John Bell

Topic replies were supposed to work also but I misunderstood the installation instructions, you should receive them from replies now also.

You've figured it out I'm glad that your friend was able to help you "See the light" ..what you explained is in a nutshell the exact same thing that is focused on in Traffic ProfitPro.. I explain a lot of the technical reasons why, but if I put it all here then the site would have no reason for existing, lol.... put simply it's a term called "effective frequency" which is how many times your ad must be viewed before someone takes action.. and it can be a pretty significant volume, the more you can shrink your focus the easier it becomes to see results... a lot of people jump in the water without checking if it's warm, and never find results because they are working so inefficiently.. just a few little tweaks to a person's strategy can make a world of difference... Full Disclosure: I own Traffic ProfitPro so the references to it are obviously self serving, but I do like you guys enough not to make it a link

I believe they can be effective, probably not as much as they once were, but I think they can be used as like an "OTO" to get someone's attention and create urgency.. As far as Traffic Exchanges.. most I don't think allow them, or will allow one. On my sites I have them not allowed according to my terms, however I generally will approve them, and only remove them if there is a complaint.. but I mean at my most popular traffic exchange there are generally 3,000-4,000 ads in the system and about 5,000 unique surfers so when someone has an ad that has an exit pop-up, as long as it doesn't happen all the time, it won't reach most people frequently enough to even be an issue - so I let a lot of that stuff slide.

I disagree, a co-op is a co-operative, everyone working together. It's the same as a traffic exchange (the original name for Traffic Swirl was traffic co-op, because that's what it is; people working together). An Advertising Co-Op would be, three of us get our businesses together and pitch on an advertising and split it... but when you're buying traffic from most of these sites that call themselves co-ops, that's not really what you're doing... I guess in the long term it is because they are pooling the resources to buy advertising at a lower cost, but that's sort of a spin.. they're really just selling you advertising and outsourcing it's delivery, a lot of them even are using their referral credits so they're not even really buying the advertising to begin with, just reselling you their traffic they have for free. I'm sure I wasn't the first to come up with the idea of the viral co-op, but I hadn't seen it before when I created Explosive Traffic and I don't think anyone can argue it's effectiveness. I refer to the site as a viral co-op because of two reasons - one being the definition I provided at the beginning of this post in that it is people combining their efforts -- you surf there, i'll surf here, and we'll split our ads. In it's most basic form, that is why I created this site to begin with. I knew that if I could even get 1 other person on board - then we could each double our reach.. that was why I created it, and that mission is why it remains successful. The viral aspect obviously being that it spreads.. your individual advertising exponentiates your reach because it is human by nature. If you're trying to buy a "co-op" share of someone's advertising then of course you are at their will, and most people could advertise more effectively on their own - but you're paying for that convenience... At the end of the day I would consider the viral co-ops as true co-ops, as well as Matt's example, that is a true co-op because it is the people who are working together, the kind of co-ops that you are referencing, and I've heard your argument a hundred times, isn't really a co-op.. you are in theory pooling with other people to get a deal, but you're not actually pooling with anybody -- you're buying advertising directly from an agent, regardless of how that advertising is delivered - the reality remains that no matter how you paint it, you're buying traffic. Period.

