There was incredible chatting going on from my last post, in fact there are 52 comments! It’s clear that many of you have an understanding of the team concept.

It makes sense too, because we are all working out of different locations so when you log in each morning it’s easy to feel like it’s you vs the world. But when you are in a team, it only takes a few minutes to open that inbox and be reminded that you’ve got other people backing you up.

Jon Olson and I had a conversation with Rusty of Team Ocean Swell. He came in to Traffic Exchange Live and chatted for a while. I’m happy he did, because he was able to see we weren’t anti teams, and we were able to see he wasn’t making some of the crazy claims (although let me remind you, the last post wasn’t directed at him).

The whole team concept has duplication involved, and when that happens the people duplicating can make claims or promises. Like one person said this can happen on just about any business.

So if you are in a team it’s important to attract people who want to build a real business, and aren’t in it for fast cash. The reason is that people in it for fast cash are fast to leave. You can spend lots of time, energy, and even money on a person who really isn’t in it for the long haul.

That’s where the promises come in. If you word things the wrong way you could find your team filled with fast cashers. What you want is long haulers, because you want to build a strong steady business. So you need to teach them how to use the services they are signing up for.

If they use the auto-responder in their business, they won’t leave. It’s really that simple. Moving auto-responders is a pretty tedious job and it makes most people nervous. So if they know how to use it, and are actively building lists with it, chances of them leaving for any reason is very small.

You also do need to look at your wording for legal reasons. Since 2001 there have been many things coming and going in the exchanges, and many of them have told us that the police won’t care what they are doing. And then the site disappears and there are rumors (or in some cases actual proof) that the people are in big legal hot water.

Anyone remember 12DailyPro? There were people who swore that thing worked and that it was legit. But it got into the media, the government got involved, and shut down. I’m not saying that’s what will happen with the teams, let’s be clear on that. What I am saying is simply claiming the government wouldn’t care about a claim won’t actually stop them from investigating.

So what’s my recommendation? Well truthfully I think joining a team is a great idea. I’ve thought about doing some kind of team thing myself. Just check out the team first, see if they are interested in teaching you how to build a business, or are they interested in filling your levels. If they’ll show you the ropes on starting your business, then I think it’s a good thing.

I’ve seen an increase in the number of Traffic Wave teams. It’s really interesting to watch. But at the core there is one goal: Building downlines.

The way it’s done seems to differ. Does everyone promote the same link? Do we take turns getting the benefits? How do you get paid? Is there a fee to be on the team?

I really want to caution you here. Some of these teams are making promises that are border-line illegal. Ever hear the phrase too good to be true?

Think about it, promises of $x income for paying $x in fees. Pyramid scheme right? Whether or not you are using a product or a service as a front for a pyramid scheme, it’s still a pyramid.

These come and go online so often, and I get hate mail anytime I point it out, but somebody has to say something. It’s only a matter of time before the number of people getting referrals and getting paid starts to slow down until nobody is getting anything (except the people who are already in the system).

Already I’ve seen hints of this happening. Different teams mentioning other teams where there are long lines, and saying to get in quick on their team. Why quick? Well it’s another pyramid, so the quicker it happens the more people will be able to get in before it slows down and people jump ship again.

I know many of you will come and tell me that’s not so. The problem here is this: Every referral wants to be in the team. Therefor every new person in the team needs a new referral. Therefor every person on the team will only ever get 1 referral. Therefor it’s not possible to build a large downline.

Update: Many people are under the impression that I’m against teams. That’s not the case. It’s the promises that some teams are making. Whether its a leader, or a member of a team, some are making promises. Not all of them. I am not against Traffic Wave, GDI, etc. I use Traffic Wave and I promote it. I think teams are great, I even have teams on my traffic exchange (StartXchange). There are some teams that are promising specific numbers in specific time frames which can get you in trouble.

There are 181 exchanges that are ranked on Traffic Exchange List. It’s a miserable job to go in and manage your advertising in all those exchanges. Miserable.

So how do I dominate the exchanges? Well I don’t. But I do have a few tricks up my sleeve.

What I do is go to Traffic Exchange List, go to the latest report, and start from the top. I then assign any credits in my account, and purchase credits when necessary. I make it a goal to get through the top 20 – more if I am feeling good about it.

Next I go to my TEtoolbox account and I view my tag stats for my rotator. I sort it by GTR (Goal Through Ratio). This tells me which exchanges are getting the most signups per hit. I’ll then assign or buy traffic at the exchanges that are performing well for me.

Sometimes new exchanges end up on the list because they’ve only delivered a small amount of traffic. That’s OK because they’re bringing in results. It’s good to support an exchange, no matter how small. But I’ll only buy traffic if they can deliver the traffic I already have in there.

And finally for the secret sauce I use two coops. Well I’m lying because I just realized one of them my subscription seems to have failed me. They are Doctor Traffic (Jon Olson) and TE Blaster (Steve Ayling). These are great because I get a variety of traffic from them, and many times from exchanges I’m not currently using. So it helps me get seen on a variety of exchanges without having to do the business of managing them all.

I usually forget about banners, but Steve Ayling recently launched a site called Buckets Of Banners. He was just in Affiliate Funnel talking about how important banners are. I totally forgot..

So I of course grabbed the imagery from my splash page and made a banner with it to match. It’s not the best banner, but it’s got my photo and that bright orangeness so it should do some branding. Oh yeah, my name too.

This is my official notice to remind you guys as well. Banners may not get as many clicks, but they still do the branding that will help when your splash page comes up in rotation. And you still do get some clicks, so you will get some results directly from them.

