We’ve all done it, so today I’m going to tell you about some of the mistakes I’ve made whilst generating traffic by surfing Traffic Exchanges.

#1 Promoting The Wrong Thing

The cardinal sin that everyone does at first. You jump in and send all your traffic to a standard affiliate page for “ACME overnight wealth” that you’ve bought into where you’re told all you need is traffic. A few google searches later and you’ve found that Traffic Exchanges can send you hundreds of visitors each day to your site, so as Del Boy says “This time next year we’ll be millionaires”

#2 Not Tracking

In all the excitement you joined about a dozen sites, and through sheer luck you’ve found someone who has joined “ACME overnight wealth”. Sadly you have no idea where they came from? Did they even came from the Traffic Exchanges as you’ve also been posting your affiliate link all over your social media profiles.

#3 Who Are You, And Why Are You Selling Something To Me?

The world of Traffic Exchanges has changed, it’s now very much a community, and they don’t take well to being sold to. It’s like a small town from the 60′s, if you’re new in town and the first thing you do is open the conversation with a salespitch you’ll be driven out of town. I’m not saying that you won’t be able to sell “ACME overnight wealth” but you’d best get used to having the door slammed in your face a few times in the process.

#4 Upgrading In The Wrong Sites

All Traffic Exchange owners will try to sell you advertising when you join, but how can you tell if you’ve wasted yet more money? It’s simple, if you’ve bought 10,000 credits each month and the site is currently only able to deliver 5,000 per url in rotation then you’ve been diddled. Several ranking systems exist such as Affiliate Funnel or you can drop by TE Live at 4 pm EST and get live support and answers to any questions you have.

#5 First Impressions Count

At most you’ll have 10 seconds before people click onto the next page. So that 20 minute video presentation that “ACME overnight wealth” have on the standard affiliate page isn’t going to be watched. It’s time to get creative and create a fast loading splash page that will tell people who you are, and why they need “ACME overnight wealth” in their lives – hint I use Adkreator to create all my splash pages.

#6 Giving Up

With any traffic source you need to gather sufficient data before deciding if you should continue with it. When you look at PPC sources such as Adwords & Facebook where you can easily spend $100 in an afternoon it’s easy to know when you’re beaten. Now Traffic Exchanges are the exact opposite, it’s not until you’ve invested the time in branding yourself and becoming part of the community that you will start to see results. If you’ve left town too early then you won’t hear someone asks you “Why should I join ACME overnight wealth”? What a shame you gave up just as brand awareness was starting to kick in…

#7 Not Listening To Feedback

As I’ve said the world of Traffic Exchanges has gone social. So if you use Sweeva you can get direct feedback on your page. If you’re getting lots of red thumbs down and harsh comments then you’re doing something wrong. If you’re getting blue thumbs up and positive comments then the chances are that you’ve doing things properly and stand a good chance of getting results, even if you are still crazy enough to be promoting “ACME overnight wealth”.

#8 Don’t Just Use Traffic Exchanges

If you’ve gone to all the hard work of creating splash pages that are converting and getting you results from Traffic Exchange traffic then you have a well oiled marketing funnel. It will also convert with traffic from Safelists, PTC, Media Buys, in fact any sort of site where the traffic is such that it relies on being able to grab the viewer’s attention and convey a message in < 5 seconds.

Here’s How To Get Good Results With Traffic Exchanges

Invest the time to understand how things work. It’s not like other forms of traffic where instant profits can be made, you’ve got to commit time and effort and if you’ve actually listened to feedback on “ACME overnight wealth” you may have realised it’s not actually the best thing since sliced bread.

Focus on the other skills that people in the chats have told you they like about you. Set up a website selling these skills to the new friends you’ve made. It might not make you thousands of dollars in 2 hours, but it could be that you’re starting an online business that has real foundations and based on a passion rather than hype and a matrix system.

Yesterday we went to the cinema as a family to watch a film about a bunch of muppet’s who were popular many years ago, before the internet was even invented. Overall the film is excellent, very much focused on singing and dancing with the ubiquitous happy ending, perfect for a family film.

During the film one scene saw Kermit The Frog say something that really resonated with me. He gave some advice to a character called Walter, and this advice is something that that I think every online entrepreneur need’s to know.

To set the background Walter’s dream was to meet Kermit The Frog and the muppet’s and do some singing and dancing on stage with them. Walter achieved the first goal of meeting his hero, and he was praised for all the good work in bringing the gang of muppet’s back together, but when he’s asked to join them on stage panic sets in and the fear stops him from achieving his goal of going on stage.

Now the advice that Kermit The Frog gives out was a very simple, but powerful message.

