Issac G's Blog

When I was a kid, I used to love the story “The Little Engine That Could”.  I guess it was an early sign of my coming entrepreneur-ism that I loved.  The big engines wouldn’t pull the big train cars, but this pipsqueak little engine tried… and tried… and tried.. and DID!   Proving that the little guy DOES have power to play with the big boys.

This past friday, Logiscpae announced the launch of their new monster, called Monster Splash.  I’ve got to be honest.  It’s cool… but in my opinion, not THAT cool.  It’s kinda like having another BIG engine.  Yeah, sure it’s nice and shiny, but is it really doing something difficult or even helpful to bring into the industry?  Or is it going to stand there looking shiny, and doing good things… but not the things that you’d expect from a big shiny engine?

Basically, it’s very similar in idea to the “splash page network” from Traffic Era, in that you can create ads and ad placements on your website, and then you basically barter people’s ability to place ads on your website for your ability to place ads on other websites.

Honistly, I’m a bit curious as to why they’d have selected this particular business model so recently after releasing their traffic exchange oriented TEBrowser web browser.  The TEBrowser helps people click between their favorite traffic exchanges and thus totally miss ads that will be displayed with Monster Splash…  And if their surfing with a fast surf counter on any exchange: well, to put it lightly, anyone who allows ads over their site on an exchange with a 6 second timer isn’t doing anything useful to themselves to begin with.

So, good thinking Logiscape, but I’m kinda left wondering how useful their full portfolio is together.  They’ve got lots of GREAT sites, but I’m not liking things in 2010 so far (even HitSilo doesn’t seem to be doing so well, which is disappointing).  And don’t get me wrong: for the record I LOVE LOGISCAPE!  TS25, TrafficPods and HitPulse were some of the early exchanges that I surfed, and are still some of the best converting (for me) exchanges out there!

On the other hand, a big (albeit belated)  kudos out to Gary Ambrose with his recent launch of List Wire, an incredible site that lets you have a 100% fully-functional autoresponder for free!  So there’s no more excuses for saying that you can’t afford iContact or aWeber (although they do have better services which are worth the money!).  Start building your list today.  Thanks for that, Gary!

It’s been a while since I had the opportunity to write a bit. I’ve had an enjoyable month full of activity in all honestly, but slumped a bit in my online social activity.

So what have I done?

Well, first of all, I unveiled a really cool new feature to my splash pages, which has an audio welcome that’s customized based on what traffic exchange you’re viewing the page from. It’s really cool! To see it in action, try adding http://www.TheTrafficExchangeBook.com/ to your favorite traffic exchange and see what it looks like when you’re previewing it (try refreshing a few times, too )

Then, later in the month, I started a limited beta test of my new dedicated server offerings, which you can read more about here, if that’s the kind of thing that interests you.

Finally, I broke 100 downline members at SuccessQUIK, and promised my 100th downline member a free upgrade on me, just for being number 100. Oddly enough, the guy never took me up on the offer.

*shrugs*

Anyway, just wanted to drop a quick line to say that I’m still alive, and up to new and cool stuff to keep my business growing.

I’ve also been loving the thank-you page rotator at TE Toolbox which has kept signups to various programs flowing in even when I take my hand off of the pulse of my traffic-exchange-centered business. Kudos to Tim, Jon and Paul for that!

One of the things that I’ve quickly fallen in love with ThumbVu for is… No, not the thumbnails allowing you to pick which site you want to view next, although they’re cool too.  Not the voting buttons on the surfbar either – but they’re cool too; they allow you to send positive or negative feedback about the page you’re on to the site owner.

Anyway, before I get carried on about the things I didn’t want to talk about, let’s try to focus on what I did: the “Connect with” button on the surf bar.  When clicked it opens up the surfbar to show more information about whose page you’re currently viewing (including contact information for those people).

I like the feature for two main reasons.

