1. The exchange was mis-managed. This can happen in many ways. Usually it’s the owner not knowing anything about credit inventories and selling more traffic than they can deliver. When that happens people stop surfing and go elsewhere. If you can’t deliver it, don’t sell it. And don’t have a surfing ratio or bonuses you can’t deliver.
2. The owner doesn’t have it. The sad truth is, not everyone can run a business. Some people just don’t have it and so people join a site because they are friends with them, but the person really doesn’t have the business mindset to keep it running.
3. Technical difficulties. The biggest excuse owners make is they don’t know how to do something. Something breaks and they don’t know how to fix it. A server crashes and they didn’t have backups. This is a business using computers, so if the owner doesn’t have the knowhow and they don’t have someone they’ve hired, it’s easy to kill an exchange this way.
4. Expenses > Income. Most people expect to get a huge amount of money running an exchange. They think the $5 a month hosting plan will do, and their members will promote for them. Then reality sets in. They aren’t making much money, they have to advertise themselves, and the second they do get busy that $5 host pulls the plug because on line 391 of the AUP it says they can pull the plug on sites that use too many resource. The owner then has to start spending their own money to keep it going and gives up because it didn’t go according to plan.
5. They get stale. With new exchanges and new features coming and going, it’s typically the exchanges that stay ahead of the curve that’ll. It’s the copy cats and the ones who never update their exchange that die off. It’s also the hardest part of running an exchange. It’s really easy to keep running things how they are running. It’s really hard to come up with something new.

Those are just some of the reasons, there are others but these tend to be the main issues. Any one of these doesn’t mean that the owner is a terrible person. It’s all about figuring out what you are good at, and doing that. You might make a killing advertising in exchanges, but do terrible running one. So don’t try to be something you aren’t.

And don’t keep launching “new” exchanges thinking the next one will work. It’s OK if this isn’t your thing. If you can’t run an exchange, but really want to run a program, try a different type of program. Try, fail, and take notes. We constantly tell people that the money is in providing a unique service that goes with the exchanges because there is less competition. If you can find something new and cool you’ll have people jumping in left and right.

• Sell the exchange
• Delete the exchange
• Ignore the exchange

My question is which one is worse? In my opinion the only viable decision would be to shut it down. Put a notice on the site that it’s closed. Take off the signup form. Pay all commissions and refund any credit purchases that weren’t delivered.

The reason I think this is the best route is because the other two just cause even more problems. When an exchange dies and someone sells it off to someone else, the problem isn’t fixed. It’s just someone else’s problem, and somehow the first owner gets paid for letting it die? Then the new owner is out the money and has to struggle to get the exchange to breath again. Sometimes it’ll work, but most of the time it just continues to die anyways.

Then of course you have the owners who just ignore the exchange. They see they are getting purchases so leave it online because people still surf and people still buy things from it, so they must want it, right? Well the problem with that is it’s usually people who don’t know any better. They don’t know the exchange is dead. They don’t know those hits they just purchased are likely never to be delivered.

Most of the time owners of failing exchanges think they are helping their members by not deleting it. Like they owe it to them to not close the doors. Really you owed it to them to not let the site fail. Thinking the next guy will return the exchange to it’s former glory is just making them waste more time and money on something that’s dead.

If you really want to help them put on your index page that the site is closed. Give them links to exchanges that are thriving and that you get results from. That’s what would help them. Most of these people already low on funds, so the least you could do is have them get results for their advertising bucks.

So how accurate is this? Well I sold 2 exchanges myself, I thought the same thing most owners thing. Both never recovered. 36 exchanges have been removed from Traffic Exchange List for disappearing completely. Another 30+ (lost count) are listed and defunct. A handful are still online, but totally ignored.

I don’t understand the logic in this. The whole reason is to view the site right? So why not let me view the whole site and not just 75% of it? Really weird..  Any thoughts?

