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.