Stay tuned for more information about this next surfing contest!

The winners have been announced in the members area news section and the credits have been added to their accounts.

Congrats!

We’ll have more contests soon!

It’s not exactly the prettiest or most functional shoutbox you’ll ever see but it does give our members the option of communicating with each other!

I hope that in the future we will be able to replace it with something a little bit more robust but it will do the job for now.

The first is a scrolling news box which will display news and information about Traffic Spawn.

The second is a new poll that we’ll update periodically with new questions.

Enjoy!

Tom
Traffic Spawn Admin

The last time we did something like this was almost 2 years ago. We’ve been relying on search engines, direct requests, and word of mouth for new members so expect to see a huge increase in activity soon.

I’ve been hesitating to send a newsletter out to our members due to the fact that there hasn’t been a whole lot to talk about and I refuse to send useless updates like 90% of the other traffic exchanges do. I don’t know about you but I get sick of all the worthless spam I receive from other traffic exchange programs on a daily basis. I’d love to list some of the worst offenders here but I won’t. I’ve literally had to cancel my membership at more than a few traffic exchanges in the past due to the fact they would send multiple emails per day talking about things that I could care less about.

Anyways, once we have the new surf and prize images in place, the new poll script, and a couple of other minor things then we will launch the advertising campaign and send out a newsletter to let everyone know that we’re back and bigger than ever.

Tom
Traffic Spawn Admin

I think the new seals are a lot more polished looking, kudos to Trust-Guard.

For those of you that are unfamiliar with Trust-Guard, they are a 3rd party company that verifies website security, privacy policies, and business information. If a company/website passes their entire verification process then they are also awarded a Trust-Guard “Certified” seal.

TrafficSpawn.com is a Trust-Guard Certified business with a valid business address and phone number. Our Privacy Policy has also been thoroughly checked and all transactions placed with us are 100% Secure.

We hope that by providing a 3rd party verification service, our members will have the confidence to know that all information sent and purchases made through us are totally safe and secure!

If you have an online business and you think Trust-Guard could help then feel free to check out their services by clicking the banner below.

I don’t really understand what the problem is considering it used to work just fine but it won’t even install correctly anymore.

There’s a couple decent poll scripts out there but I really liked the last one. Hopefully I can find something similar in looks and functionality.

I’m still working on the new images for the surfbar and prize game as well. I wanted to use the pictures that we had last year during this time but they were deleted.

Tom
Traffic Spawn Admin

You’ll notice that there is now a calendar displayed showing the available slots.

What’s interesting is that now you can either spend credits or out right purchase an entire day of your website being displayed first in the page rotation.

Typically your site will be seen much more than normal since every time someone starts a surf session, your website will be shown first. This is a great way to send some extra traffic to your website!

Simply navigate to our first page auction within the members area and select the date(s) that you would like for your website to be first in rotation. Then, choose whether you want to use credits or cash to purchase a slot. It’s simple as that!

You will be able to reserve a slot for up to 10 minutes. If you fail to complete the purchase within 10 minutes then that slot will be open again for the next member.

The Basics

Traffic exchange programs can be a very effective way to put your website in front of thousands of potential customers. They are perfect for promoting business opportunities, blogs, products, services, and more.

When you use a good traffic exchange program to it’s fullest potential, you’re going to get some great results. The problem is that many people do not use them to their fullest potential and quickly give up when the money doesn’t start pouring in.

News flash! You cannot simply put your website home page into the surf rotation and call it a day. This is probably the biggest mistake you can make besides not tracking your ads, which I’ll get to in a bit. You only have a limited amount of time, usually just a few seconds, to get your message across to the surfer.

If your website is taking 8 seconds to load and the timer of the traffic exchange is set to 8 second views like us, then obviously there is a major problem. Honestly, anything that takes over 3 seconds to load is asking for trouble. It really doesn’t matter if the surf timer was set to 15 seconds or even 30 seconds. If you have a slow loading page no one will ever see it or even care when it does finally load.

Splash Pages

This is where splash pages and squeeze pages come in. I don’t want to get into too many details about these right now but if you are not using one of these types of pages to advertise on a traffic exchange then you are simply not using traffic exchanges correctly.

Every single page in rotation should be a splash or squeeze page with the exception of maybe a blog or a super fast loading and attractive home page. These pages load lightning fast, have high-impact fonts/graphics, and instill curiosity in the visitor.

Ad Tracking

Another major problem that I have seen is people not tracking their ads. You will never know how well your ads are doing without tracking them. There are plenty of 3rd party ad tracking services out there and we even have one built in to our exchange!

The concept is to take at least two different splash pages and set them both up for tracking. It’s important to use the tracker URL when promoting these pages. Go to your favorite traffic exchanges and add your tracker links to the surf rotation. Again, remember to use the tracker links! That’s all there is to it.

Now you will be able to see which one of your ads is getting the most hits/conversions. Use the ad that gets the most hits and continually modify it until it is converting at an acceptable rate. Trackers also have some other great uses which include testing to see which exchange is producing the best results for you.

Alternative Methods

Last but not least there are banners, text ads, paid emails, and solo emails. All of which are perfect for added exposure. The more of these tools you use, the better the results are going to be.

Participate in the banner and text exchange programs and not just the traffic exchange portion. Putting the banner and text ad code from a traffic exchange on your website can really help with the amount of targeted visitors you receive.

Build your downline! This is a very worthwhile method of building a steady stream of traffic to your website over time. Almost every traffic exchange I know of has their own splash pages, banners, and text ads that you can use to build your downline in that program. Advertise those links on other traffic exchanges or anywhere else for that matter! Downline members can and will pass up hits to their sponsors when they surf.

If you have 100 members in your 1st level downline at TrafficSpawn and each of them surfed 100 pages that means you would earn 2,000 hits without even doing anything! That is why it’s so important to build your downline before you start advertising your own business in most cases. It’s all about a steady flow of traffic and not random spikes of it. You might even make a decent amount of money from your downline members purchasing traffic and upgrading their accounts! A win/win situation.

Closing

There really are no secrets when it comes to getting good results with a traffic exchange. All it takes is a little effort on your part. You get what you put into it, as with anything else in life.

Good luck! I hope some of this information was useful to the newer members.

I’m happy to report that not only are we back up, but the server transfer was a success for the most part. TrafficSpawn.com is now running on an AMD X2 64-bit dual-core processor, 4GB Corsair XMS DDR2 800MHz RAM, and two 10,000 RPM Western Digital Raptors. Now that’s some power!

Unfortunately, we ran into some minor database problems after the move.

The blog and poll databases were completely lost so we decided to start them over again from scratch. The blog is currently 100% working now though, and the poll will be back shortly.

I haven’t updated the surfbar or prize game graphics in quite a while so that’s also on the list of things to do. I plan to go back to the holiday/season themed graphics for both of these so keep a close eye on that!

If you notice any strange behavior while using our traffic exchange please open a support ticket within the members area or register on the blog and post about it here. I’ve done a lot of testing to make sure that everything is running smoothly after the move but I could have easily missed something.

Tom
Traffic Spawn Admin