• Does load time matter with results? I’m thinking about doing a test on 2 identical pages, but having one load slower than the other. I think it matters, but I’m not aware of anyone who’s done actual testing on it. Have you?
• I updated the traffic exchange consulting page. I don’t think I’m very good at the one on one gigs. I take too long to respond. So I think what I’m going to do is just keep adding to that page as I see fit, so any new owner can go straight there and be like BAM yeah baby. Feel free to link that page right up like you light up a christmas tree.
• Work on Traffic Exchange List continues. Now you can comment on the exchange pages again. That ended for a while in 2008. I wanted to try the Google Friend Connect thing, but it didn’t work out as I had hoped. Problem was I already deleted the comment system. Anyways, Austin has hooked it up again.
• Oh speaking of which, the Traffic Exchange Live Toolbar got a kick in the face. The Exchanges drop down now has easy access to the Super Surf Exchanges, ThumbVu (bribery), Top 20 Exchanges, and exchanges running promos. So if you are ranked 50 or lower and are running a promo, go submit it inside the Traffic Exchange List members area. It’ll get pushed to all the toolbars so we can all find out about them easier. Let’s face it, with so many emails going daily it’s really easy to miss a promo.
• Owner Reports – If you are ranked in the most recent report then you’ve got a secret owner report to go with it. But it costs you some dough. $47/month to get the weekly reports. Hefty price but it’ll tell you exactly which exchanges you should be targeting. If you watch my videos or me streaming you’ll notice a piece of paper on the wall next to me, that’s my owner report. It’s customized to your exchange so each report is different and there are some really surprising results in there. For instance Hit Kingdom I had totally forgotten even existed, and it was listed 2nd most important for me to advertise at a few months ago. I did advertising there, got signups, and now it’s at the bottom of the list. Oh and these are in PDF format so you can archive them if you want or print them in color for a really cool feeling. Stick it in a black envelope marked ULTRA SECRET if you want to be super cool.
• I think it’s time for me to get back into making splash pages and teaching you guys. I go in phases where I focus on different things because they happen to motivate me at different times. Right now it’s Traffic Exchange List. I just run with it because I end up getting more done. Although Austin’s been doing most of the work there, which is a huge relief because I don’t stress as much about getting things done.

Something that’s New is New Listing Notifications. When a new exchange is submitted to the list there is an option to have members notified. That’s what happened today when EternityTraffic was launched. Those who opted-in were notified. Oh and it gets better! It will notify you before your referrals, so you have time to get your ID in before they find out. Just note you get an hour head start so do it quick ;-)

Didn’t get the notification? Well make sure you opt-in. Goto the account profile page and check off the email notifications you want to get. In addition to the New Listing Notifications you can get the Weekly Top 10 and Movers & Shakers mailed to you:

1. EasyHits4u
2. Traffic-Splash
3. StartXchange
4. Hit2Hit
5. HitsBoosterPro
6. Hit Safari
7. Tezak Traffic Power
8. I Love Hits
9. Traffic Witch
10. Traffic Taxis

Moving on Up! These exchanges improved in rankings from last week. Congrats to Traffic-Splash for passing me StartXchange =P

1. HitsBoosterPro +38%
2. Traffic-Splash +33%
3. Hit Safari +33%
4. Traffic Punk +24%
5. GoneClicking +22%

The way these work you make money for selling the product or service, but you also make money for getting people to join in as “distributors” or “affiliates” or whatever the term may be. And then you make money on the services they sell as well.

This results in a team atmosphere where you can help those on your team because you benefit from the sales they make as well. The problem many seem to be facing is how to build their team.

An easy solution would be to setup a list using TrafficWave to build your team with. First you’ll create two lists, one that will talk about the service you are promoting, and another that you’ll use to talk to people who joined in and are on your team. Then using “Campaign Chaining” you can tell Traffic Wave to remove them from the first list when they join the second list.

The purpose of the first list will be all about you selling them on joining your team. You can explain that you’ll help them out with it, that you’ll show them the ropes, etc. The second list you can set up an automatic series for the basics, and then send out a weekly or daily broadcast to everyone with the latest and greatest.

