Traffic Exchange Scoop

Well today I have some very exciting news, one of the older and more established traffic exchanges has relaunched! It is SWAT Traffic , one of the TE’s owned by Jon Olson!

So what’s going on with the relaunch of SWAT?

• Fantastic New Design
• The next 500 members get $5 FREE into their accounts
• For the next 24 hours, each referral is worth $1

There’s also a contest for whoever comes up with the best name for his mascot! I’m not sure on the prize details for that yet, but I’m sure it will be announced soon.

But I have to say this may be one of the BEST relaunch deals in history, because it is coming from an established traffic exchange that already produces results. On top of that, you are also getting an incentive to join and refer people to a quality program.

When you join, make sure to consider taking the special one time offer. I’m a captain member at SWAT Traffic not just for the traffic, but also because I get exclusive access to the SWAT Traffic Seminars, which has helped me immensely in doing business online. I talk a lot about that in my E-book Zero to Internet Marketing Hero .

So anyway… that is some very exciting news for the traffic exchange world. If for some reason you’ve never joined SWAT Traffic before, now is the time to do it!

Click Here to Join SWAT Traffic.

Jon Olson’s Hit Exchange News has experienced a hard drive failure, which has resulted in the loss of data for Hit Exchange News, Hit Exchange Blog, and Doctor Traffic. Work is being done to see if the information can be recovered, but at this point we will just have to wait.

In the mean time, Jon Olson has made several announcements:

• The Hit Exchange Blog will no longer exist and will instead be consolidated into the Hit Exchange News.
• The future of Hit Exchange 101 is still being decided. It might get a complete overhaul or simply go offline.
• The Traffic Exchange Guy Consulting service will not be accepting new clients. It will be eventually come back even better than ever.

It’s terrible to see such a huge loss, but hope is not lost and hopefully others can learn from this experience. It’s more than just "back up your data". This is a lesson of working hard in the face of adversity, looking for the positives and solutions in a terrible situation, and the value of relationships.

The outpouring of support for Jon Olson has been tremendous because of all of the relationships he’s built and the people he has helped over the years. Among those people he’s helped is me as well. A business can fail and be rebuilt over again. However true relationships will be there for you when you need support the most. I hope you are all investing the time to build relationships and friendships with new people, it’s hard to succeed in business without it. And most importantly your friendships will be there even if your business vanishes one day.

Please take the time to wish Jon the best and be sure to learn the valuable lessons that this situation can teach us.

It wasn’t so long ago that Jon Olson dubbed Blue-Surf the traffic exchange to watch in 2008. There has certainly been a lot of big launches this year, but Blue-Surf has lived up to expectations with high activity and high ratings. It has just celebrated its 4,000th member in under 5 months!

Although it doesn’t get much attention, S.W.A.T. traffic has quietly climbed the ranks into a coveted range by reaching the 10,000 member mark! This is another traffic exchange owned by Jon Olson. A big congratulations to S.W.A.T. traffic and to Jon Olson for having yet another successful traffic exchange.

Brand your name! Brand your face! Blah blah blah. You hear it from all of these so called experts, but what is the real value of branding? Here is a real life story from me. In fact you may have seen unravel before your eyes without even realizing it.

Want to know the truth about TEscoop? I may lay my referral links all over the place here, but I hardly get any referrals from TEscoop at all! The truth is that most of you that visit here are already fairly avid traffic exchange users, which means you are likely a member of most major TE’s. That makes my referral links pretty much useless. So why bother?

I started TEscoop with one major goal in mind, and that was to brand myself. I spent hours and hours surfing to promote TEscoop, which earned me nothing financially(and continues to earn nothing)! It may seem like a waste of time because I’m not earning any money from this website, but we have to look at the bigger picture. It helped brand my name in the industry!

In less than 2 months, several owners from big traffic exchanges recognized me and the work that I was doing! That is amazing if you think about it. How powerful is branding? When several big traffic exchange owners recognize your name and the work that you do, that is worth more than a few sales.

Since then, I’ve made some valuable connections and at least brought attention to who I am and what I do. Am I big player yet? No. But branding has brought me one step closer and made the process much easier. It’s helped me make my own  mark with TEscoop and EliteSafelist. The big boys like Jon Olson keep telling you that branding is key, but I don’t think I’ve ever understood it as well as I do today.

