Issue 212 - The High Cost of Low Cost Traffic Exchanges
Author: The T.E. GuyIssue 212 of Hit Exchange News. It’s time for my yearly ‘rant’ and ‘rave’ about the traffic exchange industry and how far it’s come in the decade since Click Thru first came online. You know, after 212 issues of this e-zine one thing has remained constant in this business…The people!
I have met the best people in the world through these programs, from my ‘GOB’s’ at Net Marketing Forum, to the big boys at the offline seminars, this industry brings together the best of the best in online marketers. It’s not easy and it’s an uphill battle at times, but the traffic exchanges seem to breed winners and winning mentalities.
So here’s another feather in the cap to the traffic exchange industry. Keep generating the hits and developing some of the leaders of today and leaders of tomorrow in this industry. We’ve come a long way but 10 years later, we are still the most reliable and stable form of free traffic generating online!
Jon Olson
The Traffic Exchange Guy
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The News
- I Love Hits hit 90,000 members this past week. At this pace, we will hit 100,000 members in a few months. Now this does not means 90,000 active members, but 90,000 people have come through the doors at ILh since it launched in 2001. Not too bad for an LJ script, a funky design and a cartoon boxer huh?
- $1000 is still up for grabs! Traffic Wonderland is in it’s final days of the 1000 dollar giveaway. This hot new exchange has become the sleeper hit so far of 2008 with over 2000 members in only 7 short weeks. This is not to be missed folks!
- Alive Hits will be changing ownership int he next few days. Sam, the original owner, has chosen to leave his post and find new management to take over this very solid traffic exchange. Good luck to both Sam and the new owner of Alive Hits.
- Rumor has it that Jennifer Herold and John Guanzon will be releasing ‘New Way 2 Surf’ in the next day or so. Be sure to stay tuned for reviews and news about this proposed ‘revolution’ in the traffic exchange industry. This T.E. surfer is eagerly awaiting to see what they have in store for us.
- Congratulations to ‘Keith’ for winning last week’s copy of Hits, Clicks and Misses. Want to win your own copy of the best selling traffic exchange book on Amazon.com (actually, it’s the only published book about T.E.’s on the planet), simply post a comment about this week’s issue of HEN!
- Splash Page Hall of Fame - DeeDee Medcoff is one of the most well known T.E. administrators on the net. And this splash page sure does help her branding!
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The Famous Hit Exchange News Top 10 (Disclaimer: These are my top performing exchanges for the past week. Alexa rankings and fancy numbers have nothing to do with how I rank my list. This is based on my results and my opinion, nothing more, nothing less.)
1. StartXChange
2. Traffic Splash
3. TS 25
4. Traffic Swarm
5. Traffic Bunnies
6. Dragon Surf
7. Easy Hits 4 U
8. Magnify Traffic
9. Hit Safari
10. Traffic Era
Note: Analysis and Tracking by Hits Connect - The Official Link Tracking Service of Hit Exchange News! Sign up today and get your 30% Discount!
Question: Hey Jon, how come I Love Hits, SWAT Traffic and Click Crazey are never on the top 10 list? Since I own them, I feel it would be a conflict of interest to place it on any of my rankings. (But we all know how great they are anyways lol)
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Deep Thoughts - Jon’s Weekly Rambling
Where Does It End, How Low Do We Go?
Disclaimer goes here: Yes, I know I Love Hits and SWAT Traffic are some of the lowest priced traffic exchanges to both upgrade in and buy credits. But the kicker is, I have never lowered the prices ever in either program, in fact I have even raised prices in SWAT Traffic. End disclaimer.
Rant time. There’s a new program out in the traffic exchanges this week that brags about being the last ‘affordable’ T.E. to upgrade in. Of course, it costs a buck or so to be an upgraded member. I’m all for free enterprise, but wow. Is this what this industry needs? An already dirt cheap form of web site advertising, going even lower in price points?
I for one cannot understand this marketing move. This has been known to kill industries since day one when we start to lower and lower and lower the prices. Let’s put this into perspective, an upgrade at I Love Hits is $9.97 (or even lower if you took one of the offers) that’s roughly 33 cents per day to be upgraded in a traffic exchange with over 90,000 members. Not a bad investment I would think.
Now this program comes on talking about one dollar to upgrade, and at least half of that goes to a payment processor for service fees. The owner is left with 50 cents roughly. It would take a whole lot of upgraded members to make that exchange profitable, which means less money for the owner to advertise, which means less new members coming into the program to look at your sites.
Hey, maybe I’m making a big deal of of nothing so please do voice your opinion below. And even better, tonight’s seminar at SWAT Traffic will be on this topic. A hot topic maybe, but something that needs to be talked about.
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Things That Make You Go Hmmm…
- Only a few more days at Affiliate Funnel’s Laptop giveaway. Win a lap top PC, a digital camera or a Sirius radio from the wacky owners of AF.
- Hey UA, we are still waiting for Dealer!
