Bad Traffic Exchange Discussion
Okay, never thought I would get involved with these type discussions but these things keep popping up for discussion. No, I will never post a link to one that I feel is a bad exchange, nor do I have any intention of banning them from Soaring4Traffic at this time.
My only response is to point out 2 things that stick out when deciding whether to become a member of any traffic exchange. Tim Linden, owner of Startxchange is currently writing a series on his blog that I personally will follow, just to see what he has to say. Tim Linden’s Blog link
Jon Olson also had some comments on his latest Hit Exchange News. Many discussions in forums and other blogs that frankly I have forgotten where they were, so it might be up to you to search them out. lol
Many owners and long time users of traffic exchanges have known this all along, however it seems now that more are speaking out in an attempt to if nothing else educate traffic exchange users of things to beware of. Many feel that these exchanges are giving traffic exchanges a bad name. You can of course leave your comments below. 
This is likely to be my only post concerning this matter, so here are the two things I look at before joining a new program.
As Tim stated in the first post of his series, the design is important for two reasons. First you want the site attractive enough that new members will want to join, i.e. it attracts their attention and makes them comfortable. Secondly, if the owner doesn’t care enough to create a unique attractive design, will other aspects of the program be shoddy as well?
Even if I like the design, my second red flag is the amount of credits offered to join. When a traffic exchange offers hundreds, sometimes thousands of credits to join, it will not be able to deliver, plain and simple. Sounds attractive but really not workable. Second would be the offer of thousands of credits at a ridiculously low price. No one would ever surf, no need too. No surfing, no one ever sees your site, so what would be the purpose?
Those two things can usually be seen and determined without joining. Those are my red flags and determine right away the sites I decide to advertise on. Of course there are other internal choices to make, but most are purely opinion, speculation and result oriented. Some which cannot be determined right away with a brand new exchange.
Not likely this post will be news to any Soaring4Traffic members, mainly because I feel you already know what to look for and for sure smart enough to figure this out already.
So what do you think? Some say this is diluting traffic exchanges in general, will give a black eye to legitimate exchanges? Others argue that the bad exchanges will come and go, while the better ones continue to grow and thrive?
Would love to have your opinion since this is a very serious business for me, not a hobby.
Now, on to other news. Speaking of traffic delivery, Soaring4Traffic’s activity is flying very high, a good thing yes, but credits are flying out the door too fast for my taste.
How do we solve this? Never thought I would say this, but have taken a couple of internal steps to slow things down a tad. But I also need your help. Login, assign some credits to your sites. We have literally thousands of credits not assigned or sites placed on hold. Let’s get them rotating as soon as possible. Credits sitting in your account are not doing you any good, your sites need to be seen.
Simple math, more sites in rotation, slower the traffic delivery will be.
Other steps taken are to increase the surf bonuses, so look for those while surfing. For those that don’t have time to surf, all credit purchases for the next 48 hours will be doubled automatically, please assign them after purchasing. By the way, text links are always running low, good time to add some impressions there as well.
If you’re wondering why you haven’t gotten any blog posts lately, been working hard in the background on some things that we want to add. Also took the leap, purchased a couple of books on PHP and MySql web development. Since I’m a slow reader and one of these books is like 4 inches thick, don’t worry, won’t be messing anything up for quite some time.
That’s all for today, keep Soaring higher! Login now, surf for extra bonus credits, and or make your special purchases.
Ray White - Proud Owner
Soaring4Traffic.com
P.S. After talking about bad traffic exchanges, there will be notification of a new one posted here within the next few days that will certainly fall into the “Good” or should I say, “Excellent” category.
April 25th, 2008 at 4:13 am
I am absolutely in agreement with both you and Tim Linden on this.
My view is that Traffic exchanges still have a long way to go as they evolve together with the Internet. It seems to me that there is a very real opportunity for Traffic Exchanges to become the ‘glossy mags’ of the Internet and thereby collect an international membership of thousands. When you look around, and I do, because my site is about reviewing and testing Traffic Exchanges, it is already clear that some significant things are happening - for example ‘The Cinnamon Hollow’ traffic exchange is aimed at women nad provides quality female content - there are a few others but this is definitely developing and the glossy mag idea doesn’t sound too impossible when you look around these type of sites.
I am currently working on my own Traffic Exchange which will have a unique content and thereby, hopefully, attract a particular membership.
