Tim Linden Blog

Come Join The ReLaunch Party

Tim — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:29:17 +0000

Well today is the day, 3PM TEtoolbox is being ReLaunched. But you’re not going to be able to signup and see what’s new till then, and you’ll have to wait till you get a link from one of our JVs!

That being said – you can join us in a LIVE stream. It’ll get really cool at 3PM because it’ll be streaming the new user signups LIVE!!

Check out the Relaunch Party

If you are already a member you won’t see the new stuff till then. Again, you won’t be able to join till 3PM and you’ll need a JV’s referral link to get in!

Did you ever want to have a tracker on your domain?

Tim — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:45:32 +0000

With email deliverability, the links you use in your emails can have a big difference in whether your email ends up in spam, or in the inbox. Even when you use a service like Aweber those links make a difference.

Well what if you could have all your tracking links on your own domain? Then you don’t have to worry about people spamming their tracking links because you’ll have your own domain’s reputation.

Tomorrow I’m launching a tool that’ll let you do just that.. And for free!

You’ve probably seen me using links like trk.timlinden.com in my emails.. That’s why! And once you have it setup, it’s a breeeeeze to use. You’ll wonder why you’ve never had it before.

Oh, and the best part is this isn’t a script you have to install. So you’ll have world class performance on that tracking link. So even if you don’t have hosting, but you have a domain, you can use it ;-)

How do you track branding?

Tim — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:52:46 +0000

One of my biggest pet peeves over the years of telling people about branding on traffic exchanges was then telling them how to track their results.

The problem is, tracking which exchange provides a signup doesn’t show you the full picture. If we know it takes 7 views of an ad to get a signup, then why should an exchange providing 1 of those views get all the credit?

Well I’ve been working on this for quite a while, and it’s being revealed on Tuesday. That’s right, I’ve created a branding tracker.

I’ve tracked the last 3019 subscribers to my blog and found it took 56,266 views on 44 different exchanges. On average each person subscribing was seeing my advertisements 18 times on 3 different traffic exchanges.

How’s that for stats!

I can also see which exchanges were providing the most branding power, and which ones got lucky taking the credit.

I can even see that an exchange ranked close to 50th at Traffic Exchange List is in my Top 5 for branding my blog. Without this I’d have never known!

So I’m really excited to be releasing it on Tuesday. It’s so powerful and so unique that it’ll knock your socks off!

Safe Site Scanner Released

Tim — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:37:31 +0000

Well I’ve been keeping this a secret for as long as possible, but it’s out now so here it goes! I’ve released my famous site scanner I use on StartXchange to other owners. So far the results have been amazing!

What’s even better now is that using feedback from other owners it’s even awesomer. You see it now allows us all to collaborate banned lists!

Previously we’d post in a forum whenever we found bad sites, but that requires alot of logging in to check, and there’s always a delay. But now if an owner I trust bans a site, it’s auto banned on my exchange.

There’s a really cool video to show it all. If you are an owner, and want access you’ll need to send me a private message on NMF. I have a feeling I’m going to get a TON of requests so be patient if I don’t reply right away ;-)

Going Incognito with Google Chrome

Tim — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:01:09 +0000

This is especially useful if you are an admin to any kind of site, but I’ve also found uses for it outside of the admin realm.

With Google Chrome there is a “Incognito Mode” that starts a private session. It doesn’t remember your history, cookies, etc. What I’ve found it most useful for is logging in as different users!

Sometimes problems happen with accounts, and errors come up, and the only way to figure it out is to log in as that member. But then my sessions and cookies are stuck on that user, and I have to go back and login as me.

Well, not in Incognito Mode! It’s almost like having a new browser never used, you can login and it won’t try to enter your saved passwords – it even disabled LastPass (password tool for Chrome), and when you are done you close the window and it hasn’t effected your logins anywhere. Pretty sweet.

It can also be useful if you are trying to login to a site and it keeps saying invalid login. Rather than do all the clearing of cookies and such, you can open up Incognito Mode and try logging in. You’ll know right away if the pw is right or not.

