Sorry, I am done with the TE Rat Race

[Paula van Dun]

Back to Basics, Quality Traffic!

What has happened to the Traffic Exchanges? 
Are they still delivering traffic that actually give you sign ups and sales?
Maybe, if you promote a surf for cash site but other than that.... Sad to say that the majority of TEs don't convert very well.

Many TE owners offer a lot of money for surfing thus attracting surfers that only surf for cash. If I would live in a country where a dollar is still a lot of money, I would probably do the same but....... those are not the type of surfers I want on my TE.

I really don't want surfers that surf 1000s of sites daily to earn a few cents. They burn credits from other members that get very little or nothing in return as for sign up/sales for their hard earned credits.

I would rather have 5 members surfing 50 sites every day than 1 surfing 1000.

Don't get me wrong, I am not against surf parties and small cash rewards to keep it fun but... in general I am more in favor of rewards in traffic. Traffic to promote opportunities and services that make you more than a few cents.

So I decided to do things a bit different.

The Ventrino Script allows to show member ads outside the exchange and that is exactly what I do now. I am showing member ads, both text ads and banner ads on this page. To have your ads shown all you need to do is ad your banners and text ads and be an active member. Active means you have to surf once a month (as a free member).

On this page we show text ads and banners in size 160x600, 468x60 and 125x125.
With a few exceptions this is the only page I am promoting now on other exchanges, mailers and traffic coops. Thus exposing our members text and banner ads to a huge audience.

 

Surf-Bar-Traffic promotes for you by investing money in organized surf promos to get our members ads in front of a large audience and to encourage people to join and surf our exchange. By surfing the organized parties and finding the Diamond Claim Pages and TE-Promos Bonus sites, you can earn/win cash paid out to PayPal.

We reward surfing members with extra text and banner credits. It is also possible to earn extra credits by showing SBT ads on your site(s).

The best way to earn from SBT is to bring in new members and encourage them to upgrade and/or buy ad packs. And of course indirectly by promoting your best opportunities in the surf and with banner and text ads.

We pay out all members for cash earned from upgrades/purchases from their downline.

Free members can redeem cash earned from surfing, promos and contests only for upgrades/credit packs at Surf-Bar-Traffic and other sites I own

Edited November 24, 2014 by Matt Koshko
Affilaite links not allowed

[successful1]

All traffic exchanges are definitely not created equal Paula.

 

I consider myself a "retired" clicker for credits. My experience in the past was primarily with Traffic Swarm but just couldn't justify the time I spent each day in hopes of maybe making a sale.

 

I have even been told by someone in the IM industry that he himself has a team of 5 people from India, clicking full-time for credits promoting his offers alone. Can you believe that? 'gasp'

 

I suppose since the capitalistic internet marketing world is essentially a modern day wild wild west, I shouldn't complain too much since I have the same opportunity myself to "hire" 5 Indian workers

 

to click for me

[Matt Koshko]

I have even been told by someone in the IM industry that he himself has a team of 5 people from India, clicking full-time for credits promoting his offers alone. Can you believe that? 'gasp'

 

 

 

Depending on that Internet Marketer's business model, they likely discovered the time he was investing in TEs wasn't worth the revenue, or maybe he spends his time closing deals rather than in the advertising stage.

[Jerry Iannucci]

I have even been told by someone in the IM industry that he himself has a team of 5 people from India, clicking full-time for credits promoting his offers alone. Can you believe that? 'gasp'

I suppose since the capitalistic internet marketing world is essentially a modern day wild wild west, I shouldn't complain too much since I have the same opportunity myself to "hire" 5 Indian workers

to click for me

 

And the same opportunity to be banned.  Having people surf for you violates the terms of most TEs.

 

I'd report him.  I'm sure the owner would appreciate you helping to keep his exchange free from cheaters.

[Brian Francis]

On the contrary Jerry, whilst you are correct perhaps for most cases. Just take my funny but humble experience with Traffic Exchanges as an example.

When I was very fresh to the whole Internet Marketing world and especially the likes of Traffic Exchanges - which I had never heard of before, in spite of my years of experience working in Marketing Communications...

Can you imagine the perception that formed in my mind after literally receiving hundreds, if not thousands of emails per month as an individual, and all from a single Traffic Exchange?

Yes, I truly believed that the only way anyone could possibly handle so many emails would be to have a team of “Surfers” behind them. I pictured a room of several individuals poised over a computer soley surfing TEs for credits ( I thought that was what a “Surfer” did. LOL )

Fast forward to today, I understand that the idea was more likely aimed at encouraging people to buy credits rather than surf for them. However, there is still something to be said about the value an advertiser receives from advertising via a Traffic Exchange.