If you haven’t checked it out yet, also check out Buckets of Banners. It’s essentially a banner traffic exchange. Not a banner exchange, not a traffic exchange. You’d have to sign up and see for yourself to understand =P

A few posts back I did that testing on browser sizes, so I thought it was time to create a new splash page. I took the sizes into account and created this:

I’ve linked to the page so you can see how it was done. Essentially it’s a 600×300 sized ad that is centered with a background that draws your eyes to the center. Remember we said just about everyone had their browser at 625×250? Well that means the headline and main content are shown in pretty much all surfer’s browsers.

The hardest part was figuring out how to get the DIV to be centered perfectly. Well, it was actually easy with some cool CSS magic. It’s pretty simple:

1. Create a div, give it an id (mine was “main”)
2. Set the div to a specific width and height (mine is 600×300)
3. Set the position to absolute (position: absolute;)
4. Set the top and left positioning to 50% (top: 50%; left: 50%;)
5. Set the margin-top to negative half of the height (300 / 2 = 150 so margin-top: -150px;)
6. Set the margin-left to negative half of the width (600 / 2 = 300 so margin-left: -300px;)

That’s all there is to it. Essentially you are telling the browser to put it in the center (50%/50%) but that’s where the top left corner is, so you then have to tell it to backtrack half of it. And bamo, centered.

So far the results have been on par with my other splash pages. Not any better or worse, but the look of it is pretty cool so I’m keeping it. Try a centered splash page yourself and see if it results in better results. By using the above trick you’ll know it’s centered in ALL browsers and resolutions. Pretty sweet ;-)

It’s kinda funny that I posted the whole “Who’s Job is it Anyway” post. Shortly after making that post I received feedback from two people on two different sites.

The first one was a rather unhelpful comment on the blog saying TEList wouldn’t let them unsubscribe. Unhelpful because they put a fake email and name, so I couldn’t unsubscribe them. But I did get that unsubscribe link to work.

And the second one was a member finding a video on how to cheat StartXchange. Oh boy. The sad thing is this method of cheating is super simple and I had previously had it setup so you couldn’t use it on StartXchange. At some point I must have removed that portion of code.

So in the end I still think it’s the owner’s responsibility, no doubt about that. I should have tested that unsubscribe link thoroughly, and I should have paid more attention while playing with the code. In the end two members (well, one ex member? LOL) helped me out, and I appreciate that.

I’ve got something interesting to show you. I tracked 178,862 hits yesterday from many exchanges (ok so I didn’t count that) and recorded the size of the browser windows the ad was being displayed in. Then made a headmap of it so you can see exactly which areas had the most view time:

You can click the image for the full size. I put it on a black background so you could see more of the subtleties in the changes. I also marked  “minimum/maximum” areas.

You’ll want your most important eye grabbing parts in the 625×250 area, but you’ll also want to consider that there are many who’ll see 1015×425 so having blank space outside that area might make your page look tiny.

More things to think about when designing a splash page. But remember, test test test!

There are so many toolbars, browsers, computers, etc that your big monster screen might trick you into thinking your advertisements are great. In realitiy, there’s lots of wasted space happening:

See, out of my huge monitor only about half of it is showing your advertisement. OK so I don’t really surf with that many toolbars but I had to for this demonstration =P

So what are we to do about this? Well it’s important to keep your ads small so any browser and any resolution can view your ad. You don’t want your site to be hidden from view, otherwise it’s a waste. So don’t make it too long or too wide.

What’s the perfect size? I’m not sure. But I am going to be testing that today, and hopefully tomorrow I’ll have some awesome data to report back to you. For now let’s do a guessing game.. What do you think is the average size of the window the ad is viewed in (in the graphic, the yellow area)?

Sometimes things don’t work properly and owners don’t know about it. But who’s job is it to make sure it works? This is the topic for the day.

I’ve been noticing more and more things not working on exchanges. From big to small it seems the technical problems are coming up, and many times remaining unfixed for months.

The big one has to do with money. Whether it’s those AlertPay buttons that are setup wrong, or it’s commission cash-out requests “not getting to the owner”.

This really bothers me. I don’t know how scripts are setup, and I don’t really care to be honest. If someone requests payment using the interface on the site, they shouldn’t have to wonder if the owner got it.

But maybe I’m just in a grumpy mood because I woke up with a sore neck. Maybe you guys think it’s ok when things break and don’t blame it on the owners? I know I tend to be strict on the techy side because I know the techy stuff. What do you think?

I’m in the process of joining an exchange, I read the Privacy Policy and it all seems normal to me:

We will not sell, share, or rent personal information to others.

Sounds good right? Until you look above it where your referrer’s email address is. Oh, but guess what, I didn’t have a referrer. It gave me a random one (most likely upgraded). Oh look over here, I can load the page in and get another email address. Hey, looks like I can just keep loading the page and get every upgraded member’s email address on your exchange. Cha ching!

Note that due to cookies, you won’t see the random email if you simply refresh. And it doesn’t matter if it’s only supposed to show if your referrer sent you. It says right there that you won’t share personal information. Your email address is personal.

Many exchanges are in the trend of sharing your referrals information as well. I wonder if their privacy policy reflects that. Most people don’t read them, and most owners don’t write them. Copy, paste, “we’re good to go”.

Well shameless plug, but StartXchange is part of the Sender Score Certified Program. They reviewed my Privacy Policy, and monitor my email practices. So you can be sure I do everything possible to keep your information from being shared ;-)