- Wow! I love Traffic Asylum!
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Good writing. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed my Google News Reader..
Matt Hanson
I enjoyed the read this week, you had a interesting subject in your rant section. I am looking forward to hearing what other’s are thinking about it. I’ve seen it mention several times with different view points. Maybe you could dedicate a page with opinions of others on that particular subject.
Continued Success
Kind Regards
Toni
Just wanted to say how much I enjoy each issue’s updates on various traffic exchanges. Keep up the good work.
Hi Mr Jon Olson
On the web we constantly see adverts which promote the latest this, that and the other. The best ever, so on and so on. How does a new marketer getting into traffic exchanges begin to understand which ones to join?
Point being, on every exchange, other exchanges are heavily promoted. You can’t join every single one as you only have one mouse to click with. So would you recommend joining several and working them in a daily rotation or would you just join one or two that seem to be the most common?
Thanks for you help
John in the UK.
Thanks for the comments everyone, I will announce the winner tomorrow.
Toni - Great suggestion. hopefully the comment section of each issue can fill up as well. The best issues of Hit Exchange News, in my opinion, are the ones where the readers really communicate their feelings and opinions on the topics.
John - The easy answer, would be to check out the Hit Exchange News Top 10 list every week. However, I do highly recommend Affiliate Funnel for finding the best exchanges online. The ones that rank the highest will be managed by dedicated teams of people. But combine that with your own tracking, you will find which exchanges perform the best for you. =)
I think it is just plain inexperience or stupidity to sell a upgrade for a buck. You won’t see me joining or upgrading in such a exchange. I figure you get what you pay for and at a buck it’s just a bargain basement traffic exchange and a waste of my time.
Another great issue Jon!
Rich Morris
Thanks for the link to DeeDee’s splash page - good stuff.
Kent
Now we are making traffic exchanges in to PTC sites? I saw those cheap rates when I owned one the reason I left that business. Unfortunately people will join for the same reason they did those other sites.
But at those rates impossible to keep up with growth.
I recommend that when deciding what or how many exchanges to join just try some different ones and see what you like. 7-10 seems to be a good number depending on your internet speed and your computer speed.
But keep in mind like in any internet business if it sounds to good to be true leave it alone. So for a buck upgrade forget it. Won’t last.
Love to read the news.
Jay Gutknecht
This is the first I have read Hit Exchange News. I love it! You have so much great information for your readers, and I am sure I am not the only one who truly appreciates you.
HAVE A GREAT DAY!
NewWay2Surf is live..just got the mail, and no sore fingers. ;))
Good issue Jon! I like to call traffic exchanges like OneDollarTraffic ‘garbage’ traffic exchanges. They ought to be avoided like the ‘chickenpox’. Another hint: If a traffic exchange can’t deliver 100 visitors in seven days, drop it. It is an embarrassment that owners of these type of traffic exchanges even call themselves a traffic exchange.
Cheers!
Tony Tezak
[...] Jon Olson started the discussion in his SWAT Traffic Exchange conference room. All upgraded member of SWAT Traffic Exchange have access to the room. Jon continued the discussion in his newsletter, HitExchangeNews. [...]
I’ll be going over fully how to spot a bad traffic exchange on my blog. Tony was right, it hit a nerve last night when Jon brought the topic up in Swat conference.
Thanks for the comments everyone. Marlise, if you can send me your mailing address to hitexchangenews at yahoo dot com, I’ll ship you out a copy right away!
Good afternoon, Jon-
I’ve only been evaluating traffic exchanges as an advertising source for about a year, so maybe the information I’d like to see is out there somewhere and I simply haven’t seen it.
Obviously, there is no shortage of individuals and organizations that rank traffic exchanges. There’s the “Traffic Exchange List,” your own “Hit Exchange News,” the “Affiliate Funnel,” and of course the monster of ‘em all, the “TestHoopla” report. There are also a number of folks who publish subjective lists of their favorite traffic exchanges on their websites.
There is certainly no shortage of statistical information regarding virtually every facet of the traffic exchange industry!
However—
—as an ADVERTISER, I could care less about an Alexa ranking, or the number of members, or hits/unique ratios, etc, etc. Naturally, all these figures can be a good indication of RELATIVE performance. But!—
As an ADVERTISER the only data I care about are:
1) The cost per thousand visitors
2) The length of time it took for an exchange to deliver those thousand visitors
3) The number of “actions” that resulted from those thousand visitors. By “actions” I mean either the actual cash-in-hand sales of a product, or downloads of a free report, or opt-ins to a list.
4) The click-to-”action” ratio, and finally,
5) The cost per “action”
I, for one, would LOVE to see such a “Top Ten” list published by someone on a weekly basis. In my opinion, such a list would give a DEFINITIVE and OBJECTIVE analysis of the top exchanges.
Does such a recurring list exist?
Stan Stuchinski
Author, “Secrets of the Big Dogs”
Webmaster, GuruUniversity.net