Deleting Old Safelist Emails

Tim — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:10:23 +0000

Just a quick tip for you. Obviously with the thousands of emails safelists will send you, it can get overwhelming. And since the links in the credit based ones do expire, you won’t need them even if you will go back to them at a later date.

So what’s there to do?

If you use Gmail, it’s easy. Normally you would either use a separate gmail account altogether, or create labels. If that’s you, this’ll make it a breeze:

Select the label
In the Search Mail form, add the following: ” before:2009/11/01″ and hit search
Click Select: ALL, Then click the bigger link that appears “Select all conversations that match..”, Click Delete (and OK to confirm)

Ding! You’ve cleared them out! Just remember to change 2009/11/01 with the date from a week ago. I talked to one safelist owner and he said they expire after 7 days. Most likely they are all like that, but if not you can easily tune it.

How many emails?

Tim — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 13:51:27 +0000

So I’m starting to use Safelists now. I wouldn’t quite say I got them down yet, but I think I got the gist of it. Very much like a traffic exchange.

The biggest concern I had before using them was the amount of emails. I had no idea how many I’d get. And I thought it would be overwhelming.

It is.

So how many emails do you get? Well here are the ones I’ve tracked. All stats are based on the last 4.5 days.

AdTactics: 1,264 Emails
EliteSafelist: 634 Emails
FreeSafeListMailer: 1355 Emails
ListBuildingMaximizer: 32 Emails
ReactiveAdz: 18 Emails

I was doing good the first 2 days, clicking *every* claim link. But since I take Sundays off, and didn’t get to be on Saturday much, well I’m a bit overwhelmed with the inbox now =P

Originally I thought that people would click every email link because you get credits with them. You want the most credits right? So rather than spend time writing a decent email and subject line, I focused on where they went when they clicked.

Thinking about it now, subject lines must come into play here. There’s no way you can click them all in every safelist. So either you join one and do them all, or you have to pick & choose. So I’m going to re-think my strategy.

Overall with the safelists I’ve used I received 431 hits, and 5 subscribers to my blog. So not bad. Those are 5 people I wouldn’t have found elsewhere most likely. I just need to up my game a bit!

My thoughts on Safelists and Listbuilders

Tim — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:37:34 +0000

Yesterday Mike and Bill launched List Building Maximizer, a new list builder. I haven’t spent much time on list builders before, I’ve been too busy running my own programs to be honest.

But since there was this new launch, I decided to check a few I’ve joined in the past and see what the whole concept was. It’s remarkably like traffic exchanges.

The main difference is rather than going to the site to view other sites, you get emails. And rather then spending credits for a view, you spend them for an email.

It gets even more interesting because you earn more than a credit for every email link you click on. So it’s actually more than a 1:1 credit ratio. But then it’s not guaranteed that your email link will get clicked. But since you can earn more credits for clicking the link, I would think people are clicking them all.

Well these guys have been in the business for a while, so they wanted to create one with some exciting features. One of them I was so close to getting yesturday.. It’s an email which has a link that only ONE person can claim. It’s kinda like a race to click it. Obviously people are using it because 30 minutes later I was told I wasn’t the one ;-)

Anyways, I’ve wanted to check them out more in depth for a while and I’m kinda using this as the reason. A new list builder is a new reason to use them right? So I’m going to start tracking on them and posting those results too. Will be interesting!

If you haven’t yet, go join – it’s free! List Building Maximizer

Special Thanks!

Tim — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 08:37:12 +0000

I just wanted to say a special thanks to the 49 exchanges below that have the Traffic Exchange List button on their front page proudly linking to their ranking page. Let’s hope the other 200 or so exchanges do the same ;-) Below are the ones linking in order of their current rank.

You’re not reading that TOS, are you?

Tim — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 10:07:30 +0000

It’s probably not amazing to know, but I did some heat map testing on my signup page, and it shows that people are checking off the “I agree to the TOS” check box, but only one person actually clicked it.

Pretty funny if you ask me! Hey, I usually don’t. But then sometimes I do if it’s a new script or owner I don’t know. They are usually long and boring and very wordy. Mine is long but it’s mostly bullet points in plain english..