Do your own due diligence
You’ve seen the ads on the traffic exchanges. Those products that promise you will have thousands of followers within 1 week of purchase. The services that will make you $1,021 in seven days. Splash pages that scream, “Pay just 5 bucks and get your own ready-made business.” No one would make promises like that unless they can deliver, right? No one in their right mind would believe such outlandish claims, would they?
Traffic exchange owners agonize over banning specific ads. We want the best for our members, no doubt about that. But is it really our decision to make for you?
Banning sites open traffic exchange owners to claims of libel and slander from the owners of the banned products and services. If we ban some sites, but not the one that cheated you, our member, then we can could be found liable for your loss. Traffic exchanges have members from all over the world. Some business practices and models are legal in some places, but not legal in others. Banning specific ads also smacks of censorship.
Traffic exchanges have hundreds to thousands of members, each with at least one site submitted for rotation. Traffic exchange owners do not have the time to investigate every single program and product submitted to them. Traffic exchange owners do not have the resources to determine which practices are legal where in the world. Traffic exchanges are advertising venues, not filters.
Traffic exchange owners agreed as a whole to ban investment auto surfs because we watched one suck in thousands of members, take their money, then collapse and disappear. We could not, in good conscience, let that happen again if we could help it. As for other services and products, we usually go by how “traffic-exchange-friendly” their web sites are. The framebreakers, the Live Agent sites, all the things that interrupt surfing, it’s a no-brainer to kick those web pages out. But something that we might think is a really bad idea, you might think is a golden opportunity.
So what does that mean for traffic exchange members? You, as the CEO of your business, the captain of your life, must do your own due diligence.
When you consider a new opportunity, do some digging. Who is behind the program? What is their track record? Do you have the resources that you need to make a success of the opportunity for you? How does it fit into your overall business? Do you have the time needed to put into using the product? Do you understand how the program works? Is support available? Does the payment structure make sense to you?
Seriously, you don’t really want me to decide what you can and cannot join, do you?
March 4th, 2010 at 12:01 am
[...] Go to Source [...]
March 4th, 2010 at 5:03 am
Hi Ray,
This is a great post which begs the question, where do you stand on ptp, ptr and/or ptc sites?
These are bonafide money makers for some folks however others have been ripped off by them. There are some reputable ones and others that are just plain sleezy.
The same can be said for products and services however like you said who are we as owners to say what is right or not within reason?
Thanks for your insight and where you stand on this matter,
Mark Edward Brown – Proud Owner of TrafficDynamite.com
March 4th, 2010 at 9:11 am
Ray,
I concur with your entry. Lately, it seems to me that an additional traffic exchange consideration is the “blackballing” by various administrators of traffic exchange websites of their competitors.
For a long time now I thought we were all in this together in friendly competition for the advertising and referral traffic the exchanges produced. To see the forums bashing admins and their business practices for their beliefs is not good for the traffic exchange industry. So, some of the traffic exchange leaders band together at the expense of another peer. What does this accomplish?
Viewing these practices as an outsider ( and not a traffic exchange admin) I now see the need to review the websites I see available to me before I join and surf. It is a real shame for us all to see these negative issues arise in the traffic exchange industry.
No traffic exchange owner or administrator should wield such a long sword as to make decisions that affect so many. If the issue continues the collapse of the traffic exhanges as an industry could occur due to governmental intervention.
This gives me just cause to continue my support of PowerSurfCentral as my main traffic exchange venue since the values of that group are superior to competitors in the industry. In other words, just keep on truckin’.
March 4th, 2010 at 4:42 pm
Hi Ray,
I’m back again, Gary brings up a good point about forum bashing etc which is a reason why I dont visit them much anymore.
Gary, I need guys like you to tell Ray and Paula to add Traffic Dynamite to Power Surf Central!
Long live the click!
Mark Edward Brown
March 5th, 2010 at 3:29 pm
Thanks for posting and I have to agree totally – most of us are put inbetween a rock and hard place – just in the time that I have been online – I can’t believe all the changes I have seen and most are not for the better.
Lately, I’m even seeing site owners promising money that they can pay and then having to close down because they can afford to pay their members. It’s like all the things that are going on hurt the good and honest site owners also as there are some of us that are trying very hard to grow their sites with hard work and honesty – and then you get these people that don’t care come along.
It’s very disappointing that all this goes on and I don’t like seeing all these splash pages promising things I know are NOT going to happen. It’s really sad with the economy the way it is right now – that there are so many, many, many people out there just using others.