Please Note: Any “Solo Says” posts are mainly my opinions sprinkled in with some facts. Feel free to intelligently agree or disagree. =)
Have you noticed that recently some traffic exchanges have been reducing their surf timers as a temporary bonus for surfers? The idea sounds great, after all that means you can get more page views per hour and ultimately earn more credits. But what the people who surfed before for 15 seconds, and then learns that someone else could be watching their page for only 10 seconds. How does that make you feel?
Recently Tim Linden brought up this issue in his blog. At his suggestion, I will address my thoughts on it. The obvious problem is that this does not seem like a fair trade off, I view someone’s page for a certain period of time to earn credits, but someone else earns the same for a smaller time investment.
And what about the people who purchase credits, expecting their websites to be shown for 15 seconds, but instead it is shown for 10 seconds? Do you have a right to be upset? I think it is fair, but in the end we should look at the big picture.
The bottom line is that we desire certain results. I don’t see a problem with timers changing. I regularly surf at exchanges with surf timers ranging from 6 - 30 seconds, and the timing of the surfbars have shown no affect on the results of my advertising campaigns.
It’s not about the surf timer, the bonuses, or the theme. It is about the members. The question to ask is “who?” Who is surfing at these exchanges? When I look at Traffic-Splash, which has a 5-6 second timer, my results are typically excellent because the members are active. While comparatively, some exchanges with 15+ second timers give me very poor results.
My thoughts are that as long as the members are active and reading my pages, the length of the surfbar is irrelevant (As long as it is shown long enough for someone to read and understand it).
What does Solo say? I say I don’t care; as long my message gets in front of interested people. I also say that I completely understand if you are against this practice as well. You invest your time and money for a service to be provided. If it is not delivered the way it was promised, you have the right be upset. But for me, as long as the results continue to come, I will be there.
January 27th, 2008 at 10:59 pm
I think it’s a question of credits in / credits out. As an owner, we want people to earn credits and then burn them to keep the system in check. As a means of checks and balances.
Reducing surfbar timers may be a way to incite activity if the credits in the exchange are too high and not enough are burned. After all, even a reduced timer is better than one not viewing your page at all because the credit balance is out of whack.
January 28th, 2008 at 4:41 am
Thanks for the thoughts! I manually trackbacked your post, as for some reason it didn’t see that you send me a link LOL
January 28th, 2008 at 8:17 pm
What is the problem? I think that every surfer surfs at least 4 sites at the same time using different windows - so they don’t see your ad’s 10 to 30 secs but about 2 secs and you can but browser time whatever you want. Some sites let you minimize window and then of course you see ad’s whole time.