The ideal traffic exchange?

[Menard]

Ideal would certainly be open to interpretation.

From ratios to member pools, there are all kinds of variables which might make one traffic exchange more desirable or useful over another.

Being that many traffic exchanges are carbon copies of each other, with the domains changed to protect the guilty, what would distinguish one from the abundant crowd?

One aspect for me which is simply lacking in most traffic exchanges (I actually can't think of any which fully offer this) is security for the end user.

An absolute truth to using traffic exchanges is that if you use them, your computer at some point will be infected.

Of course, surfing the web alone could result in your computer becoming infected. You lessen the chances by staying off of certain types of sites; but the chance is always going to be there.

I am not talking about absolute security; there is no such thing on the internet and it would be silly to try to hold traffic exchanges to a higher standard that any other sites on the web.

There are, however and in my opinion, things that can be done to improve the security of traffic exchanges.

1) (the most critical) Do not allow sites which use advertising rotators. Yes, it looks like just a banner, but the majority of paid adverting ratotor services simply serve spyware thru their rotators.

2) (similar to the above) No inline frames which link to remote content. This would include button and banner exchanges. An inline frame to a remote source is an invitation for other to send whatever they dang well please to your page. This does not include affiliate links which are only served by the affiliate.

3) (this one is questionable) Develop a list of prohibited hosts. Perhaps it might be silly, or even overkill, but there are web hosts which have poor security which leaves a site wide open to hacking. If someone hacks your site, they can pretty much do anything they want and send anything they want through your site.


There are annoyance measures that a lot of traffic exchnages follow, though they do not necessarily add to the security, they can help provided someone is paying attention.

These include: no popups, no fly-in adds, no message boxes, no framebreakers, etc.; though these are largely in place to prevent surfing from being interupted so people will stay.


I just recently cleared up (mostly) some pretty nasty spyware that has been in my system, causing numerous problems, and I got most of it through traffic exchanges.

Being that I am working on some traffic exchanges of my own, it occured to me that they would be no different and do the same thing to others as what was done to me unless I institute stronger security measures than what is standard for traffic exchanges.


I'm asking for some input on the measures I have mentioned and any other measures you might suggest I could use to weed out troublesome sites that could do harm to one's computer.


Of course, this thread is open to anything which your feel would make a traffic exchange ideal whether it involves security or not.

[Andy]

I think that the ideal traffic exchange is already evolving in the form of the Blogosphere. It's where many people surf each other's blog sites and get alerted of new posts via RSS and the good quality sites quickly rise to the surface.

In Firefox, I am starting to "subscribe" to sites, this makes it easy for me to check for new posts without wasting time visiting the actual site to check for updates.

The old style Traffic Exchange is mostly an unpleasant experience, but surfing and commenting on blogs is fun and effective as a targeted source of traffic. For example, you are only likely to comment on blogs that are relevant to your site topic and people that click through your link from your comment will be very targeted to your site topic.

[donecweb]

Tell me something Andy. How do you have time to do all the surfing you talk about, keep the projects you have and do all the posting to websites, blogs and forums, plus write your articles and create your programs? I'm retired and I don't have time to do 10% of what you talk about.

[Andy]

I'm retired and I don't have time to do 10% of what you talk about.

LOL

Well, it's my profession now. Currently I only check out 2 forums and then I try not to get wrapped up in drawn out discussions. I scan the posts for anything of interest and quickly read them and maybe do a quick post. For blogs, I bookmark them as rss subscriptions so I don't have to surf them to check for new posts. When I find a new interesting blog I may well spend a long time reading many of the posts since it can be valuable information. For projects, I try and make them self-sustaining with automation so once done they function without much manual intervention. For example, my product sales process is 100% automated.

I don't watch TV, don't commute, don't play computer games and don't surf sites much (I use websites to learn things mostly rather than for entertainment) so that frees up many hours per day.

When I worked in an office, I spent 1 hour for lunch, 1.5 hours commuting and 5 hours watching TV so there's 7.5 hours saved not counting the 7 hours wasted actually in the office 

I suppose that when you are retired you are running errands for your kids, looking after the grandchildren, doing part time work, visiting clinics, standing in queues, tending to the garden, repairing things, sorting out your boxes of "stuff", searching for stuff that has been lost, cleaning your house and doing voluntary work and stuff?

[Menard]

I think that the ideal traffic exchange is already evolving in the form of the Blogosphere. It's where many people surf each other's blog sites...

Interestingly enough, blogs are one of the types of sites I am considering not allowing.

Too many of them are overly heavy and not dial-up friendly; not to mention that a number of bloggers are using a service and have no concept about web design as evidenced by a lot of the stuff they just throw onto their blogs. I have had my computer restarted for me several times while surfing exchanges, and the web, and most often the site scripts responsible for that are blogs and CMS scripts.

Of course, I will have to check each site individually. Even if it is a blog, but it loads quickly and is lot loaded with a bunch of BS, I would approve that. If I don't approve it, they can still rotate a splash page with a link to their blog.

[Andy]

Bloggers will not be bothered with traffic exchanges since it is very effective to get targeted traffic by simply posting a comment on another blog. I know since I get traffic in this way. You can siphon traffic from blogs that charge a lot of money for advertisers, but it doesn't cost you any money. Tactically, you can aim to be a top commentator and get a link to your site on their home page for free too.

So as bloggers surf each other's sites, the traffic is naturally exchanging and it is focused and targeted rather than being in a rotator of forced views.

p.s. I am finding that some banner Ads are performing better than splash pages on traffic exchanges to generate clicks. The CTR on the banners is up to 0.2% but they have a 30:1 ratio of exposures to credits giving an equivalent CTR of 6% which is very good. Sorry I haven't number crunched the splash page clicks to get a CTR figure.

[Menard]

p.s. I am finding that some banner Ads are performing better than splash pages on traffic exchanges to generate clicks. The CTR on the banners is up to 0.2% but they have a 30:1 ratio of exposures to credits giving an equivalent CTR of 6% which is very good. Sorry I haven't number crunched the splash page clicks to get a CTR figure.

I have run some banners on traffic exchanges but have not had that good of an experience with them. Admittedly the credit exchange ration can  be very good on some exchanges. It is good, as you had mentioned about exposure on traffic exchanges, as an additional way to keep your name in front of the exchange user for name recognition. I would well imagine, though, that the exchange ratio for banners would be the determining factor in how well they perform in an exchange.

[Andy]

I am now rotating another splash page to measure results. I am logging any clicks on the links so I can evaluate the CTR. Also, I am tracking affiliate sales made via these clicks.

My gut feel is that this page must get clicks. I can't show you the page since that would skew the results.

It will be a good test of how effective this kind of advertising is.

Using the data I collect, I can work out the value of each surf credit that I use up i.e. value = sales commission / number of credits required to achieve a sale

I am targeting the American market so I am trying to avoid rotating the page during the bed time hours of the USA. Ideally I would show the page all the time but that requires more credits.

[Andy]

I don't seem to be getting any conversions to sales, no matter what I try with Traffic Exchanges so I am thinking to accumulate credits until I have a new idea on the subject. One use is to test banners so you can tell which ones get the best CTR. My best one gets 1 click per 500 exposures and the worst get no clicks after 2500 exposures. I could maybe sell a report of my test results or offer a banner testing service?

[Queen Bee]

I could maybe sell a report of my test results or offer a banner testing service?

I am fairly ignorant on the subject, but I think that both of these sound like good ideas. Test results may prove useful for other people struggling with traffic exchange companies just as you have.