Recently the tracking service I use went through a makeover, and if you spend time driving traffic to your squeezepages then you need to collect some data to make sure you’re not wasting your time, money or both.

Like the banner above says it’s super simple to use, and in this post I’m going to share some of my results.

Traffic Exchange Advertising

Before the rebrand Trck.Me was all about traffic exchanges, and it gave me one link that I put into any site that I joined, and then as and when I create a new squeeze / splash page I just add it into rotation and compare it against the current page.

Alternatively if I want to run a seasonal campaign I only need to visit one site to change up all my advertising.

 It also let’s me track individual sites and monitor conversions. the site will give me a list of sites where the traffic comes from, and conversion can be recorded either as a click through or image uploaded to a thank-you page, ideal if you’re using a double opt-in process and want to know that people are giving you real details.

The reason for the rebrand was to allow the site to reach out to an audience who don’t use traffic exchanges, and it allowed for the site to become a paid only service – see this post about why relying on free services is bad for you business.

http://www.hitexchangenews.com/news/the-death-of-the-free-mentality

 Site Of The Day

At sweeva I always surf 10 days a site, and I’m an upgraded member. This means I generate a lot of credits, and I save these up to get my Click Track Profit squeezepage shown to all the members. As sweeva has a longer timer it means that the video has time to play, and here’s the results…

This is the url so you can see what I’m advertising

http://trckrs.com/6530

Note that any hits will show up as coming from this blog and won’t impact any other advertising campaign.

The number of credits it will cost you to get site of the day varies, but I’m happy that 7,500 credits resulted in my site getting seen by a lot of people. The 15% refers to unique visitors, so this shows that my site was shown a lot in rotation and this gives me good branding to the members who were doing more than just the 10 a day.

A conversion rate of 0.6% may not seem like much, but getting 24 new subscribers who have connected with me is awesome, and each of these people are now my Click Track Profit friends which means a relationship can be started.

Lastly I also got loads of great comments, and having people like your advertising means a lot.

Same Page In General Rotation

Now I have a co-op subscription which gives me a baseline amount of credits, and I when I do some surfing to collect the vault ‘n’ keys or a specific promotion I get spikes.

Yesterday’s extra spike occurred as I was feeling flush as one of the 24 leads from sweeva bought my Build A Quality List course  

Now with general surfing the same page still converts, but to a lesser extent than site of the day – here’s the stats so far for November – I don’t want to name & shame the site that has generated zero results from 232 hits as I find this a surprise.

Now as I’m using a personalised video squeezepage that I’m building up my brand, and as I use my surf time to look for the clever people like me who are using traffic exchanges to build a list coupled with the fact I actually like clicking at all of the sites I feel happy advertising on traffic exchanges. 

If I was just promoting a generic affiliate link and didn’t understand the community I would not be able to turn a profit based on these numbers. 

Safelists Still Generate More Leads…

Now here’s where the real money can be made by understanding tracking.

Advertising a squeezepage in safelists will generate a lot more leads, and all things being equal I should really spend more of my time advertising with safelists. 

Again, note that I’m still using personal branding and giving away information that people want.

http://trckrs.com/31661

I know that  a lot of people are already sharing safelist tracking results, but if you look at my stats you will see my upgraded accounts at YourLuckyList & ListBandit from back in the day generate only a few hits, but the quality of leads is most excellent.

Can You See How Tracking Makes You Money Now?

In summary I hope this post has given you an insight into what sort of pages I’m promoting to build my list, and how I’m able to generate leads from traffic exchanges and safelists. If I was to move into PTC, banner advertising, solo ads, or giveaways then I can use Trck.Me to monitor what happens.

Just buying traffic and hoping for the best is like building a house with no foundations. It may look great, but you’re just asking for trouble in the long term.

Take advantage of the 30 day trial.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JP4fa4PQnko

If you advertising on a traffic exchange and not promoting a site that you own where the leads and revenue directly go to you, then yes you are stupid.

So How Can I Stop Being Stupid?

Create something of value that means people will want to be associated with you.

Interview a successful traffic exchange owner, buy a ClickTrackProfit Badge to give away, share your weekly stats in blog posts, create a youtube tutorial on something that you think other TE surfers need, set up affiliate landmines by rebranding reports and getting people onto your list.

Actually anything really that makes you a purple cow, being different in the way you advertise is good.

Essentially this is +1 marketing where you are the brand and you’re introducing yourself to new visitors and showing them why you’re worth listening to.

I know that setting up something like this will be uncomfortable, but to have an online business you need more than affiliate links. Create solid foundations for your business by creating content, generating leads, and then point them in the direction of your affiliate links rather than trying to sell sell from the start.

Invest time learning how to do this, then start teaching others, and next thing you know good things will happen.

Look forward to reading your opinions

Andrew.

So this week’s blog post should have been a list of Killer Resources, but that will have to wait until next week as I’m not organised enough to have planned ahead.

Today’s post is back to a threat headline.

Why Can’t We Trust Internet Marketers

Almost everyone you speak to online can tell you about a product or service they bought that was over priced and under delivered. Perhaps even worse is the fact that many of these people fall foul of the same tactics more than once before finding out that they have been diddled.

The worst thing is that these scumbags actually go out and target people they know are new to the world of Internet Marketing.

What Are The Warning Signs?

Here’s how to tell if someone is trying to abuse your trust.

• Even when you have your credit card in hand all excited you don’t actually know what you’re buying
• When you do buy a product you’re immediately told that you need to buy extra things to make it work better and give you that instant return on investment faster and easier.
• Every email you get from them is trying to sell you something
• You ask support a question and get no answer
• The product is all filler and no actual information. Telling you to promote the product you just bought to make money is not actually a product.
• Google is full of fake reviews and testimonials that have been bough from fiverr

How Can We Find The Good Internet Marketers?

It will take time, but eventually you will do some research and find a product or site such as the warrior forum where someone will take you under their wing and teach you how to create a BS radar and keep you on the straight and narrow.

Even better is when someone takes the time to write blog posts that educate you and teach you how to do things that will result in real sustainable online business.

Hint: By telling you the things above it means that I can no longer send you a copy and paste email to something involving russian programmers and a pintest loophole that will make you a gazillion dollars by the weekend.

Learn From The People Who Actually Have Done It

If someone is selling a blogging product but doesn’t use wordpress themselves then what makes them qualified as a teacher? Like I said in the previous post you need to learn from proven experts.

It’s also worth finding half a dozen or so people you connect with, make friends, and learn together.

Go out and find facebook groups or forums that have the same passion as you, and just have fun learning.

Suddenly the learning means that you’re now able to create content and start your own blog. Then you’re ready to start monetizing the content. If you don’t have real content then you are “faking it” and are no better than the scumbags who are selling hopes and dreams.

So in this post I want to talk about how a company formed recently has taken the world of Traffic Exchanges by storm and generated a membership called ClickTrackProfit that now has over 30,000 members.

Lesson #1 No Hard Selling

If someone knocks on your front door or calls your house phone and the first thing they do is start trying to sell you something, what do you do? I tell them to shove off (or something ruder if I’m in a bad mood), so why is that so many people online think that it’s cool to start selling on first contact?

Sure the guys at TimTech do try to sell you upgrades, but it’s always done via video, with an introduction, and then a here’s why it would be cool if you purchased this from us today…

Also with the amount of traffic they generate / buy across the Traffic Exchange network they could build crazy downlines in anyone of the scam sites that constantly plague this industry promising push button wealth for a single investment. They stand tall and regularly tell people at the daily TELive (4 pm EST) to promote yourself first and opportunities second.

In fact whilst I was typing this post I was distracted by this post from Jon Olson, read the comments section and you will learn an important lesson – Why I don’t care about building Downlines

Lesson #2 Basic Branding & Networking

So from the first lesson you know it’s time to get personal and start promoting yourself first.

The perfect way to do this to use AdKreator, which funny enough is also a TimTech company

Here’s 3 different pages I’ve created

Chalkboard squeezepage for Headline Report

Leadership splash page

I love CTP Blog Post (may change the link to this new post now)

Notice how in each of these I make sure I’m branding myself as an expert in areas such as Headline Writing, Leadership, and trying to attract other members of ClickTrackProfit to this blog. If you spend more than 10 minutes surfing you will constantly see hundreds of people promoting ClickTrackProfit, and subtly I’m branding myself and by having my own badge means that I can get some of these 30,000 members onto my mailing list.

Doing this sort of self branding first is something that will benefit you long term vs being given a load of affiliate links and told to drive traffic to these links. Should a programme your promoting go bust or stop working then you’re left with nothing, and all the hard work you put into traffic generation is generating leads and sales for someone else.

Next time you see someone advertising themselves take a minute to write down their name, and if you see the same person on multiple occassions in the next week find a way to get in touch, and talk about the great job they’re doing branding themselves.

This first contact and longer term friendship based on a common interest could lead to all sort of great things happening. For example I bet Patrick Griffin didn’t think he would publish a book with Justin Ledvina when he first joined ClickTrackProfit!

Lesson #3 Stay In The Game

 This is the exact opposite of all the salesapges that are aimed at pulling on your emotions and getting you to part with your credit card details and earning bucketloads of cash by using automated software developed by a russian programmer who will make your content #1 in google before you’ve even posted it.

At ClickTrackProfit you will learn a concept called +1. Basically you pick a sensible target and use it to create slow but steady growth in your business. In the world of Internet Marketing you have certain overheads that you will need to pay each month, these are called evergreen products. For example I get paid by Aweber each month as I recommend it to you the readers of my blog and put it in multiple downline builders and my viral reports.

Like all good business owners you’re first objective is to break even, and then work on the growth using the +1 strategy. So if I set myself a target of 30 new subscribers each month, and achieve it, the next target is 60 per month, then 90 per month, and so on.

If you don’t have your own blog / product / service then concentrate on evergreen products and crack the break even phase so that when you do move onto the next phase you have a good network of people to support you in the next stage and help you launch your own little bit of the internet.

Lesson #4 Don’t Accept The Status Quo

 This means that you need to stand out from the crowd. I think that almost all of TimTech read business books from the top thinkers in the world of business, and one of the most common theme’s is the Purple Cow concept from Seth Godin.

When advertising do something unique and different. The best way of being unique is video, in this world of high speed internet and mobile technology you can get your message across, and if you give that message with the logo of the company you’re promoting on your forehead it will definately get attention.

*golden nugget” I should have done this for the login lesson I recorded for ClickTrackProfit.

If you do see real results and have something you think is worth sharing with the entire membership and you’ve taken the time to network at TELive and in the chat functions then you stand a good chance of being able to share your ideas and give yet more social proof that the training inside ClickTrackProfit will work if you spend the time to take action on it. Like everything else if you ignore it and do nothing then you will get the result of nothing squared which is nothing!

Lesson #5 Have Fun And Sell Things You Enjoy

Everyone has the ability inside them to create and sell information over the internet.

I know lots about safelists and listbuilding, and doing geeky things such as installing membership scripts, and I can install an aweber form on your website so quickly I can do it for just $5!

Don’t get hung up on selling internet marketing products, most of them are rehashed crap. The real power of the internet is that it gives you the chance to become a superstar just by doing the things you love. Many of the lessons within ClickTrackProfit all have this underlying message, do the things you enjoy, help others, and then find people who will pay to learn from you. “Crush It” by Gary Vaynerchuck will give you the inspiration to get started blogging and start sharing your ideas.

Create quality content and then find a way to monetize it, if you try to create content to make money it will generally backfire and read like you’re selling rather than sharing.

Graduation

To complete the school of TimTech you also need to visit the Nike school of Marketing – JUST DO IT!

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.

I’ve decided to go back to basics, and start using Traffic Exchanges again.

I’ve not used them properly in nearly 5 years, but I knew that Jon Olson is still the man to learn from, so I knew that click track profit was what I needed to do.

The site is essentially a drip fed video training course where you have to do certain tasks before the next video becomes available. It does take time to do the tasks, but you will soon learn what you need to do to be successful with traffic exchanges.

Hint – it is about branding and finding ways of forming relationships with other members of the TE community.

The one biggest difference I noticed is that all sites now have a chat function. I’ve been using this occassionaly to ask some questions and find out why Click Track Profit has become so popular.

The reasons below are a summary of the answers, if you have another reason be sure to add it in the comments section.

#1 The Owners

The site is owned by TimTech and these guys are stand out leaders in this industry. They live and breath the world of traffic exchanges, they have fantastic support, and have taken the Gary Vaynerchuk way of turning this passion into multiple income streams.

Rather than constantly pitch you with affiliate offers all the emails you get have content / special offers. They leave the pitching to the pages they advertise in the exchanges. When I see a new page from these guys I’m saving it to use as a template.

#2 Adkreator

This site is the answer to your TE advertising branding issues. I have no graphical skills and yet it is super easy for me to create brilliant splash pages within minutes. Your creation is instantly saved as a single graphic and hosted for you on super fast servers. This saves you a lot of time and hassle when you want to make any changes, and helps make you look like a professional advertiser.

I have upgraded in adkreator as it gives the ability to create a squeezepage so I am listbuilding directly in the surfing window of the traffic exchange. The point of the normal splash page is to get the viewer to click out of the surfing window and visit the site you’re promoting.

When you spend time surfing you will start to see what is possible, and the creative ideas you can have will make upgrading seem like a “no-brainer”

#3 – Clicking

Modular training is given to you where you have to complete a task before moving onto the next video.