My wife did Mary Kay a few years ago and their weekly meetings were very enthusiastic and encouraging. I didn’t go, but after every meeting my wife was all excited about her business. (she later stopped when we had kids, and now does full time mom’ing)

You can do the same thing with your team, and you can encourage those below you to do the same (or have them send their downline to your “team list” if they don’t want to). As each person builds the team below them, it can grow pretty quick.

Just remember not to use the default affiliate links to build your team! That’s a killer. You want to advertise a squeeze page that gets them on your list, so you can convince them over time that it’s for them. Just sending them to the affiliate link directly they aren’t likely to think about it for longer than a few seconds.

Surfers replaces Unique

The reports have been changed and no longer include “Unique” traffic, but rather include “Surfers”. At first you might think it’s the same, but they are actually very different. The data is collected from thousands of rotators being moshed around in the exchanges.

Surfers is the number of different people that have surfed that exchange. Unique on the other hand is the number of different people that viewed a particular rotator. See the difference?

As a Surfer, there is only one me. But if I surf an exchange and view 10 different rotators, all 10 of those rotators will see me as a unique hit to that person’s advertising campaign. But I’m still just one.

So why the change, since many people want to know the unique ratio? Well there is no way for me to know if a rotator is put into the same exchange multiple times, so that would skew the stats. I don’t like having stats that can be easily manipulated (even if done with harmless intentions). It also uses more resources to track it for each individual rotator, so this change does reduce the load partially ;-)

Top Exchanges Removed

What!? Well I removed it from the reports because I plan to discontinue Top Exchanges completely. I know sad right, but with the new Surfers category in the reports using the old Top Exchanges method to track the same kind of data isn’t necessary, and that top sites script gets spammed beyond belief I don’t even want to look at the list of spam to remove..

Change Updated

The change column is now based on a percentage, rather than a clear cut number. So a site moving from #2 to #1 will “change” more than a site moving from #102 to #101. It’s much harder to move up in the higher levels, so this should show off the movers better ;-)

Owners & Scripts Rankings

This is a bit of fun based on the reports, I should update it sometime to include the Surfers data now. Note that this doesn’t actually mean one script is better than another. A bad owner can make the best script look terrible, and vice versa. But it does make for some fun ;-) You can also click an owners name to see their recent blog posts and twitter tweets.

Get Listed

There is also a new get listed page. I know I’ve changed this multiple times. But this time I had a programmer do it right the way I wanted. It’ll ask you for info, verify you are the owner, and ask what type of listing you want. There is a non refundable review fee. Which hopefully means people won’t submit bogus info and waste my time, making it quicker to approve the good guys ;-)

That would be the downside of working from home. When anyone gets sick it affects my work, in different variations. When I’m sick I still work but everything takes 3x as long to do. When my wife is sick it can mean less time working. When the kids are sick it pretty much means little gets done.

Thankfully it seems to be over with the kids. I’m actually writing this post in the dining room while the girls have popsicles (which my youngest insists she picks parts off with her fingers and eats it rather than licking it).

So they are feeling better, but now the wife isn’t feeling well. Which means more slow time.

This is where being prepared really comes into play. If you are just starting out this downtime could really put some stress into your week. Downtime can often mean less sales, less income, and more bills waiting to be paid. So it’s important to have savings set aside specifically for any downtime. It’s still important to do when your business grows, but thankfully I’ve not had to use those savings.

It can also mean irate customers (irate is one of my favorite words) if you don’t get back to them. Which is why it’s also important to have other people working for you. Support people can help keep people calm while you are down.

So there you have it. Thank you to those who’ve asked about my kids during this time. Hopefully I’ll be able to make it to Traffic Exchange Live today and actually stream. We’ll see!

Simply copy and paste that into the address bar when you have the friend selector window open. I have a video to show you exactly what I mean here: