1) How and when did your online business get started?

I started about 5 years ago builing niche websites and monetizing with adsense. I later dabbled with Adwords. I found out about traffic exchange through a friend. He told me to put my niche sites on them…we are no longer friends. heheh. After my adsense crash I became one of them program hoppers surfing TE. Two years ago I decided to open my own TE.

2) Which exchange(s) do you own or co-own?

I am the sole owner of Savvy Clicks and Savvy Coop

3) Do you currently work exclusively online?

I quit my 9-5 two years ago this pass January. My main focus is Adwords and Savvy clicks. I’ve gotten better at both.

4) How many hours per day do you spend on your exchange(s)?

I really do not have a set schedule. I sleep about 7 hour a day, the rest of the time I’m doing something with Savvy Clicks or Adwords. On weekends I do work a little but I spend most of the time with the wife.

5) Do you do support yourself, or do you outsource support?

I take care of all Customer support issues. 95% of Programmings are outsourced

6) How fluent are you with HTML, javascript, and PHP?

I can cut and paste. LOL

7) Approximately how many members join your exchange a month?

I only track the members that come in from my own Adwords campaigns, approximately 100 new people per week. There are more that come through my TE campaigns as well as referrals made by members.

8) Does most of your advertising come from members referring, or you?

80% came from me.

9) Are you subscribed to any blogs? Which is your favorite?

No blog. I know blogging can help my business. I just need to get off my lazy butt and follow my own advice.

10) What would be the biggest tip you could give to readers?

Take action. You can not achieve your goals until you do.

It really was a simple mistake. You see I was using FeedBurner to send out emails when blog updates were made. I then switched to Aweber to use the Blog Broadcast. With Feedburner you simply set the time you wanted it to send, and presto it would send an email once a day with all the updates.

With Aweber it’s slightly more advanced! As you can see below there are more settings available!

If you want to have one email sent out per day with all the updates in one email then use the settings above. Select your time, select On a specific day or days of the month and choose Every Day. Then check the Send Automatically button.

If you want a seperate emails sent out daily with individual updates then you’d select When number of new items is at least and select 1.

If you want an email sent out right away whenever you update then again you’d select When number of new items is at least and select 1, but also change Send broadcast to Immediately.

With these 3 scenarios you should be able to figure out any other methods you’d want to use. But the final word of caution is before you change feed settings uncheck Send Automatically! The reason Aweber thought it had new emails to send was my fault. I changed a setting on FeedBurner which changed all the URLs in the feed. To Aweber, those new URLs meant new emails! If I had unchecked Send Automatically, changed the feed, and waited till Aweber found the new URLs to re-check it, I could have deleted the duplicates and not sent them out!

PS. If you don’t have Aweber yet, you can try it risk free for 30 days. I know you’ll see how awesome it is and realize it’s waay worth the money!

Looking at the front page of an exchange can give you some indicators of how Good or Bad it’ll be. But sometimes it takes looking into the history of the exchange to get the full picture. Has the exchange gone down before? Did they lose their entire database? Will it happen again? Looking into the history of an exchange can give you an indication of the future.

Archive Information

First goto Archive.org and type the website domain into the “Way Back Machine”. Click “Take me Back”. You’ll now see a listing of dates (if it’s been around and important enough to get archived). Each day will have a different archive of the page over time. Click through a couple each year. If you see the website has errors like “Site Suspended” or a default “your website goes here” page after the exchange launched, this tells you they’ve had issues with their hosting. You can check the dates around it to see how long of a period it happened for.

Google Cache

If you goto Google and type site:startxchange.com you’ll see the pages as Google sees them. These don’t go back as far as the Archives do, but it has something I find more important.. Malware notices. If a website has or recently has hidden malware on their site, there is a good chance Google has found it and will display a warning when you view the sites they have in their index. If they don’t have any pages listed, that is also an indicator that the exchange is too new. It really isn’t hard to get at least one page listed.

Why this matters

This matters because it deals with reliability. If an exchange has dissapeared in the past, there is a good chance it’ll disapear in the future too. I’ve experienced a few exchanges where the owner bailed out, and then re-launched only to bail out again. Some problems can be out of the control of the owner, but sometimes you have to ask yourself if it really is out of their control when you see it happen repeatedly.

You are focusing on the past, my exchange is GOOD now!

Ok, so you can’t change your past downtime but you can change your future downtime. Pick a host that’s known to be reliable, don’t go for the cheapest one around. Sign up to Alertra and get notified when your site goes down. Tell Google you fixed the malware problem and use a service like Hacker Safe to help you prevent it from happening again. If you’ve had past problems you need to make it top priority to not have them happen again.

A big part in being a success online is all about networking. I like to keep in touch with others as much as I can, and one of my favorite ways to do that is through blogs. I’m also always interested in finding any kind of site related to traffic exchanges. Whether it’s reviews, rants, help, whatever. So help me out here and post about your blogs and/or places you find traffic exchange reviews on..

• If you have your own blog (TE related), post a brief introduction/description as a comment, and put your blog as your URL (I have a nifty plugin that’ll grab your last post and link to it with your comment now!)
• If you subscribe to a blog that is traffic exchange related, post a little review about it. What you like/dislike about it. (put the link at the bottom of the review, so I know it’s not yours)
• If you know of any traffic exchange review site, post a review about it’s reviews. It doesn’t have to be on a “blog” platform to count. (put the link at the bottom of the review, so I know it’s not yours)

OK so here is where it gets interesting.. Post a seperate comment for each seperate site you want to mention. Don’t mention a site that’s already been mentioned. Oh and make sure you enter your StartXchange username because once I’ve had enough I’ll pick a random commentor to give 1000 hits to. Didn’t see that coming did you? =P

1) How and when did your online business get started?

Around Feb 2006 I was diagnosed with cancer. I had always been quite active, and suddenly having to sit around and let my body recover from surgery and chemo.. and radio.. and more surgery - I had to do something to keep busy! (No sorry {awwww} faces here… or i’ll have to come over there and slap you!)

In August 2006 I fell in love with the idea of owning a website. I was undergoing chemothrapy at the time and had little energy for anything else… I had no idea about anything to do with creating a website - I actually thought HTML was an abbreviation for Hotmail…lol.

Well.. when I was thinking about what kind of site I would like to have, I fell upon a really lame traffic exchange (too lame to mention). I got to thinking that traffic really is something that people want and need - so… I started TrafficBunnies!

Like I said - I knew nothing. I found out about this forum, came in and abused a few people - got all offended and didn’t come back for 6 months. In the end, Paul Kinder stayed friends with me and nudged me back to NFM… lol. I met up with a few more people, apologised to the people I had been stupid to and actually started to listen to their advice! And.. what do you know? It works!!

Back when I was 29 and diagnosed with cancer it seemed like such a HUGE and difficult challenge, when in actual fact it proved to be the opposite. It gave me time to sit back and learn a new skill and find something that I am super passionate about - and now that I am cancer free (woot!!) I am enjoying running a business online, something which I would have never imagined I could do before all of this.

2) Which exchange(s) do you own or co-own?

I am the owner of TrafficBunnies, but I get loads of help from the fabulous Deedee Medcoff. She really is my hero :)

3) Do you currently work exclusively online?

As of Jan ‘08 I do :D It feels SO fine! I appreciate every person that chooses to use Trafficbunnies, because now I am able to do things that I never imagined possible. My husband and I are planning our first ever overseas trip to go to the Focus Seminar in DC (August) and it is the first time that we have ever allowed ourselves to dream and plan something this huge. Like Jon says, it really is an adventure! (aka Olson, paraphrased…lol)

4) How many hours per day do you spend on your exchange(s)?

Umm.. too embarrased to say! Roughly between 10-12 hours. Sometimes up to 14. Most of the time that I am home I am working - I hate housework… lol - this is more fun! Since I am working from home, I don’t need to be in front of the pc 24/7 - I can still spend time with my hubby and kids, do the hobbies that I enjoy and get to the gym.

5) Do you do support yourself, or do you outsource support?

Support? I am assuming you mean help with administrative matters? Well, like I mentioned before - Deeds is really my saviour. Doing the long hours can get a bit wearing - and maintaining a healthy balanced lifestyle is only possible because of her. I can’t rave about her enough.

6) How fluent are you with HTML, javascript, and PHP?

LOLOLOLOL! OK - I really have tried! I can do ok with HTML - only because I use Frontpage - so it’s kinda cheating. But, I can usually find things if I search hard enough, and have picked up a trick or two. I have a programmer who does all of the php programming, he is wonderful, but like most people will know - if you find a good programmer you don’t share the source, so my lips are sealed (I don’t wanna share him…)

7) Approximately how many members join your exchange a month?

Our membership has been exploding! We hit 5000 members end of December, and are now over 8000 less than 2 months later. In February so many wonderful people got behind our promotions and in one week we had 798 new members join - in one week! You smiling yet? I dunno - I thought it was exciting at least.. lol

8) Does most of your advertising come from members referring, or you?

Hmm.. that is a tricky one. It’s getting a little more even now. Up until the start of this year it has been about 90% me, 10% members. This year it has changed considerably, now roughly 60% me, and 40% members.