The click part is pretty self explanitory, and you have send traffic to your tracking link to reach the next level.

Certification requires you to send 100 hits from 5 exchanges, and expert status is much harder to achieve with 1000 hits from 10 exhanges required.

Whilst doing all this surfing extra content is drip fed to upgraded members. I am getting some real value from the extra videos as it’s giving me ideas on things to test in my advertising. Whilst surfing I can see all those trying to reach expert status without the extra videos.

The people who taking Jon’s advice and doing something different really stand out from the other affilliates, and if you found your way to this blog post from a page I advertised directly what was I doing that made you notice me from the thousands of other pages in rotation?

It’s also amazing how much you notice the same people who are still promoting the same rubbish sites. The great thing about social sites like sweeva is that you can give these people a thumbs down to give them a hint that what they’re advertising sucks. On a more positive note you can also leave positive feedback, and a good page can also be tweeted / liked on facebook to show your appreciation.

Hint – It’s probably easier to get facebook friends / twitter followers than it is e-mail addresses, so whilst clicking take the opportunity to get into the community and add value to the conversations.

#4 – Tracking

When you start assinging the credits you earn / buy then you will see that not all traffic exchanges deliver traffic equally. I know that despite surfing for a long time one exchange I need to become an expert is extremely slow at delivering the traffic. Once the 1000 hits have been delivered I won’t be going back to it.

The other extreme is that surfing 100 sites at EasyHits4u I can get 100 visitors within a few hours. Now to me this sort of instant return and ability to see if the results are good is far better than surfing 250 sites to get < 100 hits over the next week.

Once the expert status is achieved I’m hoping that the training videos will go into more detail on how to measure the stats within TEtoolbox better. Still very much a novice on trying to see if long term branding adds more value than lots of unique hits to people?

#5 – Profit

Now this is a slow burner when it comes to TE’s. You never sell directly as you only get 15 seconds, and even if you were selling bottled water in the desert you’d struggle to close a sale in this time frame.

The profit comes from the process of you being seen as someone who is worth listening to. If all you do is constantly much get rich quick then don’t be surprised when the good times go even faster than they arrived.

What you’re aiming to do is build up a steady stream of traffic into your marketing funnel. This means that if someone likes one of the pages that you’re promoting that you have a way of making some cash through the programmes and websites that you are going to recommend to them.

For example I know that a new list subscriber / targeted blog visitor / social media friend is going to see that I use safelists and traffic exchanges to generate traffic. All the best sites have space in my email follow-up series / download pages, and here on my blog.

If you combine all of these multiple things then it can start to snowball into a nice income stream. We’re not talking quit your job money here, but if you are able to save up all this money then you can buy treats to make life better in whatever way you want.

Conclusions

The whole ethos of click track profit is about learning a system that will help you generate traffic to your internet marketing websites. Once you have a steady traffic stream you can start trying out different things and find out the best way to achieve whatever it is that makes you spend hours on the internet.

Please post a comment with your thoughts.

Andrew

There is a new way to manage your promotions, grow your downline, and build your list … all in one place.  That place is Splash Page Surfer.

http://www.splashpagesurfer.com

Matthew Graves, creator of WebBizInsider and TopTierTraffic, has launched a new tool for Internet marketers.  Splash Page Surfer combines a top notch traffic exchange, downline builder, with the ability to send solo emails to your downline every week … 6 levels deep!  Matthew’s been working in Internet marketing for over 10 years and running traffic exchanges for close to 9 years.  He knows what works and what doesn’t!  Now you get his tools for your use.

http://www.splashpagesurfer.com

Splash Page Surfer also has the largest database of promotional material for all of the top traffic exchanges, safelists, viral list builders, ebooks, and other tools.  They have hundreds of splash pages, banners, and text ads preloaded into their system so you can manage all your promotions without copy and pasting urls from one site to another.  You just choose the program you want to promote and point and click on the image of the ad you want to run.  It is the simplest and neatest way to setup your promotions.  I love it!

http://www.splashpagesurfer.com

Join Splash Page Surfer to put more power behind your promotions!

Andrew Stark

P.S.  The downline builder that is integrated into this program is first-rate.  Make sure you enter all your referral ids for the Recommended Programs.  These are the key tools for Internet Success  Also, make sure you take a close look at the one-time offers for Premium Membership!  Premium Members get a whole list of great benefits, including the ability to email 6 levels of your downline and random referrals from Matthew’s promotions!

http://www.splashpagesurfer.com