The bad Traffic Exchanges - which to my mind are those that have simply been purchased with ‘make-money-quick’ ideas will fail because unless they are effectively and regularly supported by their owners they will bore the individual who join, but I do not believe this will stop those individuals seeking to join a Traffic Exchange elsewhere, it will simply make them more cautious about the ones they do. The ‘red flags’ that you mention are excellent measures to assess the approach that a business Traffic Exchange owner has taken and whether or not joing a TE will ultimately be beneficial. I join lots simply to provide my site visitors with information relative to my findings, what I do think is important though is that Traffic Exchanges are not simply advertising platforms they are fast developing international communities that allow us all to view each others countries, cultures in order to better understand each other.
Ray, sorry if I got a little carried away, hope this isn’t too long!
Robert
April 25th, 2008 at 5:42 am
It has been my plan to surf the exchanges and write about them. I have come across a few where I did not stay after joining up. One of these was by someone well respected by most TE people, but the new script was in my view very unfriendly for the newbie.
Whilst I am not going in the same direction as Robert, I want to focus on the newbie aspect because a traffic exchange needs to be newbie friendly. Some scripts out there are not newbie friendly, and this is something that needs to be considered.
In the coming months I hope to be able to spend more time blogging about the experiences that I have had so far, talking about what works, and why, from my point of view an exchange fails to keep the interest of surfers (me in particular). The timer is one important aspect when it comes to an enjoyable surfing experience.
April 25th, 2008 at 8:31 am
I couldn’t agree more with everything that has been written and my 2 cents includes:
Growth and membership size of a TE.
People will join, but if the TE does not grow or does not have a sizable membership then what’s the point of sticking around? Everyone would like for their site to at least be seen and the more people that see it the better.
Keep up the good work.
Easy Traffic
April 25th, 2008 at 9:15 am
As a current exchange owner myself, but new to the business, I have been watching this dialog with great interest. I DO believe that poor-quality exchanges have and will continue to result in a decline in this business. It was not uncommon in the early days of this business according to some of my sources that were there for exchanges to give much better results and to do much better business.
What happens is that new members coming from outside the traffic exchange industry are lured into a poor exchange by some way or another. They surf their fingers to the bone trying to get results, but they don’t have the marketing skill to do it. Top onto that the fact that they are surfing at an exchange that either does not deliver traffic or burns their credits so fast with only a few viewers and you get a person that leaves these advertising resources in frustration saying that they don’t work!
Poor exchanges with bad ownership are a blight on the internet! It reminds me a lot of the S&L’s in the ’80’s where you had mom and pop outfits that were little more than glorified pawn brokers loaning people money at insane interest rates and giving high interest savings accounts to their members. The legitimate banks raised their savings interest rates too to keep up with their competitors. Then the housing market burst in the late ’80’s and the house of cards fell in. There used to be about 300 or more really strong banks in the US back then, after the collapse only about 20 or 30 were able to weather the storm. Everyone else was either bought out by the “Big Boys” like Bank of America, or were put out of business completely. I foresee the same thing happening to traffic exchanges without a shakeup in this business.
April 25th, 2008 at 10:31 am
Hi Ray,
First, thanks for the good deal on purchasing credits - a good buy for anyone.
The bad exchanges contribute to the ‘TEs do not work’ syndrome in some circles. A newbie joins a bad exchange with poor results and leaves - spreading the word to 5 others and it spreads.
The ever increasing numbers of TEs also dilutes the number of surfers for the good TEs. A person can only join so many traffic exchanges and if they are the bad ones, the good ones may lose a good surfer.
In the end the cream of the crop will always rise to the top, but at what cost - that is the question.
Cheers!
Tony Tezak
April 25th, 2008 at 10:38 am
I am glad to hear some opinions as I am still considered a newbie and I have been a member here sinc 07 and you have one of the best.At my beginning I was advised to join about 50 and I did get to about 30 and at some point came to the conculusion I could not do this ,so I have stopped and now have a few of my favorites. Those that have the 10 sec timer tells me no one can see your ad at that speed and to me, I am a member to expose my site etc. Most surfinh are doing it for credits and not to join another business, and yet we all hope some one will see and want to check what is being offered.
Thanks,
margie
April 25th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
My suggestion is to list the sites and their owners on your TE if they have been in business for at least a year and have at least 1000 active members also list the new sites that have 1000 members before their first year.
Just let your members know that you support those owners and recommend their TE’s along with your own and that if a site is not listed then it more than likely does not meet the requirements that will provide any solid results for new members.
That way you can save yourself from feeling bad about listing bad exchanges or unproven new exchanges.
As far as bad exchanges go who cares if you can keep new people from joining and as for new TE owners, well it will make things a little tougher on them to compete, but then you are in a competitive industry and sooner or later someone will come after you if you dont do it first.