Posted by Ray White on June 24, 2010 Comments Off

The other day I was happily surfing away in my favorite manual traffic exchanges when I came across a cool-looking splash page. It was very simple. Just an eye-catching graphic image, no text. Not even hyperlinked text. I went to click on the image, and nothing. It wasn’t clickable. I opened the page in a new tab and saw what the problem was. The URL pointed not to a web page, but to an image. I could click a thousand times on that image, but since the image is not linked to anything, clicking will get me nowhere.

I’m writing this post for the very green newbies that are coming online everyday. Please, if you are an old hand at internet-speak and traffic exchanges, I mean you no disrespect.

Web pages and online images have web addresses so that people who know them can see them anytime by putting the address in the address bar of a web browser. The web address, or URL, ends with a “dot-something.” The URLs that end with a “dot-jpg” or a “dot-gif” or a “dot-png” point to images. When you submit URLs for rotation in a traffic exchange, make sure that the URL does NOT end in jpg, gif, or png. Those URLs will not get you any new signups, leads, or purchases if they rotate as is in a traffic exchange. Images need to be linked to your lead capture page, or your affiliate page, or your website, for you to get any results.

The place to put image URLs in a traffic exchange is in your banners. Most traffic exchanges allow members to submit banner ads that are shown on the surf bar and throughout the pages of the website. For banner ad submission, you use 2 URLs, one for the image (which should be 468 pixels wide and 60 pixels tall, because that is the size of the box that the image will be fitted into) and one for the web page that will be linked to the banner image. The traffic exchange script will take care of the linking for you.

What does linking the web page to the image do? See the green box on the right in the side menu bar that says “adKreator”? That box, or image, is linked to my program AdKreator. When you click on that image, you will be taken to the AdKreator site. If the image was not linked, then clicking on the box would do nothing.

Incidently, AdKreator is a great place to easily make web pages with kewl graphics that are linked to your web page of choice. Just sayin.