The pulse of the traffic exchange industry and the random ramblings of Jon Olson (that's me!)
I've been writing Hit Exchange News since 2003 and have been involved in the traffic exchanges for over a decade. Enjoy the 'news', and thank you so much for making this THE must-read traffic exchange blog on the internet!
I was hanging out with my buddy Tim Linden today and the topic of branding came up. If you have been reading Hit Exchange News for any amount of time you’ll know how much of a student I am of personal branding as I do tend to think it’s the number one reason some people succeed while others fail at this internet business gig.
But something I feel people do is over complicate the process. I know this sounds simple enough but putting your face on every splash page and squeeze page you have will not only help your brand, you will be doing something your competition isn’t. Simple.
Simple little acts like putting your name, your face, your photo, your logo on EVERYTHING you do, doesn’t cost any money. Doesn’t cost you a penny in fact, but it’s something simple you can do right now that everyone else doesn’t.
And that’s what branding can be. It doesn’t have to be complicated. It needs to be simple, to the point and everywhere. For example, this picture….
All I did was get a buddy of mine to put a red ‘cross out’ across it and presto….People recognize this image. Simple. All I had to do was use it everywhere. It’s not a professional photo , heck it’s down right nasty in fact but it helped me get my name out there.
Personal branding is a simple process you just need to be original, keep your image everywhere and be seen as often as possible. Again, all simple tasks that I think we over complicate.
In the next few days you are going to see another classic example of someone using something so simple, but creating an entire brand around it. It will be a great example and lesson in keeping branding simple. In the meantime…
I did a short video on branding and how powerful keeping it simple can be…Let me know what you think of it below.
A few years ago, there was a guy named Rich Taylor who was very active in the traffic exchange community. Not trying to get all sentimental and stuff but I do think Rich was a major reason that I became branded as a traffic exchange expert simply because he pushed me to find my niche and really excel at it.
Rich Taylor was a pioneer in this business and one of the first traffic exchange owners who used ‘themes’ with his businesses. Anyways, long story short we started a traffic exchange consultation gig together and one of the ideas we came up with was the 3:1 surf ratio. Surf ratios in the traffic exchanges have always been a hot topic and well, some people swear up and down that programs shouldn’t give any less than a 1:1 ratio while others have gone as low as 5:1.
The 3:1 surf ratio was adopted at every program I owned and was consulted on and for years and it’s been fantastic, it was a very healthy ratio for the program and savvy surfers really understood why we kept it at a 3:1. But in the time and era of the cash for surfing epidemic (and yes I think it’s the worst thing to happen to traffic exchanges in years) we need more ways to entice surfers to view sites WITHOUT relying on cash for surfing.
So I have made a pretty big change in the way I do business with my cornerstone traffic exchange I Love Hits.
I have raised the minimum surf ratio for Light Weight members from a 3:1 to a 2:1. So now for every 10 page views in I Love Hits, you receive 5 hits back instead of the old 9 page views for 3. Now a few things before I get the tomatoes thrown at me…
I have been monitoring the surfing at I Love Hits for quite a few months and we can mathematically sustain this ratio thanks in large part to Bracket Surfing. Raising a surf ratio is VERY hard to do when you have a balance to maintain in a program but today I’m going to give it a shot…
Let’s see how it goes. If traffic delivery plummets, I’ll have to bring it back to a 3:1. But something tells me, with the added bonus of Bracket Surfing and the vibrant community at I Love Hits, this will do nothing but increase surfing.
In other news with I Love Hits, I am in the process of adding IM Faceplate to our Profile Pages. This is to give members even more networking opportunities for themselves and their businesses. This will be up and running very soon.