Folks, if anything is to be learned from this, listen to the experts! If you want to achieve their success, you should pay attention to what they do and say. You can disagree, but at least acknowledge and recognize their message. They have achieved their success for a reason!

So here is one more guy telling you to brand yourself. It doesn’t take much work to just put a picture up on your splash pages and let people know who is the person behind the business. You may or may not recognize me as a big name or an expert. But remember, it was only about 6 months ago that almost no one knew the name Solomon Huey!

StartXchange is giving a free 10% surfing bonus for coming in to surf today. Remember that this is on top of the regular surfing bonuses, so be sure to log in and take advantage. The increased activity should give surfers a nice percentage increase on your surfing efforts.

On a quick side note, the owner of  StartXchange, Tim Linden, has been publishing weekly interviews on his blog from many different traffic exchange owners. I have to highlight this week’s interview though, because love him or hate him, he is one of the biggest names in the traffic exchange industry. Jon Olson’s interview is online, be sure to read it by clicking here.

Blue-Surf has just hit the big milestone of 1,000 members! It experienced a significant boost in members after being ranked #17 at Traffic Hoopla. It also received significant attention surrounding it after being pronounced one of the traffic exchanges to watch for the year by Traffic Exchange Guru, Jon Olson.

Blue-Surf reached the milestone in 53 days, a difficult to accomplish in a crowded market. The user-base has been very active according to Blue-Surf owner Scott Martin, who states that 25-40% of the members are surfing approximately 25,000 pages per day.

A big congratulations to Blue-Surf, although don’t expect this to be the last congratulations you send to it this year.

Note: Unfortunately I just received the newsletter by email today, which is 3 days late. The newsletter was published on January 7th, 2008.
ILoveHits has announced its first contest in awhile, a referral contest! You have 7 days to refer as many members as possible, and the person with the most referrals wins. The prize?

Jon Olson, the owner of ILoveHits, doesn’t say specifically what the prize is, but he mentions ILoveHits products, credits, and more. It looks like you will either have to wait or win to find out the prize.

Blue-Surf made another big announcement today, however this has nothing to do with programming changes. Instead it is the structure of Blue-Surf that is changing.

First, the surf ratios have been changed. It was previously 2:1 for free members.  Now the ratios are:

• Free - 3:1
• Bronze - 4:3
• Gold - 1:1

The owner, Scott (I could not locate his last name at the website), appeared ready for the backlash with a somewhat defensive e-mail update. He explains how the lower surf ratio will help members and Blue-Surf in the long run in terms of increasing user activity and being able to offer more bonuses. While no one likes earning less credits per page view and may turn some current members away, it generally is better for the long-term health of Blue-Surf. It is a bold move, but if Scott feels a change should be made, I applaud him for doing it early in the life of Blue-Surf before we all get comfortable.

On a more positive note, the surf time has been reduced from 15 seconds to 10 seconds. Even though you are now earning less credits per page view, you still have the ability to earn the same amount of credits per minute.

Finally, the credits you earn from your downlines’ surfing has been decreased. For free members, you now earn:

• Level 1 - 7%
• Level 2 - 4%
• Level 3 - 2%

Blue-Surf claims that this will allow larger bonuses to be given away. I have yet to see any bonus pages in my surfing thus far though.
Blue-Surf has seen a lot of changes this past 24 hours and is certainly trying to adjust in order to be successful. Although some may dislike the current changes, I am one person who thinks that it will benefit Blue-Surf in the long term - even if I’d prefer a 2:1 ratio for myself.

Jon Olson’s prediction has been correct so far. For 2008, this has been the exchange to watch!

Blue-Surf has added text links to additional advertising to offer members. This is a common feature in nearly every major exchange. What makes this such an interesting addition is that its script is custom made. Jon Olson, a recognized traffic exchange expert, has publicly noted that Blue-Surf is the exchange to watch.

Living up to expectations so far, Blue-Surf has already made a few changes since its launch, with much more planned. You can see those planned changes on the homepage of Blue-Surf.