I can see why you would think that, I often too wonder how they are able to bring advertising results, yet they still do. My business generated $250,000 in sales last year, and other than a few safelists, virtually all of my paid advertising was in Traffic Exchanges.. so although as an advertiser sometimes it does defy logic, and I think know there are some traffic exchanges that will never give me a return, and some ads that I can never get a return on, in general it is still effective. This year my paid advertising has expanded beyond just Traffic Exchanges because I want to reach a larger audience, however I still am unable to beat the ROI I get from Traffic Exchanges, however I do also attribute most of this to the fact that the majority of the advertising I am getting is free from referrals, so my actual advertising cost is much lower than if I had to pay for every visitor outright. To be frank, most traffic exchanges will not provide the value if you spent the money on the credits, a lot of them have adopted a business model of creating a community and connections, using the advertising platform as the vehicle - and have been able to provide a lot more value to the members through this than the advertising itself, and a lot of traffic exchange users are paying for the things that come along with being in that club, rather than buying the advertising itself. As far as everybody promoting the same offers, that's true for everything. 99% of TV Commercials are the exact same thing, 99% of previews for movies are the same format.. most of the criticisms I hear about Traffic Exchanges, while generally valid, really apply to paid advertising as a whole. Regarding people mindlessly clicking and ignoring your message --- good, your message isn't for those people. Let them click mindlessly for years and get nowhere, they aren't there for you, and that's ok. How many bottles of Tide laundry detergent do you think a single Tide commercial sells? Sitting at your home, watching TV.. nowhere near a situation where you are actually looking to purchase Laundry Detergent, and most likely you already have a favorite anyway. MOST people are going to ignore it, and that's ok. You don't need MOST people to react to your advertising.. you really only need a couple people who your product REALLY speaks to get interest, then let the power of your product do the rest. Finding that person who responds to your ad is way better than trying to get everyone to respond - because people who don't need it and respond, don't stay. People who need it and respond, tell their friends. Big Picture : There's really only two ways to market a company that are semi-viable. 1) Content Marketing -- creating content that your customer values, providing value in good faith that the trust relationship being built will lead to sales. Content Marketing is a very long-term play given the nature of the methods it is found - search. 2) Paid Advertising -- Buying up ads to get your message out. The Paid Advertising is a short-term play, you buy an ad and it shows up right now. Both strategies really work hand-in-hand. Content marketing is of course going to be more effective, but it'll take 2-3 years to really scale, to have enough content that enough people are coming to you. The major downfall of Paid Advertising is that it is a business of interrupting people, and people generally don't like to be interrupted. Traffic Exchanges have a distinct advantage in Paid Advertising in that it's not actually interrupting anyone, when a person surfs they know exactly what they are getting themselves in to, they know they are about to look at an ad - and choose to do just that, so the traditional failure of Paid Advertising -- which is interrupting people who don't want to be interrupted -- is why Traffic Exchanges have remained effective. Another reason why they remain successful and popular is simply that you can do it for free or very low cost, a lot of new businesses just don't have the budget to blow $3,000 on facebook ads just during the learning curve of figuring out how to make an ad that works. These two methods can work very much in tandem, and the people who combine them are the one's who dominate in Traffic Exchanges, and it works simply by creating materials you would for Content Marketing, and advertising that content. Knowing that most people who are using them are beginning at business and aren't running on their 4th round of angel investors getting a $8 Million valuation, you can narrowly understand who your audience is. The next step is to create content specifically for them. Think about the problems and solutions that you might have had when you first started your business.. you needed things like hosting, an autoresponder, and to expand your advertising efforts to increase your reach. Now you take the content marketing approach of creating meaningful content regarding those subjects, the most effective I've found is creating a full-fledged membership site built around the topic, and offer training and consulting on how to do it effectively. The trick though is that it really needs to be free, valuable content.. allow the sales to happen on the back end for what you are REALLY trying to advertise.. this website or email series needs to be specifically designed to give information, provide value, and build trust.. so that when you do get that point where you work for a purchase, the barriers will have already been dropped, and they can purchase with confidence. You're at an advantage in Traffic Exchanges in that you already have the viewers permission, people build entire sales funnels around the concept of trying to get someone to tell you it's ok for you to try and sell to them, but with a Traffic Exchange they gave you that permission as soon as they hit the surf button -- they KNOW when they click that button that they are going to be sold to, and they did it anyway, so now that you have your foot in the door, you can really turn up the volume on the value level, and begin building trust... providing free valuable content will build that trust, and using paid advertising ramps up the distribution of that content, and creates sort of a one-two punch. You're right in that Traffic Exchanges won't work for most people... and neither will facebook ads, twitter ads, adsense, or putting a banner on a blog. However when you give that sort of specific, long-tail content that brings direct value to the audience you want - then Traffic Exchanges do work.. and so does facebook ads, twitter ads, adsense, and putting a banner on a blog.

