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!
Something amazing happened at TimTech last week. We hit a milestone, I didn’t think we would have this early in our companies history. For months, we have been paying well over $1000 a week in affiliate commissions. This was such an amazing number and really cemented our belief in the ‘evergreen’ affiliate product plan.
We caught a lot of heat for making our commission rate 30% across the board. We lost ‘friends’ because of it, we were told that we were crazy, that our business model would fail and well, that we were generally the worst thing to ever happen to traffic exchanges…
Last week we paid out $2427.43 in affiliate commissions.
That means our affiliates received the highest amount ever from TimTech and here’s the best part. We did it without launching a new program. We didn’t do it with ‘JV’ accounts. We didn’t do it with email pitches. The members did it. All we did was provide the services.
This is what happens when you put people before profits. When you understand the real power in business is not from a flashy OTO or a catchy video…But from people. And the community.
That was the BEST way we could have started 2012 and we are so pumped up for the year ahead. We promise to make our members the focal part of our business and the community to be the center piece of our brand. We have lofty goals now…We’re shooting for $3000 a week in affiliate commissions as an average by the end of the year.
So it’s the new year…I’m finally back from my 3 week ‘drive’ and I’m looking to have a fantastic 2012. So what better way to start the year off by cancelling my aWeber account and saying bye bye to my lists of over 20,000 contacts.
Huh?
Wait a minute Jon…Did you just say you deleted your lists? On aWeber yes, I did. First of all, I am very happy with Traffic Wave and they have served my needs very well PLUS Brian and his team actually WANTS and appreciates traffic exchange business. aWeber on the other hand, has told me and a few of my friends in the business that they want nothing to do with ‘untargeted’ traffic sources like traffic exchanges. But…That’s not the big reason.
I’m taking a step back from the whole ‘list building’ side of things. Yes, I still think it’s very important to build a contact list but I think for years, the industry has had it all backwards. The old business model is push. Push your mesage. Push your broadcast. Push your promotions. And as someone on the list, there was very little we could do to interact with the sender…Other than reply. Which most of the times it went to a ‘no reply’ email address.
In this day and age of social…It’s not what I consider a good business model.
Now if we flip it…Do two things, where we first worry about the relationship rather than the ability to push promotional messages to your list…I think that builds a real ‘push / pull’ relationship where your readers don’t feel like they are simply a name on a list.
And second, why not make it easy for your ‘list’ to contact you. Send them to a blog where they can interact with you and hear from you directly…Not just a ‘no reply’ email address.
I dunno, maybe I’m completely wrong…I’ve been known to make bad decisions in my life and business but I’m saying no more to the whole top down way of list building…Let’s walk side by side with our ‘lists’ instead of just pushing messages to them. Treat them like real people and not just a faceless name on a list.