Firstly, it lets me learn a lot about what people whom I already know are promoting.  For example, Tim Linden promotes his TE Toolbox rotator, whereas Tony Tezak promotes a splash page for Tezak Traffic Power.  But by watching what is being promoted, and by whom, there’s a lot that you can learn and take away from

Secondly, it helps me find interesting people who are marketing good pages and try to connect with them.  Like take Penny Cannon, who was randomly selected to be featured here by virtue of having a picture uploaded to ThumbVu and a matching picture branding her on this page.  That’s someone who understands the basics of Traffic Exchanges and is therefore someone whom I’d want to connect with more than people who keep rotating generic affiliate salesletter pages, who have a lot to learn.  (One might argue that I could do the opposite, too, and connect with people who don’t know the basics and give them a free copy of my book to help teach them )

The best part about this nifty feature is the fact that I asked for it to be available as a default option in my surf, and was rewarded with the admin’s agreement and it being added as an option in your “Profile” page just 24 hours after I’d made the request.  Kudos to John for making that happen so fast!

Anyway, in conclusion, there’s lots to learn from this exchange and I get the feeling that the social marketing potential will exceed even what I got out of Hitsilo (you’re gonna have to search the blog archives for that – I’m too lazy to post a link.  Sorry)

So anyway, what do you like (or hate) about ThumbVu?

I hope the new year’s going well for you.

Let me get straight to the point.  First, yes, this is going to be a “sales pitch” post.  Bummer – sorry.  But there’s a bright side to it.

There’s a program that just launched a few days ago – made a lot of noise for just a few days…   And then got quiet again.  I had a tragedy in the family (great uncle had a heart attack and passed away ) so I only saw the launch emails a day late, and didn’t really act on them.

THEN, today I got a tweeted something from my buddy Jamison Raymond, and I went to look and it was this same site that I’d heard about.  So I figure, ok let’s take a look.

And, boy – it was REALLY really REALLY cool!

Like check out this splash page (I love it and it’s available for anyone to use!):

I haven’t used a splash page out-of-the-box in ages, but I loved this one!

The program is really cool too.  It’s new and slick – like Traffic Dealer and Top Tier Traffic were when they came out.  They have really amazing social media and list building integration (pro members only :/ ) which is amazing, and may convince me to keep my upgraded membership just by itself.

And it’s semi-targetted traffic; people see a thumbnail of your site and click on it to visit it, so you’ve already got people who are semi-interested.  I love it!

They’re also very person-branding oriented.  There’s plenty of places to get your face and your links in front of people.  Whenever someone clicks on your site, in addition to your site being displayed, your picture, blog, twitter, facebook, skype, and any other details you want ALSO can be displayed – that’s personal branding on a whole new level!

The best part is, I happened to notice that there’s a cash contest for referals.  The leader, Jon Atwood, has only 11 referrals, which means that noone is promoting it, meaning that there’s HUGE potential to still build a massive downline there!  Even better, they give their pro members random referals.  I can’t promise results from getting in early on random referals, but I jumped in at High Hits when it just launched an random referals alone have built me a downline of 10% of the membership base there!

There’s an upgrade option, which I found to be a tad on the pricey side, but if nothing else, at LEAST try a 1-month trial at $17 (inside the site it’s more) – the social media, 250 free credits EVERY WEEK, and the rest are all worth it.

Definitely check it out (hey – at least sign up for free and maybe help ME win the referral contest, maybe? )

Heck, they even desigend it specifically to work from your iPhone!  How friggin’ cool is that?!?

Anyway, I’m still loving my first experience with it and hope this one will both be a keeper and teach us some new ways to market ourselves better!

So I was checking out @timlinden’s blog where he was asking his followers what they thought of 2009, advertising wise, and saw something which I’d been waiting to see for quite a bit, although most of it was in the form of “Yeah, what she said…”.

People seem to want a better reason to sign up for your list than to get a free download.

That’s cool with me, as I’ve already got something like that going with Insta!Login – now all I’ve got to do is monetize it

On the subject, I’m still waiting for more people to fill out my end-of-2009 survey, but there are some interesting findings already and once I get a slightly more significant sample of answers, I’ll be sharing what I find, so fill yours out if you haven’t yet so I can get the answers out ASAP!