9) Are you subscribed to any blogs? Which is your favorite?

Umm.. I do more forums than blogs. I drop in occassionally to tescoop.com - I find that is always entertaining. I should try and be a good girl and do the blog thing a bit more.

10) What would be the biggest tip you could give to readers?

Only one? Gosh! I have two :)

a) FOCUS! The biggest key to doing well online is to sit down, away from the pc if possible, get a pen and paper and set some goals. Set a yearly target and then set monthly and weekly (daily if needed) goals to get where you want to go. Richard Taylor and Robert Puddy helped me a lot with discovering this. If you get excited about every new thing going around you will find it difficult to succeed in any of them. If you have a weekly traffic target to your (single) project, then you can work out what it will take to get you there.

b) Do what you love! For me, coming up with fun promo’s playing with pretty pictures and networking is my thing. I just LOVE it! You need to find out what you are good at, then work out how you can use that skill to benefit you - and set you apart in the traffic exchanges. There is a lot of talk going around about branding - but if it’s just a photo and your name, I personally don’t think it’s enough. Get your personality out there - don’t be shy, we all want to know that there are real people that we are dealing with!

c) Quit promoting standard affiliate links. Make them your own! And - what you can’t do yourself, outsource… lol - you are not expected to be supergenius! I keep hearing all of the so called te guru’s saying it like a broken record - and yet.. people are still promoting standard affiliate links! If you want your advertising to get noticed it needs to be noticable.

d) Brush your teeth. Yeah, sure - we work in our PJ’s… but that is no reason to forsake good dental hygiene… :P

Sorry! I thought up 4. Thanks for the chance to share this info :D It was kinda theraputic!!! haha.

All the best!
Cindy

I’ve been thinking about getting into other areas of advertising, and trying them out.  So I’m looking to my growing readers for ways they are advertising their websites outside of traffic exchanges.  I’ve joined a safelist once (and never used it), and paid a bit in Adsense, but that’s about it.  The goal is to grow this blog to more than just traffic exchanges, but traffic in general.

So, if you’ve got some effective ways to get traffic please post URLs below.  Limit 3 per person!  Also note that this will trigger my comment spam system, so don’t try to refresh or anything if it gives you problems. I”ll see the comment and approve it.  Also if you could include a brief description to convince me to try it that’d be cool too.

There is a lack of understanding of how inventory affects traffic exchanges. Many beleive you can simply add more credits into the system, and all is well. In reality, inventory plays a large role in an exchange. Too little inventory and people start to see the same ads over and over again, too high and people start to wonder if people are even surfing the exchange. Part of spotting bad traffic exchanges, is spotting owners who lack this understanding of inventory balance.

Signup Bonus

The first indicator is how many credits you receive when you first join. Simply put, there are exchanges out there giving way too many credits to new users. The magic number of a good or bad signup bonus depends entirely on the exchange. An exchange can afford to give away a bigger signup bonus if A) it is a larger, established exchange with active members B) it requires you to surf to receive this bonus (IE: Surf 100 pages get 100 bonus credits) C) it is a brand spanking new exchange with 0 inventory and the bonus is removed after so many members (or when the owner finds the correct balance). Of course C is harder to detirmine without joining first.

Referral Bonus

Just like the signup bonus, but for the referral. If it’s too high the same out of balance inventory can happen. The same A/B/C factors apply as the signup bonus.

Surfing Ratio

If the surfing ratio is too high, the exchange will have problems with inventory. Anywhere above a 2:1 ratio, especially on new exchanges, use caution. Especially when you see a 1:1 ratio. Many new owners who only look at an exchange from a surfer’s point of view will open up an exchange to proclaim they have the best ratio in town! Little do they realize this essentially leaves them no room to sell traffic or give out bonuses. Any selling and any bonuses will max out their inventory.

So then, how do exchanges like EasyHits4U do it? There are various ways it can be done. For instance they have a 1:1 surfbar and a 2:1 surfbar. You can also pay members to surf, or allow credits to be used to display banners. It can happen, but delivery will be slower than an exchange where the ratio is lower.

Referral Earnings

And finally we’ve got referral earnings. This is where you receive a % of your downline’s surfing. Some go one level, some go multiple levels.

Adding It All Up

First add up the signup bonus and the referral bonus. Then convert the ratio to a % and add that to the referral earnings percentages. (IE: 2:1 = 50% + one 10% level = 60% total). If the total % is equal to or greater than 100, then red flags should go off. If the total bonuses is higher than 100, red flags should go off. Realize the idea here isn’t to drop an exchange with one red flag, but at the end of the series to add them up. The more red flags you’ve got, the more caution you should use before joining.