Archive

Archive for August, 2011

Banners Bite @ TrafficSwarm

August 18th, 2011 3 comments

The other day, I blogged about the re-launch of Traffic Swarm.  While I still think it’s great bang for the buck (paid or free), I have to admit that I’m very disappointed by the banner results so far.  They’ve been… dissappointing, with the worst click rates on my traffic-exchange banners (like the one below) in the industry – like 0 clicks for almost 15,000 impressions.

To put that into proportion, this particualr banner – as is – usually brings in 0.3% – 1.5% click-through-rates in every other traffic exchange I rotate it in (the better exchanges tend to give me higher clickthrough rates), meaning 3-15 clicks for every 1,000 views.  Meaning I’d have expected at least 45 clicks from Traffic Swarm to stay on par with the worst performing exchanges…

Maybe it’s the fact that the banners are only placed on the bottom of the pages with the surf ads (to choose the next site to click on) combined with the fact that you don’t earn credits for clicking on them (the only 2 links on the page that won’t earn you credits).  Whatever the reason, I’m very disappointed with the results.  Taking into consideration that banners cost 10 impressions per credit in addition to the sucky results, and I personally doubt that I’ll be using banner ads there any more unless some serious changes are made to where and how they’re displayed…

Issac – Mighty Warrior (At Last!)

August 16th, 2011 2 comments

After knowing about it for years, but recently seeing a lot of activity from the WSO world in the last month or so, I finally took the plunge and joined The Warrior Forums.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with them, the Warrior Forums are an old and pretty respected forums in the Internet Marketing niche.  Once a paid-only forum (when I was first introduced to it, it cost money and I was too careful over every dollar spent to “risk” joining – sound familiar?), it later changed to a free membership.

Currently, it’s still free to join, with many paid-member-only areas on the site.  As Allen said, the incredible PR value of the forums was causing a lot of folks to take unfair advantage of the free membership to spam the system without contributing to the forums.  Even with high moderation, to keep the content high quality and clean, that was making problems.

So this morning, I finally joined (and paid for the upgraded membership that I foolishly turned down years ago) and really hope that it will prove worthy.  If you’re a member there, make sure to send me a friendship request – my username is “issac”

Categories: Informational

One Of My Top 3 Traffic Sources Just Silently Re-Launched

August 14th, 2011 1 comment

If you’ve had a chance to read my Traffic Exchange book, you’ll already know why this is one of my favorite traffic sources, but just in case you haven’t, keep reading…

So, apparantly, a month or so ago, one of my favorite traffic exchanges re-vamped, re-designed and basically re-launched, but pretty quietly. The exchange in question is Traffic Swarm.

If I remember correctly, Traffic Swarm was one of the first 3 traffic exchanges I ever joined – I think this would have been back in 2007, or maybe even 2006 – having learned about them from the then brand-new Magnetic Sponsoring community. (Yeah, I could get sidetracked on Magnetic Sponsoring and talk about THAT for hours, but lemme stay focused).

What turned me on to Traffic Swarm back then was it’s similarity to Google Adwords, in that rather than clicking randomly from website to website (or even picking one based on thumbnails like some newer TEs do), you’re given a page full of “AdWords Ads” and you pick one to visit.

I’ve found that the targetted traffic I get tends to convert several tiems better than at any other traffic exchange that I use, if I can write a real winning ad, simply because the traffic becomes more “direct-response” type traffic, than truly random traffic.

I also found that another advantage is that I can put up more websites that are not so targetted for the “Making Money From Home” industry, and still get great responses – also, because of the filtering that they have.

A final useful tip, like I write about in my follow-up email series to my Traffic Exchange book, is that I love using Traffic Swarm as a great way to test ad copy before using it on Google in my Google Adwords account!

One thing I can say about Traffic Swarm, is that they’re one of the exchanges that I spend the most real money on, because of the quality of the traffic.

According to this post on their blog, they relaunched exactly a month ago. It was done pretty quietly, without much fanfare – at least not that I heard of.  Which is a bit of a shame, because they’be got some incredible deals going on.  Be forewarned that their offers aren’t cheap to begin with, but I personally have been looking for an excuse to get some Traffic Swarm upgrade goodness, so took them up on it anyways.

Let me know if you’re interested in hearing my results from the new Traffic Swarm.

White-Hat Clickbank Product Celebrates Second Birthday

August 7th, 2011 4 comments

I know, I know.   I harp about this product a lot.  But it’s still the aboslute coolest and best that I know of in it’s niche, and still earns me the most every month.  (And I had so much fun making the video for them - especially the bloopers :D )

ClickBank Raises the Bar – Promotes “White Hat” Sales Techniques & Cracks Down on “Black Hat”

August 2nd, 2011 2 comments

I just finished reading the update to Clickbank’s terms of services for vendors, and WOW!

They’re taking real steps to help unsuspecting customers remain safe from unscrupulous vendors.

Here’s a short list of the changes:

  • No “fake” testimonials or “fake” sellers.

I love this one – I recently saw a product sold on clickbank where the sales page described a “normal” person – actually, a hobo – who climbed from living off the streets to riches within a year of using the traffic methods being advertised in the product.  It made me sick, though, when I found out shortly later that the entire “story” was a made up fairy tale – the person didn’t exist, it hadn’t necessarily transform anyone’s life – it was all a crock of s*%#

No more of that.

Also of personal interest to me is no more “video only” web pages that you can’t stop or pause.

  •  No fake scarcity

No more countdowns saying “only 13 minutes left to buy”.  No more “Only 60 37 12 remaining.  Buy Now!”  Unless it’s real.  If you write something like that, Clickbank will count how many sales are made, and when that “3″ hits “0″ they won’t let you sell your product any more for another week!  Note that “one time offers” which only really do display once, are still allowed – they’re not banning scarcity, justblatantly  made-up scarcity.

  • No more fake discounts

No more saying “This product normally sells for $997, but TODAY ONLY you can get it for just $97!” – again, not unless it’s true.  Clickbank will check the prices, and if you’ve sold the product for a while at $997, you can write it…  But you can’t just plug in a $997 price tag for the sake of offering the discount.

  • Limits on One-Time-Offers / Upsells

There’s nothing wrong with an honest upsell!  But no more days of buying a cheap product only to be slammed with tens of offers to confuse and frighten you.  There are now firm limits of how many upsells can be offered, as well as how many “wait one second!” exit offers are allowed

There are a few more, and you can view the full details at Clickbank’s website.

My favorite part of these new rules is that my products already comply with every single one of them!  (Go me!)  How’s that for honest marketing?

Do you know of products that do or don’t comply?  Let me know by commenting!