I feel the ideal solution lies in the ability of reaching an audience outside of the Traffic Exchange’s membership and perhaps even working alongside search engines - But how ? I have no idea...

[rivaal]

Sure some of them still work.

 

I see sign ups from them every day.

 

I still use them and am happy to use them and am happy they are there.

[Jordan Stark]

TE sucks balls....think about the type of people that use them. Do you want those types of people as your leads (the few that you can get)?

[Guest mrclean0325]

Hmm, I have been getting leads, sign ups, and sales from TEs....I must be doing something wrong.

[captkirk]

Traffic Exchanges was the first FREE advertising method that I ha success!

 

I make sales directly promoting only the sales pages on the traffic exchanges.

 

Would you believe that I was making sales promoting only Clickbank products? 

 

I highly recommend Traffic Exchanges!

[opti]

Too many TE are owned by folks who don't understand how to pass on any educational value to their members because they themselves aren't well educated marketing strategists so they think, the majority will be happy to just keep on clicking all these redundant web pages for points till the end of their days ... ahahaha

 

If we try to reach a few of these system owners, with some alternative viral scripts they could be using themselves while educating their members how to become site owners who are hosting more valuable programs on their own web spaces, the whole TE business would experience and intellectual quality change of mega proportions!

 

Maybe this Viral Recurring Income System is a good place to start?

[jminkler]

I'd just like to add to the point that not all TE are created the same. Point in case would be these scripts -> http://www.amcswebs.com/

 

These scripts are highly prone to cheating, and it is not even hard - No team in India required - I can get on the top clicker list in minutes. 

 

The key to running a cheat free TE is the captcha - For sure it is required, and mouseover is not something that is a captcha AT ALL.  I know that most of the people that run these sites are not very knowledgeable with running websites, but these scripts provide 0 value to all involved.   

 

 

The same goes for Safe Lists for credits.  Easy to collect your credit links with no captchas.  I have collected 10's of millions of credits, doing nothing.  

 

Even if there are decent captchas, if the payout is great enough, one could even use a solver service.  

 

To date, I'd say 80% of TEs are vulnerable to some form of automation.  And yes, it is against TOS, but if you aren't greedy, nobody ever notices, or even seems to care.  (have been doing this for a decade now?)

 

Here are some hints at finding bad TE's:

1) Mouseover enabled - easy to automate

2) No captcha at login

3) "Match the picture" TE's - usually the src of the images match up, and is easy to automate the click

4) Side games with no captchas for credits - There is a pretty large TE with a "grid" game, easy to collect $$ 

5) Safelists with no captchas on credit collect link - timers are not enough

6) Older sites, that have not been updated in a decade - usually haven't updated captchas

 

But, don't Captchas discourage users? I'm sure they do, but without them the site is useless.  

 

How is all this possible?  

Using software designed to test websites (QA) that will automate the browsers just as if someone was sitting there clicking/mousing themselves.  

It's not even hard to setup.  Download a browser plugin, hit record, surf one site, copy the generated commands, paste them 100 times, and press play.  

 

But .. I have pages that try to catch the person that if they click the captcha instead of collecting the reward they get flagged for cheating!  

Not so ... even easier to catch (hint page is served from your own domain and easy to read the page code in the iframes to determine if its a page the script must react to) 

 

Safelists?

Scripts read emails, collect links to surf to, and open a new browser window for 20s, and then close.  

 

So, how do you feel about TE and Safelists now? 

 

p.s. It was nice of AMCS scripts to provide a whole list of sites that bought the script 

[jminkler]

Plus - it also looks like this very site is using tokens to "surf" their links ... with a timer ..  *sigh* 

[Darren Olander]

Plus - it also looks like this very site is using tokens to "surf" their links ... with a timer ..  *sigh* 

 

There are captchas from time to time.

[jminkler]

There are captchas from time to time.

 

But anything in place to "catch" someone not filling it out over and over?  Having captchas only sometimes, isn't really a deterrent, you have to be able to flag repetitive fail attempts - which would be difficult since most users would probably just close the window anyways if it was a pain  (high volume safelists for example)   - this one seems low flow, so should probably add them to all links.  

 

It doesn't build any trust with the advertisers to allow "free" clicks like that imho. 

[Darren Olander]

But anything in place to "catch" someone not filling it out over and over?  Having captchas only sometimes, isn't really a deterrent, you have to be able to flag repetitive fail attempts - which would be difficult since most users would probably just close the window anyways if it was a pain  (high volume safelists for example)   - this one seems low flow, so should probably add them to all links.  

 

It doesn't build any trust with the advertisers to allow "free" clicks like that imho. 

 

If they don't fill it out they don't earn credits, so if they keep opening mails it doesn't matter, they won't earn credits for opening them because they never solve the captcha. You can only continue to earn credits if you solved the captcha.