Sugar Coated Feedback Hurts
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?