Facebook messages generally get filtered out unless you are a friend on there. It's not really designed to me a 'mailer' ..it's a tool to help you manage the mailers you use.. it does have the mailing aspect but that's not the primary feature and is designed more as 'pay to play' advertising tool. If you have any questions you can ask in support, here is fine too, or facebook fi you add me as a friend I'll see the messages, there's also a skype group on the help page that you're welcome to ask questions in as well, or twitter

Hi Joel. I can assure you I have answered every support ticket received within 24 hours What was the ticket regarding? I'm happy to help. If you don't have credits then your mailing won't go to anyone. When you receive emails you get tokens, you can use the tokens in the marketplace to get advertising. You also get a token every day that you log in. The facebook group doesn't exist, I'm not sure how you found it It was used for beta testing, only beta testers were added and it hasn't been used for several years.

All of it, I pretty much still do it as a hobby / for fun even though it's been my full time income for a few years... I just prefer to do it when nothing else is going on, but when I started it was definitely every minute every day possible... I've been sick this week and have been able to just do my daily stuff an hour or so a day, so that's probably all I really NEED to work, but I'd rather put in more time then watch tv or any other mindless things so usually if I'm just at home doing nothing - I'm working, which ends up being probably half a day or more.. though admittedly most of it is just chatting with people lol

I would do a free something to generate opt-ins, but nothing else. Giving away freebies on your site that you want people to get in and ultimately purchase things is not a very good route to go, from my experience.. ..but giving them a free guide on how to do something as the hook for opting in to your email list - then providing value to that list and later advertising that site you want them to get in and ultimately purchase things, can be very effective -- you've used the freebie to get them in (the hook) but then once they were in you've built a trust relationship by providing legitimate, actionable, value; so when they get to the point in the funnel that you want them to begin purchasing, that barrier is much smaller because they already trust you and your judgement.

I've had the total opposite result, many of the smaller mailers for me are producing click thru rates so small It's hard to even justify the time of mailing there, as low as 4 or 5 clicks per email.. I can get that from posting a link in twitter or spamming facebook, lol.. with the flood of LFMVM's coming in it seems to me (from the outside looking in) that there are a lot of people coming into the industry who just don't 'get it' and it is obvious in the results at their generic ABC mailer they launch.

It's hell when you start a mailer because you really have no idea how many people are actually going to open emails, or how many are going to send.. how many are going to upgrade (getting free credits essentially with each mailing) and reducing these numbers is way more difficult than increasing them... having a low credit rate from the start may seem demotivating but I think it's a good strategy for long term success to start low and adjust up if needed

Just echoing the other comments here... many people use tracking to determine which advertising sources work better but the real key of tracking is customizing more responsive advertising... like they mentioned using a lead capture page is essential, not only is it EASIER for the people you are advertising to (they just put in their email address and keep going, don't even have to leave the page or stop what they are doing) but provides much greater opportunities for follow up.

But you still can't Beat Gnana!! Nothing personal to you, lol, Gnana has been a long time supporter of my products so very happy to see his mailer doing well But I gotta get mine back on the list, that's pretty disappointing

It's just the nature of the beast... low entry points means low risk.. anyone can spend a couple hundred bucks to open a mailer, and if it doesn't unlock the secret to instant riches like the sales page told them they did, it's easy to just walk away because of such a little investment...