I believe in you Walter

Fast forward to the end of the film and when the chips are down Walter is forced onto stage, and he think’s back to what Kermit the Frog said and takes a deep breath and goes out onto the stage. The audience, like Kermit and the muppet’s end up loving Walter and he get’s a standing ovation from everyone.

So I hear you ask, what has this got to do being an online entrepreneur?

Product Creation

Each and everyone of us has the ability inside us to create a product, and like Walter’s whistling it’s not until we release it to the public and face our fears that it becomes a success.

Even if you run away and hide for a bit at some point you will be asked to face this fear. You can’t become an online entrepreneur until you’ve taken an idea from your brain, turned it into a website, and made money by selling the idea to others.

Start today by surrounding yourself with positive people who will encourage and help you create and launch an online product. I know from my guest blog post over at HitExchangeNews that people like and appreciate the way I can communicate my ideas. My next hurdle is to turn articles like that into a proper report and stand in front of the audience over at the Warrior Forum and see if I can make them clap?

Sure some people may not like the tune, but if you have the backing of people who believe in you and what you write it’s much easier to stand in front of an audience and sell your product.

I know that we can’t all have happy endings like the movie’s, but if you get out and build a relationship with your hero and get them to believe in you then you stand a good chance.

Andrew

 

So if you want to learn what it take to be successful in Internet Marketing the best place to start is by learning from a proven expert, ie Alex Jefferies.

==> http://andrewstark.com/AlexJefferiesMentoring

Go into this with the right mindset of learning from an expert and meeting the 1,000 plus other people who have already bought and good things will happen to you.

Be positive, and keep me up to date with your progress.

Andrew

In this day and age of instant information it can seem almost impossible to keep up with all the developments that are happening in the world of Internet Marketing. Although the days of big hyped home study launches seemed to have gone, there’s still a constant flow of new and exciting products coming to the market on a daily basis.

So how on earth are you supposed to keep calm and carry on?

#1 Stay Focused – Build A Silo Mentality

Stop slot machine marketing, pick one sub niche of the Internet Marketing world and stay focused on becoming an expert in this sub niche. It’s better to be a big fish in a small pond than a small fish in a big ocean fighting for the left over scraps.

To do this you need to pick a sub niche you’re passionate about. When you go to sites like the warrior forum think about the posts that you’re drawn to. I normally get drawn to list building questions, and ways to generate traffic for squeezepages.

Once you have a sub niche defined it’s time to put up the barriers and stop people distracting you. I’m very selective about which lists and products I buy. If someone starts sending me messages about anything not related to listbuilding and traffic generation then it’s time for me to unsubscribe. Even if what I’m being sent is super interesting it’s taking me out into the dangerous ocean where I’d have to start fighting for scraps again.

#2 – Build Relationships and Become A Player

The easiest way to do this is to just give back to the existing community. Write lengthy replies in the forums, follow and retweet / become a facebook / google plus / stumble and digg  what the existing big fish in the market are doing, and write educated comments on their blogs. If you find this difficult then it sounds to me like you’ve picked the wrong niche, so rinse and repeat step 1.

Now it’s time to step out of your comfort zone and start blogging about your chosen niche. For the technophobes amongst you you will soon find that using wordpress is probably easier than microsoft word. In terms of content just take ideas from the popular forum topics and turn your blog comments into posts where you are expressing your own opinions on the hot topics of the sub niche.

With your own blog started link all of your social media, forum signatures, and blog comments back to the blog, and if you’re able to stay in your silo for a few months just building up relationships and getting seen as someone who knows what they’re talking about then good things will start to happen.

I know this sounds like hard work, but if you investigate every overnight success you will find they spent a long time knocking on the door to make that success happen. Remember if it was that easy we’d all be sitting back in the Caribbean retiring from that $10 investment we made at the start of our Internet Marketing careers.

#3 Create Your Own Products

Once you have a blog, and are used to creating content the next step is start selling it. The simplest product would be to use the relationships you now have to interview a fellow expert in the niche, and turn it into both a pdf and audio file. Release it as a $5 WSO and suddenly you’re now a serious player in the niche who people are looking up to.

When you have a collection of interviews that are proven sellers it’s time to package them up and set them up a main product, with the upsell of some personal 1:1 coaching where you just chat and share your knowledge skills directly. I know this sounds crazy, but if you have followed your passion and given out value to the niche then people will be willing to pay for such access. It’s exactly the same business model that makes consultants so much money.

Even better is record the consulting packages and you have an instant high value product ready and waiting to be sold in the future. Currently I’m not ready myself to take this last step, it’s something I know I should do, and if my circumstances change to a position where I need to make the internet my main income it’s what I be forced into doing.

In summary the message you need to get into your head is that you should focus in on a niche you’re passionate about and CRUSH IT!

Thanks for reading

Andrew Stark