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.

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A quick review of Hit Exchange News will show you that I’m not a fan of cash for surfing. I still believe to this day that when this became the ‘norm’ in this industry, results were lowered. A huge shift happened in the way people surf the traffic exchanges…And it was not for the best.

However, I’m not just going to have an opinion without explaining it more and offering a solution.

Cash for surfing comes in a lot of different forms. Now a program like Easy Hits 4 U was built on the cash for surfing model. This I don’t have issues with because it never tried to be anything else. I like Easy Hits 4 U, heck I’ve got a downline of over 27,000 in it but when I promote there I know the majority of people are surfing for their 30 cents. No problem, I’ll use it for branding purposes and I do get results there but I know it’s going to take a lot of credits to see some action.

Again, this is just my opinion and experience, some people get massive results from the program and that’s cool. I just know what I’m signing up for, it’s the same thing I expect when I advertise in the PTC’s.

Where I have issues with cash surfing is not only the enormous amount of garbage emails that these traffic exchanges are sending of late (I mean seriously, how many times a week do I have to hear about $1.50 or $2.50 cash links becoming active….) but from the mind set it creates with surfers.

When traffic exchanges started it was as simple as this…Surf and look at sites…In return, you get people looking at your site.
So simple and one of the reasons I think traffic exchanges are so effective. But now we have another reason people surf and that’s to earn their 25 cents for surfing two thousand pages…

So while these people may be taking an odd glance or two at your site, what they are really looking at is how many more clicks is it going to take them to earn their cash reward. Now some people will argue, there is nothing wrong with rewarding people with a cash prize or two for surfing all day but I disagree. Simply because the mind set of the surfer changes the moment you focus on the end reward of cash gifting which I’m sorry to say, isn’t getting traffic to their site, branding their name or heaven forbid…Building their list.

But Jon…You have Bracket Surfing at I Love Hits and you are giving away prizes like iPod’s and Flip HD cameras. Yes I am, but I have made a major change in Bracket Surfing to bring the focus back to USING the system for the right reasons. You can read more about that here.

But Jon…You dislike cash for surfing but what are you doing to change it….

Sweeva’s Widget Hunt

With our new feature at Sweeva, we are trying to not only get users and advertisers to work together and get rewarded together, we are trying to keep eye balls where we should have them…On the web sites. This new feature makes sure people are LOOKING at your site and poking around to find the Widgets. Yeah they may have an end goal of clicking the Widget for a potential prize but the main thing is this…To get that prize, they have to search and LOOK at your site.

A perfect solution? Naw, nothing is ever perfect but we’re working on making Sweeva THE most effective advertising exchange on the net. And I truly believe, the more we focus on the sites in rotation and less on the surf bar telling us we won a dime, we will see focus come back to the real reason traffic exchanges exist…

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