I agree 100% and You see it a lot now on social media with forced attempts to go viral... I've seen a lot of trends like using phrases like 'secret trick' 'this strange method to..' 'you won't believe what happens...' You can learn a lot by reading just the headlines of the most commonly shared media on social sites

Because it reaches a point where time invested is of greater value than the cost of the credits. However personally, the best investment is not clicking myself nor buying credits - it's getting referrals to do the clicking and earning credits from their surfing. Free credits without clicking... this is, in my opinion, what makes traffic exchanges such valuable resources over any other advertising medium. A year or two of work building referrals to return several years of free advertising (not only free advertising, but also getting commissions)

Holding payments is pointless in most cases.. I see a lot of sites hold payments for 14 days when they don't offer refunds.. the chargeback period for paypal is well beyond 14 days so why are you even holding it? If you are holding payments to prevent chargebacks then have it be the actual time that chargebacks can be processed, or you're really not saving your business any money by doing it, you're just slowing down affiliates. Also if your return rates are that high that you really have to hold every single payment so you don't lose money, then that is a big red flag for me. ..that being said I really don't care, hold them for a year if you want - as long as I get it I'm happy, I'm not in immediate need so whatever is best for your business, go for it.. but have it at least make sense. Honestly I don't really care about any of those things other than that I do ultimately get rewarded for my efforts. If I'm leveraging my time, energy, and reputation to advertise a product then I deserve to get paid what is owed -- I don't care if it comes from paypal, check, or is paid in precious metals every 3rd year on the 12th friday -- It really doesn't matter to me as long as it is clearly stated beforehand, remains consistent, and actually happens.

One of my most valuable things I've learned from experience is that some things just have to be learned from experience You can tell someone all day that something some things work better than others, but it often times takes the user experiencing it themselves before they really believe you - just give them the best tools you can, and a pillow to catch their fall, be waiting there to help and support them when they fail.

Depends on their ability to engage their users.. we have short attention spans and lots of options - if people get bored they are going to move on -- the value of the advertising is based mostly on the quality of the traffic they provide (ROI) ..so it really varies on a case by case basis.. some provide very poor quality traffic, some provide high quality... How easy is it to cheat? How engaging is it? Are the viewers bored, or interested? Who is the audience, and what is their motivation for using that service?

Guess it depends on what you mean by 'Clutter' For me it's the opposite.. if there's not enough going on to keep someone on the page, then they're not going to even see your ad (tab surfing, watching netflix while surfing, using forums while surfing ) Gotta keep people engaged with the site, and if your ad isn't doing it then the site will need to step in and do it for you, or else what's the point? Everyone DVR's TV and Fast Forwards through commercials because they are bored and not engaged, same thing applies to TE's.

I get pretty even results between TE's and Mailers, though I have also a lot of time invested into mastering advertising on TE's.. Mailers are definitely more effective for new people, there is a lot more grace and room for error when creating your ads.. with Traffic Exchanges you need to be more targeted and thoughtful of your audience to pull the same results, though they both serve different functions and each serve them very well, I couldn't say one is better than the other (not just because I own both types) because they both have their place and I wouldn't advertise without making sure to address both mediums. While Mailers do seem to do very well for acquisition, traffic exchanges are gold when it comes to reminding people to come back to your site

Thanks for the mention Evelyn

Auto Responders can get very expensive, very fast, and the worse part is that the more expensive they get, equally harder it becomes to move (list growing).. When it comes to cost though if you aren't getting a full return (regardless of price) then you are doing it wrong lol, lists are very effective as we all already know.. When it comes to auto responders, for me, deliver-ability is the top priority, second by filtering tools... other than that the price doesn't matter too much.. it doesn't matter how cheap the AR is if your emails aren't arriving, thankfully I've had very good luck with Traffic Wave and the price is nothing compared to some of the other prettier ones..but like I said, #1 is deliver-ability, I'd pay 10x-20x more than I am if the deliver-ability started to drop, though realistically now I mostly just send from my own scripts and use the actual AR list as a back-up and for automated mailings

You say that as though those things are exclusive of each other?

I wasn't talking about your site.. If you don't think my sites are effective then you must not be tracking, because my results and the feedback I get every day show otherwise. and spam is any unsolicited advertising, doesn't have to be bulk lol