The last post I had on Hit Exchange News created quite a stir. Again, there are some that see the power of social surfing, and there are some that don’t. One of the main things I noticed is that people who embraced age old practices along with creating a wonderful brand in the social side are seeing massive results. So my advice would be this…

Stop worrying about the ‘sale’…

Make a friend first!

I am hearing how results are down, it takes ‘too much time to be social’, and blah blah blah. I’ve seen results soar for our members and for our businesses across the board because we have stopped worrying about the ‘sale’. Our results are now based on people. How many people can I say ‘hi and thank you’ to in a live environment.

We want to concentrate on creating happy surfers and happy members first, and we feel the sales will follow. And it’s been working. It’s pretty simple really, if members are bored, they do things like load up 10 tabs and power surf. However if they are engaged, interacting with others, they are happy and only surfing maybe 2 tabs at once.

Happy, engaged members = results

But what are results? A sale? Maybe a new sign up to your list? How about a click through?

For TimTech (and yours truly) results mean creating happy members and meeting new people interested in well…Not being bored to death while trying to build a business online. I have learned the most by doing, not by listening to someone in a suit tell me how to make money online…The best teacher ever is experience and why not have a little bit of fun while doing it.

So yeah, this stuff may not be for everyone, and that’s fine…But I firmly believe that if you worry less about where the next sale is coming from, and more about engaging others and talking to members, the sales seem to come in…Automatically.

What’s your thoughts on this? Is Olson out to lunch, or is the new business model online…Let’s be friends first?

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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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